Ladies, have you ever had a strong desire to be given the "little lady" treatment? You know, that experience where a bunch of men come to the home that you own, and then feel no obligation to discuss your home repair with you or show any indication of expertise, but think they can squeeze money out of you? Then call TMI!
I called TMI because there was a giant pooling of water in my ceiling. A plumber comes, cuts a 9x12 inch hole, puts an Iphone camera up, tells me he does not see any pipes, so it must be the roof. The roofer was super confused why he was there, but took the time to explain plumbing to me (shout out to QC Roof Drs the man was AMAZING). I claw hammer my own ceiling and find pipes about 10 feet away from where the plumber cut a hole. It turns out, water travels? And like, probably from the upstairs source of water? I'm no expert, but that does seem like a reasonable start to an investigation.
I get a plumber from TMI back out, but he decides it must be HVAC because his eyeballs do not see where the pipes should go. HVAC comes out, then the HVAC supervisor, Don Deem, and they decide it is HVAC. We have to remove your toilet! Redo piping with "higher gauge pipes" because copper bad! (surely they meant different materials since gauge refers to thickness but I'm just a little lady so let's not bother with coherent explanations). Later the explanation is that my condensate line was converted from metal to copper (aha! Different materials!), which wasn't a great explanation for someone who understands copper to be a type of metal and might want to know what money is actually buying, but okay.
I get a quote for $6,500.00. I ask where the confidence to send me SUCH a quote comes from, since I was home and witnessed the high tech iphone usage and expertise eyeballing, while ignoring my comments about my house being old, the leak stopping when I cut the water supply, but there were no changes when the boiler was either used or cut off from use, etc. I get a response of, "I am confident that the leak is coming from the piping above the waste pipe." Gee, the pipe I found with my claw hammer, and saw with my eyes? I, too, am confident on that front. But not that it is HVAC at all. Spoiler: it was not.
Peterson Plumbing came, cut out the dead leg, welded it shut, all without touching my beloved porcelain throne.
And even though nobody asked, AI was able to diagnose a dead leg just be "listening" to my description. So, ladies, if you insist upon using these guys, understand that you should do the diagnostics yourself and then just use TMI for their manly labor.
Edit to add: Because TMI took the opportunity to suggest there were inaccuracies in my review, I have added the entire written communications that I have received. These do not include work orders from the HVAC technician as he did not provide any. The first work order suggesting the roof notes there is no bathroom above the area, even though there is and it was shown to him. He actually did not recommend a specific construction company when speaking face to face, so the work orders do reflect fabrications. These descriptions of findings were also not explained to me while they were present in my home. The second work order says there is a bathroom. I did not have one constructed between visits. There is not a clear explanation for why it is HVAC other than, "It is not the lines I can see, so it must be something else." Which in layman's terms is, "eyeballed it." I will admit, the quote was higher than originally stated. And all of it was unnecessary to fix a dead leg. At the end of the day, the experience was so bad I was willing to pay a service fee to a different company and eat the $99 loss.