AB Service Co.

I agree that it is tricky to hire a sole contractor to do a complicated or big job. But in our case of only having a water heater in the garage to replace, Gene was great. He came out in between appointments the same afternoon I called him to see what we needed and to start the old tank draining into the yard. Then he ordered the water heater and came out the next morning, which was a Saturday, to install it. The old one was tough to get out of the closet, but he did it without damaging anything. Our heater had no overflow pan or overflow drain, so he installed those. He had to make a hole in the brick for the pipe, and he cleaned that mess up nicely. He gave us the option to pay $ 100 more for a heater made in America or go with the import.

I agree with the other reviewer Anindya. We also got referred to this company by another plumber who is trusted in the Austin area. So, I felt comfortable asking AB Service (Gene) for a bid as well. Unfortunately, all of the bids we got were so high, we ended up going with AB Service.
We need to get our septic system over to city pipes, so we had an electrician come out and build us a breaker box for $ 300 and were told Gene would be back out the next day to begin work on digging.
I’m having surgery on Friday, and we really need to be up and running as soon as possible. Yesterday, Gene was practically unreachable, until late afternoon when he apologized profusely and said he had a family emergency. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. Who knows? So, he says he’ll be out early tomorrow morning (today) and it’s 11:30am and we haven’t heard from or seen him. Needless to say, we are pretty frustrated because we are already out $ 300 with the electrician and other expenses here and there.
We know he was the least expensive bid we received, and were not initially going to go with him, but the costs just began to get so expensive, we decided to go with him. And it seems, since Gene is the only employee/​manager for AB Svc, we are going to get stuck with waiting and waiting.
Very frustrated.

Got referred to this company by another plumber. Said he would come over that day and ended up not coming out until late the next day. Found the issue and said he would need to order parts. Came back out a week later (parts took 1 week to get in) and fixed me up but found another issue and needed another part. Ordered the part and then he went on vacation for a week. About a week after he returned, said he received the wrong part and had to order the correct one. it’s been two weeks since that day and now he won’t return my calls. Needless to say I have to find another plumber to finish the job he started, but I’m 5 weeks into this job without resolution!