From Wende Y.
Dachshund Plumbing Company
Oh wow!! I could only choose a max of three great things about this service. That makes the “highlights” of the service grossly understated. Let me tell you what was going on and the service itself.
But first, allow me to give you a quick summary. I know some people hate reading long reviews. I promise those who do read it, will be pleased to understand the details of this situation I found myself in. But here is the summary….
In all, this lumber/business owner was polite, quick, very helpful, explained everything to me, professional, and provided a valuable service at a very reasonable price. What more can you ask for? He gained a customer for life today.
Thank you so much Joey, for coming to help a very disabled lady with crazy dogs who get into everything!
Now here’s the backstory…..
My toilet was clogged. I lost water for a few weeks and couldn’t flush the toilet. I had people coming to my house to help me with things and they must’ve used the toilet several times. After they stopped coming, I noticed there was an enormous amount of toilet tissue in the bowl. I tried to clear it with water that was brought to me. It didn’t work.
When the city turned the water back on, the bowl filled to the brim with a soupy nastiness. A few drops of water would have caused it to overflow onto the bathroom floor. I couldn’t flush it or try to unclog it with one of the plungers. That alone would have caused an overflow as well.
Now imagine this….I have almost no immune system. It doesn’t really function at all and I’m on antibiotics most of the year. I couldn’t work on getting the toilet unclogged at that point because bacteria becomes airborne when you start splashing around in the soup. An overflow would require a friend from another city about 35-45 minutes away to come and disinfect everything for me. I would have no way to use a bathroom without having to leave my home and expose myself to pathogens in other places, a neighbor’s house, a convenience store, a fast food joint, wherever.
Now add to that, I have some little dogs. Six of them. What was I thinking? Im a sucker for rescuing dogs at risk of being euthanized. All six are poorly socialized because I’m housebound and don’t get visitors often. I can’t expose myself to other people very often. They’ve gotten into the recyclables now, and spread them all over the house, with the highest concentration in the living area. They’ve had accidents when I can’t get them out the back door fast enough. These little guys sometimes can’t hold it, or the neighbors complain about letting them out late at night, which is totally understandable. But when a dog has to go, it has to go somewhere, which means using my wood floors as their toilet. Sadly I’ve had neighbors threaten to poison them and any other animal they consider a nuisance, over the years.
I had some lovely chickens at one point. Austin supports chicken farming in city limits. They want the bedding used for the chickens and their waste so they can produce nutrient rich soil, Dillo Dirt is what they call it. We have a specific trash bin for organic stuff and that’s where the chicken bedding and waste go.
A neighbor complained constantly about them. What was the complaint? That I had chickens in my backyard. That was it. I had no males that would crow at ungodly hours. I got several visits from Code Enforcement, and each time they came they admitted to me I was completely within city code and local laws. There was no issue. I heard from them so often, I complained finally. I told Code Enforcement that I was being harassed by that neighbor and that Code Enforcement was used to that end. A few weeks later, I found all of my chickens dead. They were fine the night before. I have suspicions about how they all died at once, overnight. And that wasn’t the only time. I had several small flocks that died mysteriously, all at once over the years that neighbor was there.
How do I know who complained? The couple next door had told me a few times they didn’t like my chicken enterprise. It was mainly the wife. Ugh! Finally they moved and all the complaints mysteriously stopped.
Anyway, because I can’t always let the dogs out during normal sleeping hours, and can’t always ambulate quickly enough to the back door, there are dog accidents. Quite a few, much to my embarrassment. But I can’t clean it up without getting really sick. Each infection I get can result in death depending on how quickly or how far it progresses. I was in organ failure in December 2022 because of multiple infections that refused to respond to antibiotics.
In short, my house does not have a fresh smell anymore, and there’s mess everywhere, as well as the recycling and whatever else they can get into. There’s no available counter or table space anymore. I have to put everything and I mean everything out of reach or they get into it. It’s like having a bunch of toddlers running around.
Here’s what happened.
Before Joey came, he had me test a few things in the bathroom to see if he could nail down whether it was strictly a toilet clog issue, or something down the pipe to the street. He explained the differences to me and what each problem would involve for him to successfully address it. After the simple tests, he concluded it was likely only a clog in the u-bend of the toilet.
When he arrived, I shut myself and the dogs up in my bedroom, gave this kind man the security code to the door, he entered, quickly and independently navigated through the house with directions, found the bathroom, and then within a minute, at most two, eliminated the offending clog, and without causing an overflow as I would have done, or making any mess, whatsoever, on the floor, at least that wasn’t already there.
His price was very reasonable, especially compared to his competitors. I was quite surprised in fact, and wondered if there was a catch somewhere. One of the other plumbers I chose to contact said they charged about $250 just to clear a clog in the toilet u-bend. It would have been well over $500, close to $600, had the problem been in the pipe that goes to the street.
In general, the more vulnerable you are, the more likely it becomes people will grossly overcharge for services you desperately need, many times just to stay alive. People don’t care and will exploit any weakness they find. That has been my common experience for years now.
So I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to find that rare person in the crowd who won’t do that. Someone who will absolutely help you, is concerned based, not upon words but actions, and who will treat you like his own family. You know as well as I, just how rare that is.
Thank you Joey at Dachshund Plumbing Company.
