Emergency Plumbing Call Outs – Sorting Fact from Fiction

Have you just moved in to the fantastic family friendly Northern Virginia region and started wondering about a portfolio of tradespeople? There’s a lot of myth when it comes to the typical Northern Virginia plumber (or one from anywhere else for that matter). One of the most common areas touched on in that domain relates to emergency callouts. So just what’s going on?

Myth and rumor If you believe the gossip and clichés, you may a lot of things about the archetypal Northern Virginia plumber and their attitudes to emergency calls. Just a few of those might include:

• They won’t work over the weekend.• They won’t come out at night or otherwise ‘after-hours’.• They’ll make lots of excuses and try to get you to wait.• It’ll cost a fortune.

OK, so much for the myth – what’s the reality?

Tradesmen vary

For a start, you can’t talk about tradesmen on the basis that they all have the same policies, because they just don’t. Some may have very formal emergency call standby arrangements if working for a larger company. That means someone will be on call waiting to deal with any Sunday afternoon or 3am catastrophes and will be able to get on the road to you quickly.

Others may have far less formal arrangements and you might need to be lucky to reach them out-of-hours or have to wait for someone to wake up and take your call. True, some don’t provide an out-of-hours service, but the solution to that is easy - if you have such a crisis don’t try and use them.

Protecting your interests

Then there is the question of ‘ducking and diving’. Surprisingly, what you consider to be an emergency might not always seem so to someone else – including the good old Northern Virginia plumber. So, perhaps at 3am you may think your dripping faucet is a calamity, but don’t expect to convince them likewise.

Keep in mind also that he or she just might be trying to protect your financial interests. If they advise you to wait until normal service hours, you’re going to save yourself a lot of cash compared to demanding they come out on an emergency basis. That leads into the cost myth. Yes, emergency calls are likely to cost you more, but then again, if you were called out to your job at unsociable hours, wouldn’t you expect a little extra in return?

The dollar is king

In general terms, if you’re willing to pay then you should be able to get an emergency tradesman 24/7 – even if the problem is relatively minor. Make allowances for the fact that they may try to persuade you otherwise, at least partly in your own financial interests. However, if you’re really in a bind and have a serious problem, you should not have any problem in securing the services of a good Northern Virginia plumber at any time of the day or night.

Sarah Saadoun works for HMS Plumbing, a family-owned business in Manassas, Northern Virginia. If you need Northern Virginia plumbers, Herve and his dedicated employees at HMS are proud to be serving the plumbing needs of Northern Virginia residents and businesses. For reliable Northern Virginia plumbers HMS Plumbing is your first choice.

Writer and Online Marketing Manager in London.