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Predatory upselling, shoddy work by Colepepper Plumbing Rancho Bernardo. Updated as I trusted based on previous experience.

Recently, my tenants let me know that hot water in the shower would suddenly cut out after a few minutes leaving only cold water. The shower was the only place in the house that couldn't sustain a hot water flow.

Colepepper Rancho Bernardo bid the repair and asked if they could do a "home inspection" in case there was anything else needing repair. I agreed to an inspection of the bathroom ONLY since there were no issues in the rest of the house. After their assessment the job was planned as follows:

1. Install a new single valve for the shower. According to them this would be a lot of work that involved cutting the ceramic tiles, pipes, and installing the new valve.

2. Reset the toilet that showed signs of a leaking seal.

3. Replace leaking sink popup.

They said the job would take a few hours. The custom price was several thousand, however, I felt pressured to go forward as it was a rental and the tenants needed a working shower and bathroom. Unfortunately, after I had authorized the work, I spoke to the tenants and they pointed out there was NO OTHER ISSUE EXCEPT THE WATER TEMPERATURE ON THE SHOWER.

I made the mistake of trusting blindly. After reading other reviews, I see that creating urgency and upselling is a trend with this company. The plumbers were on the premises from 9am to 9pm on Friday. The next morning my tenants informed me of the following.

The shower hot water flow issue was still NOT fixed even a little bit. Colepepper charged me to replace the entire shower system and the original issue was never fixed. Cold water still interrupted their showers after a couple of minutes.

The appearance of the valve installation was shoddy. The face screws were not flush but crooked on the valve face cover. For the price this should have been impeccable. Plumber said getting screws to fit would be another "up charge" as they only use screws which come with the "kit", which was cheap in appearance and obviously off the shelf at local box store.

They also installed a brushed nickel sink popup while the faucet handles and spout are chrome. The sink drain was misaligned and leaking after their work. After the tenants sent a video of the destruction in the bathroom, I sent my handyman to inspect everything. He discovered that the sink popup seals had been INSTALLED UPSIDE DOWN. He had to reinstall the popup, fix the wonky drain pipes, and reset the sink against the wall, as they KNOCKED SINK LOOSE FROM WALL and left it this way!

They left a mess in the bathroom for my tenant to clean up. Tile dust covered everything and boot prints were inside and outside of the bathroom. Tenant also heard the workers watching videos on their phones to try to figure out how to do the work, which explains why they were onsite so long.

After much back and forth, Colepepper sent another plumber who determined that the hot water flow issue was caused by the shower head being obstructed which made the flow insufficient to keep the heater turned on. He drilled out the water flow restrictor in the shower head, and upon my insistence, installed a chrome popup to match the sink faucets. NONE OF THE EXPENSIVE WORK WAS EVEN JUSTIFIED.

Colepepper refunded about half of the charges after I sent photos/video, but I still paid way too much for a really bad experience, unnecessary and shoddy work, and was taken advantage of with aggressive upselling. These guys are not a professional plumbing company, more like predatory scammers.

Mitch was timely, professional and knowledgeable. He pointed out what could cause future problems and offered suggestions for repairs. He flushed our hot water heater and did a house inspection in such an efficient way. Great service!

They responded quickly and took care of an additional problem in the spot, and Matt was friendly and explained everything he was working on throughout the process.

Had my hot water heater serviced, they made it painless and were in and out with out any pressure on future service. I have used them many times and they always deliver

Stay away from this outfit. I can't say the rep didn't try or wasn't courteous; but, he was ill equipped to act independently and ultimately refused, after speaking to his supervisor three or four times, to take the extra step needed to fix my situation. Although he replaced an angle stop that had failed, the primary mission of replacing a leaking kitchen hose faucet was left unaccomplished. My experience with ColePepper included:
-- On the appointment day, three hours into the initial time window, they called saying, sorry, can't make it. They did show up on the next day.
-- The rep was upselling from the get go.Although the problem was under my kitchen sink, he insisted on looking at my water heater.
-- For some reason he tested my water hardness, claiming I had hard water that according to his test strip was "off the chart". I told him that I had a water softener. I also have my own test strips. Testing the same sample, it showed the water was in the very soft area. He thought maybe his strips were faulty.
-- He used a gas sniffer around the water heater. Why? Well, that's a good question. (No leaks found.)
-- Using his pressure meter at the water heater, he claimed my water pressure was 100 PSI, which was way too high. He said I might need a new regulator. I pulled out my own pressure tester. Reading was 80 psi, little high but not near his reading. This was followed by him alternately using my meter and his, trying to figure out the difference.
-- Finally returning to the task that I had called about, he assessed the situation, called his boss and, and after applying a 10% discount, presented me an estimate of $610. I told him no thanks. I'll call someone else. He said, let me see what I can do.
Another call to the boss, who agreed to $450. (Probably still too high. But, OK, let's get it fixed.)
-- He replaced the broken angle stop, but, after trying for a long time he could not remove the faucet hose. (This was why I called a plumber in the first place... I couldn't get it off either.)
-- I suggested he pull the faucet up through the counter top so he could access the connection and get better leverage in dealing with what was supposed to be a "quick" connect.. Another call to the boss, resulted in him saying he couldn't do that for liability reasons.
-- He lowered the fee to cover just the angle stop, apologized, and left.
-- A few days later, I called Bill Howe. Focused entirely on my faucet, their rep handled the situation, doing what was needed to get the job done. And, yes, he pulled the faucet out to properly deal with the difficult connection.

