Brothers Plumbing Ltd

I hired Brothers Plumbing to repair the main shut off in the house. This job requires the city of Toronto to come and turn the water off outside of the house. For $90, the city will turn the water off and wait up to 30-45 minutes to turn it back on (once the repair is finished), otherwise they charge $90 x 2.

Jimmy, the plumber, was unable to complete the repair in 30-45 minutes. The copper pipe in the area of the main shut off valve was 5/8", which apparently is very unusual (1/2" or 3/4" is the norm). Jimmy didn't have a 5/8" pipe on the truck and had to go buy one. The city worker, Frank, was angry at Jimmy because he felt Jimmy wasn't upfront that the repair would take more than 30-45 minutes. Even if he had had the pipe, he would have needed more than 30-45 minutes.

Eventually Jimmy completed the job, after Frank had left. Jimmy had a great attitude, answered my messages promptly and is a hard worker but, as Frank noted, appeared to be fresh out of plumbing school (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I would hire Brothers again but I get frustrated when companies come to do a job and don't have the necessary materials. I doubt I'm the only house in Toronto with 5/8" pipe. After some negotiation, I got Brothers to reduce the bill by $90 since they weren't able to complete the repair in the allotted 30-45 minutes, resulting in an extra $90 charge from the city.

Overall Brothers prices are bit on the high side - $475 to repair the main shut off vs what I understand to be a typical Toronto price of $350-450, so it doesn't hurt to negotiate on price - I was able to get a price of $550 for both jobs I had done (second job was a new bathroom plastic sink drain). Next time, I would likely ask for a more experienced plumber to make a somewhat difficult job go more smoothly.