Smith Mechanical

Buyer Be Warned… After a hot water heater issue, this company was assigned by our home warranty company to provide service. The dispatcher who set up the appointment instructed us that the plumber would «take down the model number, serial number and do a brief diagnosis and…(most importantly) collect the check for the deductible.» He instructed that it would likely be a few days before they could get parts for the repair (without ever seeing the water heater). After the plumber was over an hour late without a phone call, he was in the house for 3 minutes including the time required to write a check. His determination: the water heater was old, the gas valve was bad and the water heater would most likely need to be replaced because parts would most likely not be available. The plumber was rude and refused to phone the authorization center for the warranty company as they asked me to have him do in order to expedite the claim. His excuse: «If I call at this time of day, I’ll wait for an hour to talk to a person. It’s faster to go back to the office and file the claim online.» Which, the warranty company had stated that filing online would delay the claim. After complaining to the warranty company about the plumber’s behavior, rudeness and his lack of evaluating any issues with the water heater, they have now assigned the claim to Home Depot who was able to fix the problem same day. Significant thanks to KW Mechanical who spent an hour diagnosing the problem, determined it was NOT the gas valve but was a dirty and misaligned burner causing the problem. He then cleaned the burner, realigned it and we had hot water back immediately. I wish I would have found the comments on Unilocal before I every allowed Smith Mechanical in my house.

Update: The next day there was some small leaking. Called Warranty company again, found out flushing WAS covered under the warranty but they wouldn’t send a different company out, so Smith came back. Said I needed a new hot water heater, told me how I needed all these things that wouldn’t be covered by warranty. Gave warranty company an estimate, and I would have paid another $ 500 out of pocket after warranty paid their part — and another $ 200 on top of that to remove the old hot water heater.
Called another company (Jolly Plumbing) to get an estimate. Total price $ 843, including removal. All covered under warranty. Since they weren’t contracted with HMS I had to pay it out of pocket and get reimbursed but instead of paying $ 700, I paid $ 0 after the reimbursement.
I can’t say enough bad things about this company. Rip off artists, rude, condescending, etc.

Zero stars (or negative) should be a choice, because these guys earn it. My home warranty folks sent them out due to a leaking toilet. They sent a guy out who took about 4 pictures and said they’d submit the findings to the warranty folks and collected $ 100. The issue was not covered under the warranty (which I understand).
None the less I asked to have Smith make the repairs, thinking the $ 100 would be applied to the cost of repairs (which is normal for most trades). Smith told us they were too busy to make the repairs.
We had to call another plumber (Pioneer Plumbing — very good by the way) who made the repair in less than 2 hours charging $ 125.
The reason Smith was «too busy» in my opinion? They already made $ 100 for taking pictures, so the actual repairs would of only made them another $ 25.
Avoid these guys like the plague.

After a sewage backup in our basement, we were told by our home warranty company that we had to use Smith Mechanical for our plumbing needs in order for it to be covered. We called their 24 hour emergency line, only to get a voice mail message instructing us to leave our name and number and someone would contact us within 24 hours. 72 hours later, they still have not contacted us, and if we hadn’t called a different plumber, we’d still be sitting in a puddle of sewage.
I really can’t rate their performance, since they utterly failed to perform. If we were in a position where waiting 24 hours was a viable option, why would we be calling their 24 hour emergency number in the first place?

Smith Mechanical was assigned to me by my home warranty company. There service tech came out to look at my water heater. Other than taking a few pictures & spraying soapy water on my gas lines he didn’t inspect anything. They wanted to replace the WH in lieu of servicing it since it was still under warranty and suggested that we lie to the warranty company so that they would replace it.
The warranty company was smarter than this and figured out the WH is under warranty. Now I’m starting over from scratch with the warranty company to get my water heater serviced by a company authorized to handle the manufacturer’s warranty service calls.
And as far as I can tell Smith Mechanical is two guys named Mike and Dave.