3 stars for inspection and 1 star for pricing. The service technician checked the install area and gave quote for each item separately as if he will visit separately for each job. In reality, everything will be done together with some extra work for each item. Please be reasonable with pricing irrespective of knowledge of the customer.

Ian was totally professional in handling of toilet installation.

Great and fast service. Came out same day and on time. My technician Sam was very professional. Affordable and professional service I would recommend

Professional and clean work completed for our house. They were able to give us estimates and work within our scheduling. Great communication between days needed to complete the job.

Mitch and Austin came early and did the water heater flush and plumbing inspection while the water heater drained. I appreciated the professionalism and promptness as well as the assessment of the inspection.

Awesome service! Very professional and timely. Didn't try to upsell anything like other plumbers. Would highly recommend and will use in the future.

Matt was very curtious and professional and knows what he’s doing. Great job overall.

To say we are furious and frustrated is an understatement. This outfit took advantage of us because of our age, our trusting natures and lack of plumbing knowledge. They showed us a set of pictures regarding leaks. We couldn’t tell if those pictures were of our house or some other. They quoted us on Monday, the 22nd, the first day they came out. It included repairing the leaks in both bathrooms. They only did one bathroom. Yet the invoice was a carbon copy of the estimate. So they’re charging us for work not done. This is elder abuse.
We had to pay for machining the base plate on the kitchen faucet which was needlessly thrown out without our permission. It's so old, we can't find another except to machine a new one. In addition, we had to pay for the hole in the wall which was not authorized by us. Add in the stress of being down to one toilet for both of us, you have a mess.
It started with a flyer offering a $49 water heater flush. It ended with an $11,887 invoice. Here’s the invoice below verbatim:
$3,589 Jackhammer up floor around closet bend and replace closet bend and flange. This was for supposedly two toilets, but Mitch Kenney, the owner only did one. Regardless whether one or two toilets, the price is very high. I googled the cost to jackhammer the floor. It was between $500-$1,000. The cost to replace the closet bend and flange was $15-$300 with certain exceptions of $500 or more.
$289 Replace kitchen P trap. I googled the cost of this part and came up with $200-$325.
$487 Replace kitchen angle stops. There are two angle stops that I saw. I googled the average cost per stop. That came to $100-$300 per stop.
$789 Replace kitchen faucets Note the invoice said faucets not faucet. There was only one faucet and the faucet used to replace cost $89. Would you say the $789 was excessive?
$487 Pull and reset toilet. Again, I believe this was for both the guest and master bathroom. In any event, isn’t the $487 a bit excessive and that is in addition to the $3,589 jackhammering up the floor? I googled the cost to pull and reset the toilet and came up with $200.
$489 Replace saddle valve I never saw a saddle valve under the kitchen sink or in the bathroom. I googled the average price for one saddle valve and came up with a range of from $150-$300.
$4,365 Replace water heater Our house is approximately 1,500 square feet with a 40 gallon water heater. $4,365-really? I googled the cost of the Bradford White water heater with exact model number and came up with $1,734.
$1,589 Hydrojet sewer Looking at the Web for comparable pricing, I found the cost to be between $700 and $1,100.
$99 Club Colepepper Amount to pay to get discounted pricing.
This invoice came straight from the estimate which I foolishly signed. There was a second toilet-bathroom involved which we refused once Mitch yet again gave us bad news that the vanity in the master bedroom had to be torn out. Why it needed to be torn out is beyond us. There didn’t appear to be any pipes within or behind the vanity.
$11,887 Total invoice for what started as flushing a water heater. Mitch’s predatory upselling on two old people who were too trusting along with their lack of plumbing knowledge was reprehensible.

Beware this outfit, especially if you’re like us, old. I’m 70 and my mother is 95. We are also too trusting and lack adequate plumbing knowledge. They will upsell you to death. They ripped out the base plate on the kitchen faucet which was old and extremely difficult to replace. They threw it away rather than keeping it. It cost $230 to have a new one machined as I could not find another identical one.
They also put a hole in the wall in the master bathroom without our permission and are looking for a remediation company to fix it—on our dime.
Beware of this company with its predatory upselling. When you see the owner Mitch come by, grab your wallet as he will probably give you bad news (leaks, more repairs). And whether those “bad news” items are legitimate is open to discussion.

Two jobs well done!
1. replace blocked lines from sink
2. installed air gap

Sam and Ian and Matt had the smarts and skills to rebuild kitchen plumbing of a 65 yo home.

Sam and Matt and Ian had the skill and knwoledge

Matt was great! Super fast and efficient guy. Talked us through every question I had. Thank you!

Had an emergency downstairs flooding & Colepepper came to the rescue!
Ian was awesome & cleared out the pipe in no time. Will definitely keep their card on hand for any future needs.

Matt was great at assessing the problem and offering up an immediate solution. We went with Culpepper from start to finish on this blockage job and it made life a lot easier that everything was fixed and handled professionally . Thanks all.

They have done several plumbing installations at my condo. They are always courteous and do good work. I would recommend them.

Sam and his apprentice, Austin, did a fantastic job! Thorough, clean, and professional.

Aside from the quality work, the two of them are also good people.

Cole pepper scheduled an appointment for the following day and Matt called ahead to let me know so I wasn’t stuck at home all day and got this clog head drain taken care of asap! In and out in under an hour. Thanks 10/10 would recommend

Matt was excellent in helping unclog my drain. He even returned twice to make sure it was done. Colepepper is a great resource to have!!