If you live in Hagerstown area of Maryland and find yourself needing plumbing, heating, or air conditioning services, I highly recommend you stay away from Larry & Sons.
We paid Larry & Sons $1,839.00 to remove our existing water heater and replace it with a new one. Our existing water heater was bad. It was leaking water. The bottom had rust. The metal drip pan under the water heater was also leaking. Water leaked out of the water heater into the pan and seeped into the room next to the laundry room. The water heater is in a closed closet in the laundry room containing it and the central air system.
Before the Larry & Sons tech came out to replace everything, I explained that the pan also needed to be replaced. I wanted it replaced with a plastic pan, not one made from metal. The existing pan was leaking, and the drainage fitting was corroded and not working. I told them I would go out and purchase a plastic pan at Home Depot or Lowes if they did not have one. The customer service associate assured me they had plastic pans, and the tech would install one.
The Larry & Sons tech came out and did the job. After he left, I checked out the new water heater. I couldn’t believe it. The old leaky metal pan was still there, under the new, larger water heater. Since the relief valve on the new water heater is located at the top, the Larry & Sons tech ran a PVC pipe down to the pan. If water were to flow out, some of it would hit the floor, not the leaky old pan.
I was not happy at all about the job, but what was I supposed to do?
A couple of days later, I received an email from Larry & Sons asking me to rate my service. I was honest and explained exactly what happened. The following day, a representative from Larry & Sons called about the rating I provided. They offered to send the tech back to correct his work. I told him I didn’t want that tech ever to set foot in my home again.
The tech didn’t accidentally use the old pan. He knew he was lowering the new tank into the old ratty pan. My guess is he forgot to grab the new plastic pan I was promised before coming over, and he figured I would not notice.
Since I paid for a new pan, but did not get it, the representative from Larry & Sons told me they would refund me the cost of a new pan.
That was August 2020. I never got the promised refund.
We’ve used Larry & Sons before, but we will never use them again. When they do good work, everything is great. When they screw up, they do not make it right. The offer to send out the same tech who botched the job was hollow. If they were serious about making the problem right, they would offer to send a different tech.
The fact that they didn’t even refund the drip pan’s price really tells you everything you need to know about Larry & Sons. If that’s not good enough, check out their Yelp reviews. Ouch.