What’s your best Drain Doctor Plumbing experience?

“Here’s the problem” – a Drain Doctor technician shows a customer what needs fixing.

Mr Rooter Plumbing – which is Drain Doctor’s opposite number in the USA – is celebrating ‘Get to know your customers day’ (no, we didn’t know there was one, either!) with a competition to find the best customer experience with Mr Rooter.

We are not running a competition here in UK but the American idea did inspire us to write this note to ask customers to tell us about their best experience with Drain Doctor Plumbing.

Of course, providing ‘dazzling’ service is the norm for Drain Doctor technicians – but is there a member of the Drain Doctor team who has truly ‘gone the extra mile’, above and beyond even Drain Doctor’s standards, to solve a customer’s problem? If so, we would love to hear about it!

There’s no prize on offer but we would be happy to feature the story here on the Drain Doctoring blog and give the technician involved a public ‘pat on the back’ for outstanding service.

(And, if you want to know more about ‘Get to know your customers day’, let us tell you that it is the third Thursday of every quarter in the USA. The idea is that on this day business executives should get out from behind their desks and instead ‘work on the front line’, meeting real customers.  We haven’t heard of anything similar on this side of the Atlantic. Have you? If so, please let us know.)

Water saving tips for hosepipe ban hit UK from across the pond

Following the news that the use of hose pipes is to be banned in parts of the UK, news comes to us from our friends at Mr Rooter that it’s ‘Fix a Leak Week’ in the US. It’s sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency and calls attention to the importance of conserving water.

The EPA WaterSense website advises Americans to repair leaks in three areas: the sink, the toilet and the shower.

This is also true here in the UK.  See Drain Doctor’s water-saving tips for easy ways to help beat the drought.

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Related articles

• Is a hosepipe ban the most effective way to tackle a drought? | Leo Hickman (guardian.co.uk)
• Hosepipe ban to be imposed in drought-hit parts of UK – BBC News (bbc.co.uk)
• Water Firms Set To Impose Hosepipe Bans – Sky News (news.sky.com)
• Mr. Rooter Facebook Game Calls Attention to “Fix a Leak” Week (prweb.com)
• Water firms introduce hose pipe ban (independent.co.uk)

Fix a leak week

It is ‘Fix a leak week’ in the USA (honest – it is!) and our opposite number in the USA, Mr Rooter, has some handy tips for avoiding water waste.

Check out this article on the Mrs Rooter blog which has a few ideas. It also has a link to an animated diagram of a toilet which is quite interesting if you do not know how the equipment in your bathroom works.

There is no ‘Fix a leak week’ in the UK (maybe we should have one?) but why wait for a special week? If you have a leak, it is costing money. If you cannot fix it yourself, call Drain Doctor on 0800 3357 999 or visit www.draindoctor.co.uk

Dentures and jewellery on Mr Rooter’s ‘roll of honour’

We reported recently on the success of Mr Rooter (our sister company in the USA) in recovering an expensive wedding ring that had been flushed down the toilet. See the related story below.

It seems that the wedding ring is not the only valuable that Mr Rooter’s plumbers have rescued from drains over the past year. Everything from pets and earings to keys – and a set of dentures –  have been recovered from a watery (or worse) end.

The full ‘roll of honour’ of Mr Rooter’s top ten recoveries in 2010 is listed on the Mrs Rooter blog here.

Related Articles

• Seek and you shall find – drain unblocker finds lost ring (draindoctor.wordpress.com)
• Plumber finds $10K ring flushed down toilet (abclocal.go.com)

Seek and you shall find – drain unblocker finds lost ring

Last year we reported that the Drain Doctor franchise covering Suffolk saved the day for one lucky customer who had lost a set of car keys down their toilet shortly before leaving home to catch a holiday flight. The Drain Doctor technician arrived on the scene within 20 minutes, rescued the keys and the customer was able to leave in time to catch their flight.

Now, Drain Doctor’s sister company in the US – Mr Rooter – has come to the rescue of a housewife in distress who had lost a precious $10,000 wedding ring down the toilet. We came across this story in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11049/1126198-54.stm

This is just one more example of the dazzling levels of service that Mr Rooter and Drain Doctor customers have come to expect – on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ask more dumb questions – make fewer dumb mistakes

This item on the blog of our US sister company Mr Rooter caught my eye.

“Asking dumb questions is easier than correcting dumb mistakes” writes Mary Kennedy Thompson, President of Mr. Rooter Corporation.

It makes a good ‘sound bite’ – not least because it is true. All of us are often too concerned about looking stupid to ask the questions we should ask.

At Drain Doctor we try to make all our communications simple and straight-forward. We try to avoid using jargon and explain to customers clearly what we are doing and why. But if you did not understand our explanation about what we are planning to do to your plumbing – ask us to explain it again.

We don’t expect you to be a plumbing expert. It is part of our job to explain things in a simple, non-technical manner.

That way, you can decide whether you want a job done or not, knowing exactly what is involved and what it will cost before we start work.

Plumber saves Christmas

Image via Wikipedia

A poet at our sister company in the USA – Mr Rooter – has written the following which appears on the Mrs Rooter blog.

We thought we would share it with you this Christmas Eve.

Christmas Eve it was Snowing

The weather was cold

But Santa and his reindeer

Continued on so bold

 

The clickety-clack of the reindeer paws

And the ho-ho-ho of dear Santa Claus

 He sprang to the chimney in less than a dash

And landed below with a terrible splash

 The chimney you see to Santa’s amazement

Went to the fireplace down in the basement

 The sewer was blocked and all he could see

Was two feet of water and floating “uch”

 Santa thought he was finished

He’d not get to his sled

When a shadow appeared

Top of the stairs dead ahead

 The bangety-bang-bang of a sewer machine

As it came down the steps for the sewer to clean

 Santa then smiled cause in the dim light

Mr. Rooter was there to deliver his plight

 Merry Christmas said he

And Santa replied

If it wasn’t for you

Christmas could’ve been done

The basement was clean in less than an hour

Santa went up to catch a quick shower

 Mr. Rooter was gone by the time Santa was done

But he swore to his reindeer he’d tell everyone

 

Mr. Rooter saved Christmas Santa said with a blink

HO-HO-HO don’t you know they’re “Quick as a Wink”.

 

Don’t forget, if you need a plumber today or tomorrow (or at any time over the holiday period) you can call Drain Doctor on 0800 70 71 72. There are no call-out charges and no extra costs for holiday working.

Related Articles

• Avoid rip-off Christmas plumbers (draindoctor.wordpress.com)
• Thanksgiving turkeys cause American plumbing problems (draindoctor.wordpress.com)