Katja in St. Lawrence Market

I had an even worse experience with no-shows from their contractors than Jared below. This seems absolutely routine with Direct Energy and the dispatch office has absolutely no means (or real intention it would seem) of doing anything about it We were told by our building manager that our water heater was probably old enough that it needed replacing so we called Direct Energy who had the contract (we never chose them, the water heater just came with the condo when we bought it). At first they couldn't even find a record of what sort of water heater we had or how old it was. They had to send some guy out to look at it, requiring me to set aside a four hour block of time. He didn't show. I called the office furious and they claimed he had contacted them to say he showed up a bit early, found no one home and left. That would be totally unacceptable even if it were true, but my husband was home at that time and the contractor was simply 'exaggerating' or had made next to no effort to make his early arrival known and then just left before the agreed time slot even began. The office was apologetic and claimed this was totally unheard of (I should have read reviews of their service earlier, that's clearly not the case). I agreed to make another appointment. This time someone came and took a quick look confirming that the water heater was something like 20 years old and should have been replaced long ago. This is their own equipment and they barely had record of its existence. They should have been able to tell me this on the phone. Instead, eight hours of my life wasted already. It gets worse. I had to make another appointment for the actual replacement. This time several hours into the scheduled block, nothing. I called the office wary of their unreliable contractors by now and they tried to locate the employee in question. They couldn't reach him, his phone was off. Time slot nearly passed. No sign of the guy and the office has been entirely unable to locate him. As far as I know they never found out why he just b---ered off and skipped his appointments without even attempting to let them know. Sounds like its common practice for the contractors Direct Energy employs. The next day I got a phone call back from their office appologising again offering me a few months free rental (something like $21 total for 12 hours wasted and work missed?! Whatever.) and trying to get me to book another appointment. Not a chance. Currently looking for a rental company that's tolerably reliable.

Took a long time about getting my review up but really wanted to say how happy we've been with plumbing services from Mr. Rooter in Toronto. We've had a couple of plumbing emergencies that also involved leaking from our unit down into that of a very angry downstairs neighbour. Mr Rooter's plumbers , and especially Val Sasu have been easy to get in a hurry and wonderfully helpful and efficient. Getting the membership has paid for itself several times over already. Last time we had trouble with our plumbing , we decided to go in and fix absolutely anything that might be contributing to the problem downstairs (without having to go in through the neighbour's ceiling). Val assessed all the sinks and toilets in our condo and expertly advised us on what to do. Importantly, he also told us what didn't make sense to change and kept us from spending more than we needed to at every step of the way. He helped us choose new toilets and even walked me through shopping for them by cellphone. He came up with a novel solution for replacing the bath tap without necessitating breaking up a large area of wall tiles and he unblocked a cement-like accumulation of clay cat litter dust that had rendered our shower stall unusable. He even threw in a new shower head for free and taught m how to caulk around the sinks and tub myself! No doubt in my mind who I'll call if there's ever more trouble but I have a feeling there will rarely be anynow :)