Bruce Gellerman of Oakdale Plumbing is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and more importantly, a lousy excuse for a plumber. I do NOT recommend under ANY circumstances. Here's the scoop:
When he was trying to get our job (plumbing our new custom home), he was offering to do extras for free and begged for the job, claiming he's been out of work and REALLY needs the money. So we hired him, after he kept contacting my husband to see if we had made a decision. He's in his 60's or 70's so we felt pity on him and our neighbor who referred him was using him on their new home as well.
He was so pleasant and appreciative when he asked us for an advance upfront (without starting any work) and again, we thought "poor guy" because he told us he was behind on his mortgage payments.
So he does the rough plumbing on our house...and now, fast forward to the time we start installing tile on the shower floors. Well, the drains are OFF-CENTER in 3 showers! I don't mean 1/2" but TWO INCHES off!
Then the 4th shower, the one in the master bathroom, has 4 body sprays. Well, not only are the body sprays NOT LEVEL, but he installed the top 2 sprays to spray directly in my eyes.
There's more. The rough plumbing for the 2 of our toilets were OFF-CENTER and TOO FAR AWAY from the water line he installed.
When our general contractor and us told him about these issues, all he could do was start the blame game. Blah, blah, blah. He couldn't validate any of the numerous excuses he came up with when we asked, so now he turns into Mr. Hyde.
He actually gets into my husband's face and yells indecencies and he also told me to "shut up" when I started talking. Seriously. My husband and I were actually in awe at his transformation and felt embarrassed and sorry for him to have acted in such a childish fashion.
The end result is that Bruce is UNWILLING TO COME BACK AND FIX HIS MISTAKES UNLESS WE PAY HIM TO DO SO. He also had the nerve to come back to our jobsite and demand that we pay him for the finish plumbing, which was work he did not even do!
As the job progresses, we find more problems caused by Bruce. He never installed a water line to our fridge and also did not install one to our pot filler. Good thing we have a raised foundation and were able to install these after the fact!
- Approximate cost of services:
- $40,000.00
