Flader Plumbing & Heating Co

They apparently live up to their reputation. Unreliable and expensive. Steer clear!

Used these guys for years. They always do a great job. Not cheap but you get what you pay for.

They are juicing hours and fuel charges.
Hired them for a rental property of mine to clean the burners on a on demand water heater. I wasn’t there but my tenant was. Got a bill for $ 330.00 which was strange because last time i used them two years ago and i was present the bill was $ 240.00 and they installed brand new parts. This time all they did was clean it. Bill should bill not as much right?
So the $ 330.00 charge threw me off because i was not there and got out the invoice from last time and it was more work for less maybe i am wrong about this so i called my tenant and ask them how long was the service call and they said ohh no time at all he was gone in 25 mins… but charged me two hours for a service call!
Called them to gripe a bit and got the run around big time i guess david the «owner» did the work and he would call me back. Four days later and no call bye bye for your service calls forever! Watch there billing and call them out on it if your dumb enough to use them overpriced and charge you for everything even gas to get to your house.

I called Flader because they were on the approved list of contractors for my hot water heater, which was under warranty for parts but not labor, BIG mistake.
I was told I’d be the first call at 7:30 this morning, at 8:00 I called and was told «he’s running late, he’ll be there soon.» No apology. When he showed up, he couldn’t identify the source of the problem, and attempted to BS me with possible causes. Putzed around for 1 ½ hrs, said that was all he could do, and went to his truck to generate my bill.
$ 89 service call, a little high since I’m 1.5 blocks from their shop, but ok. $ 270 labor for 1.5 hrs of «work»…holy crap! That’s $ 180/​hr! If I want to pay that rate for getting BS, I’ll go sit in a lawyer’s office. In all, $ 366 for being late, not knowing the problem and BSing me. Never again.

These guys are bad news. Way over priced. I have a 9 unit bldg. they converted galvanized to copper for me small section of pipes. They left a leak quoted me $ 5k+ to do more work. They turned off hot water in 3 kitchens and then quoted me 3 hours of labor to turn it back on. They were a referral. Apparently new ownership are crooks.

Was given a range of 10a-​2p the next day, was a bit annoyed they arrived at 1:45p, but was withing the range promised. Met Kevin, very knowledgeable, experienced, awesome, and helpful with my caulking questions. Kevin found the source of the problem right away why the bathtub facet leaked through the wall while the facet was on. Once Kevin left I immediately discovered the bathtub facet he was working on dripping. Kevin came back the next morning and said the drip was related to the valve source, an area he was not working on. To me, not knowing plumbing, I still thought this was a load. A plumber arrives without a dripping facet, and leaves with a drippy facet. The manager offered me a ‘free’ service call, but had to pay for time and parts. I couldn’t help thinking a plumber leaving with a leaky facet doesn’t look good for them. I insisted Kevin should come back and fix it for no charge as a means of negotiating. The manager claimed no responsibility of the leak suggesting maybe it had been leaking down the wall before the repair. I gave in on that point, but it was purely speculation. The manager did not budge on his original offer of only waving the $ 85 service charge.
Here is what I expect from someone who wants my business.
1) Accept some responsibility instead of taking such a hard line. I am clueless when it comes to plumbing, and was on the defense for possibly being taken for a ride.
2) Offer to diagnose what the problem is for free. It took Kevin maybe 5 minutes to figure out what the original problem was. If it took 10 minutes this time to diagnose this problem, I think time well spent to keep a customer.
3) I would have paid for labor and parts if the diagnosis sounded reasonable.
What annoyed me the most about Flader was the inflexibility of the manager. Kevin the plumber was very professional. I live in a condo with over 100 units whom I will never recommend Flader. I mentioned this to the manager, and that I was going to post a review here. The manager said he would post a rebuttal. I say, bring it on.

In short, we were charged over 400 dollars and our faucet still leaks. They came to our house twice and it still wasn’t fixed!
We called Flader because our bathroom faucet is leaking.
When the plumber arrived, he seemed more interested in finding other things wrong with our home, looking for potential work items. He worked very slowly and I was shocked to find for an hour we were charged over 300 dollars. He couldn’t fix our leak on the first visit due to not having the parts.
On the second visit, he spent a further hour and couldn’t fix it, but the office still demanded payment, despite us seeing no improvement.
We will go with someone else next time.

Had a good experience to start with Doug but then I called for an appointment one day for a fix that could not wait. They said they’d be in by 5pm but had to cancel. If they at least said they may not be able to come, then I could have had someone else address the situation that day rather than live with it and still would have come back. But after that I had to begin using another service based on dependability.

Flader has done SO much for me over the years. They have done furnaces, redone old piping for me, fixed broken pipes, and many other things. The range of services they have offered over the years has been incredible, that is probably why 3 generations of my family has used Flader. I would recommend them to anyone who wants a quality plumbing service/

I could not agree more with Nick K. In a time when you can never be sure if you are being ripped off or when pride and professionalism is so lacking in the trades, Flader is and has been a complete pleasure to deal with. We have used them for over 20 years and I cannot think of a single time when I was not impressed by their honesty and total professional treatment. This is an established company that nobody should have the slightest hesitation in hiring to do any job, big or small.

I read the other two Unilocalers comments about Flader Plumbing and can only conclude that the people involved had much bigger plumbing problems than they acknowledged or don’t have any idea how much good plumbing costs. Flader is outstanding. Their people are top notch. Yes, they are a union shop (and therefore charge more than some non-​union plumbers), but they really know what they’re doing. We lived in Evanston for 16 years and they did work for us numerous times over the years. When we bought a new home a few miles away (that needed extensive renovation), we insisted that Flader do all the plumbing work. They were terrific. We have heard numerous horror stories about other area plumbers — as well as how Flader is brought in after other shlock jobs are done. If you want it done right, call Flader.

We had to rent our house and are living elsewhere. Our new tenants moved it and there were three issues that needed taking care of: routine maintenance on a tub that wasn’t draining (needed to be rodded and my husband always did that); a baseboard heating pipe wasn’t heating and needed to be blown out and a noisy vent fan disconnected. The cost was $ 404 — even charging us $ 10 to USE the hand held rodder (use of plumber’s tools was extra), and $ 4 for 1.3 mile drive to the house. They said it took 1.75 hours but who knows, we weren’t there to watch. We were charged much more than other neighbors for simple jobs — use virtually any other plumber than these people.

We used Flader Plumbing for plumbing work since they came from a direct referral from another plumber that was not able to fix our plumbing problem (for house in IL). Although the work was completed, we feel that it not only took a long time to complete the work from start-​to-​finish, but also that we were charged too high of a price in comparison to what our neighbor’s have paid for similar plumbing work (at least quadruple). We were also told that the problem was for one reason and it ended up that that was not the reason at all. We ended up paying approximately $ 30,000 for plumbing work, when the problem could have been solved for much, much less money. My neighbor a couple of doors down only paid $ 4K for similar work. I would not recommend or use Flader Plumbing again.
I had just had a baby at the time. I had only been home a few days from the hospital. This situation, due to the high cost, put such a strain on us financially that we were forced to move and leave the state.
Update 2014: This is to confirm that yes, we used Flader for this job. Yes, it was for a house we lived in at the time in Illinois. Yes, our total came to upwards of 30K for everything. I have receipts to prove it. I am writing this update, because Flader has been telling people that they did not do this job or were not responsible. I have received several messages from people that were not nice or downright rude because I wrote this review. I will not be intimidated! I am sure others have may had fine work completed by Flader, but I personally did not have this experience. Others may have had a much different experience than we did.