Drainman Pro

I had an emergency on Sunday with a sprinkler pipe leakage. He estimated cost of $ 780 to $ 1,100 cuz he figured he would be there all day. He spent 1 hr and 45 minutes and charged $ 789.00. I consider this price excessive, taking advantage of an old widow on a Sunday. Shame on him.

We hired him to do leak detection and then got a second opinion/​quote. We paid him over $ 400 to detect the leak and he left without marking what he found which does us no good unless we had him do the work too. We wound up going with him since he had to come back anyway, and it turns out he detected the leak in the wrong place. This is after he ripped up carpet and jackhammered up the concrete floor, which didn’t need to be done because the leak turned out to not be in the floor. We hired another company to correctly find the leak and finish the work and repair all the damage he did. He did not offer to fix the mess he caused not refund our $ 400+ for the leak detection he did not properly do. Unprofessional to say the least.

The most important function of Unilocal is to warn people when a vendor of a service, especially an important one, like sewer pipe repair and replacement, is a party that one should, by all prudent measures, avoid. My experiences with Sylvanai, the owner of Drainman Pro, fits this category.
I had an old sewer pipe (lateral) from our home to the street, under our lawn, that had deteriorated with root intrusion through a few seams in the 50+ yr. old pipe. I got a few bids for pipe burst replacement, which is about a 1-​day job, made far more complicated and expensive, by the way, by Contra Costa County’s abusive permitting fees not required in other counties, by the way) plus City «encroachment» permit fees — totaling +/​-​$ 1000! (All the local agencies like to pile on with permit fee and inspection requirements that are over the top to keep their union staff busy and rake dollars off from property owners to fund bloated pensions.) I called a sewer pipe replacement company in Riverside County, and they told me that the same job there costs $ 2200 (half), because there are not permit fees and multiple inspections involved for a pipe replacement entirely on a homeowner’s property.
Sylvanai showed up in his unmarked beater car (no truck), and after a cursory look, told me he’d beat any bid I could get but that he’d write up a bid under $ 4000 for the job and do it for us. After I received nothing, I called him back a week later and left messages with his answering service. I was ignored. I finally reached Sylvanai on his cell phone two days later.
He apologized for the delay in getting back to me and promised to call me back within the hour. That call never came. I never heard from him again.
This company, from what I can tell, is not for «real». Anybody who flakes out so totally on returning calls, writing up a bid, and meeting even basic courtesy or professional standards, should be avoided.
Can you just imagine how difficult it would have been to get satisfaction, had I actually paid him for the job and there were workmanship issues? Avoid Drainman Pro.

Had a Clogged toilet on a Saturday.
They charged $ 94.00 just to use an auger I could have bought for much less.
Plus of course a service fee plus time and a half.
Wouldn’t use this company again.