Apex Plumbing & Sewer Inc.

I use Apex for all of my plumbing needs and last night reminded me why. Like many others experiencing this deep freeze in Chicago I had a pipe burs Sunday evening. Luckily I caught it right away and called Apex. They knew who I was as a loyal customer and got Alec out to my house the same evening. The pipe was fixed and our water was back on in time to put my kids to bed and ready for school the next morning.

We had a plumbing emergency at 11PM! Our unit’s main water pipe started to leak and wouldn’t stop. We weren’t sure if it was leaking inside the wall. We called several companies with no one willing or available to come out. Luckily, Joey and V at Apex Plumbing were willing to come out and help. They made sure the emergency was handled, and came back asap to fix the issue. They were super personable, and willing to educate us on our plumbing and how everything works. We trust them with any plumbing issues in the future!

Chaz is the man! I highly recommend him and all his plumbing services. He was recommended to us through a mutual friend and I’m so glad we now have him as our go-to plumber. He’s helped us with everything from installing a new hose spigget outside, removing an old water heater and installing a new water heater. He’s so personable and knowledgeable about plumbing and treats your home like his own. For all your local plumbing needs in the western suburbs- ask for Chaz!

I had a small drip leak on a fitting connecting two pipes for my hot water supply together. I have galvanized pipes and know that those pipes may cause water pressure issues due to sediment. I asked the plumber if there would be any issues with the galvanized pipe or from the galvanized pipes due to this repair, and if I should consider completely replacing the pipes altogether. They assured me there was no need to do that and that this was an isolated drip leak that I should fix, there would be no impact to the broader system. Once the repair was done and after they got the water back on, my water pressure was so low that there was only a drip out of the kitchen sink. I asked the plumber what to do and he said “your pipes are galvanized so you’ll have to replace them if you want better water pressure. I told you before I did the repair that this could happen” (which was not true, he said nothing before the repair) and then left us SOL with low water pressure. I found out the next day when I tried to use my dishwasher that it wouldn’t even start anymore because the water pressure was too low. I called Apex to express my frustration about this since I had explicitly asked ahead of time if we should be considering replacing the galvanized pipes. They sent the same plumber back out to look at what’s going on. He was incredibly defensive and offered no solutions. When I called the office again, they said the owner’s son would call me to further discuss what can be done but I never got a call back. Ironically, in the end, I (using ChatGPT with no prior DIY experience) was able to repair the low water pressure on my own by changing the T joint at the water supply line in my kitchen and flushing the lines to my sink and dishwasher, but Apex didn’t even suggest that. I would have even considered paying them to fix that but they jumped right to saying there was no solution other than replacing all the pipes and that we were SOL. For a licensed plumber, I expect more. ChatGPT did a better job solving my water pressure issues than this plumber!!

"Notes to self" / Here is what I learned from my experience with Apex: 1) ALWAYS Read the Yelp reviews before booking any service ever; 2) Don't book yourself super early in the morning, because you'll be too tired to back out when they give you an unreasonably high quote for the work; 3) Flat rate prices for plumbing are BULLSHIT unless you have a plumber who is capable of coming up with fair flat rates. Regarding #2: When Ben called and asked to come 2 hours earlier than scheduled, I should have said No, I am asleep go away. But instead I let him show up when I'd had no coffee. We had a leaking shutoff valve under our kitchen sink. I knew they would have to shut off the water to the building to fix it. So when Ben said that would cost $200 I was like, Okay. Then he said it would be $200 to change out the valve. Again, Okay. Then he suggested I might want to change all the valves while I'm at it because of the cost of the water shutoff and that all the valves would be the same age. In fact, a lot of Condo buildings will have them come and change all the valves in the whole building at the same time. This suggestion would essentially turn our little fix-it job into something that would cost thousands. I said No. I did, however, decide to have both of the shutoff valves fixed under our sink -- another $200 for the second one. That's where I should have woken up. Why so much to swap out a valve? But I figured they are the professionals, it must be quite a job. Finally, I asked him to re-install the new faucet we'd just put in because the non-professional who had done it had mistakenly included the deckplate, which he said would add $100 to the job. Now we are up to $700. In my heart, I knew it was a lot but I was tired and did not have the energy to send him away, look up other plumbers, and reschedule the job. I really wish I had done so. Regarding #3: The work was fine-- no problems there. But the cost was outrageous. He was done in a little under an hour. Let's break that down: Materials: two water shut off valves. As near as I can tell, these are at most $20 each at Home Depot. Time: one hour. Let's say the not-unreasonable hourly rate is $150/hour. This would take into account fuel costs and dispatch fees. Let's say even $200/hour to account for even more overhead, like insurance. So the REAL COST of doing this job is $240. Now let's add some buffer -- since this is flat rate pricing. What if it took the plumber two hours? Well, they would be a pretty shitty plumber if it took that long, but okay. So another $150 brings it up to $390. This is 79% more than actual cost of doing the job. ($390 x 79.4871% = $310) So $390 + $310 = $700. Now here's the hilarious part. Later, after he left and I'd had more coffee, I was like "What just happened?" I mean, seriously, that is a LOT of profit for one hour of work. Or even two hours of work. So I wrote to them via their online form to complain that the flat rate pricing was really inaccurate. I got a call from Ben. When we spoke, he was basically whining at me like "what do you mean? I gave you a price and you agreed to it. Now you're saying you don't like it. What was wrong with the work?" I had to repeat to him at least three times that there was nothing wrong with the work, it was the pricing that bothered me. (Apparently he'd never heard of buyer's remorse.) I told him I was going to give the company a bad review on Yelp if they didn't at least try to make it right by refunding some of what I paid. His response? Again, whining, "I feel like this is extortion." What? So me calling your company out for it's lame business practices is extortion? No. It's called the FREE MARKET. You have to compete with those who are going to charge a fair price. Thankfully consumers today have services like Angie's List and Yelp so they can figure out which companies are SHYSTERS and which ones provide a good service for a fair price. Which brings me back to #1. Always. Read. The. Reviews.

My wife and I have, unfortunately, hired Apex Plumbing and Sewer three times. The first time was when our pipes froze in early 2015. This was our first time meeting their technician Jay. Their work helped our problem; we were able to get our house back up and running. We paid a lot for this work; around $2,000 dollars. Having read some of the other reviews here about Apex overcharging, I am worried we may have wasted a lot of money with this company. The following year, in 2016, our plumbing in the basement started backing up. We called Apex and again Jay came out. He explained that our basin in the backyard was clogged and that this involved work through pipes under the house out to the street, and that this was again going to cost around $5,000. This involved Jay digging up our front yard to fix pipe in the yard. This was when things with Apex started to get weird. Jay dug up the front yard and did some work but then disappeared for a week. It took persistent calling to get him to come back and finish the job. The third time we hired Apex was when our pump in the basement failed and we needed to also repair some concrete between that and the drain. This was in January 2017. Again it was Jay who came out. Again this cost a lot; $3,300. He replaced the pump and did the work fairly expediently. But in checking out our pipes he removed our downstairs toilet, which made our entire basement smell like sewage. He put it back after checking that line but must have done something wrong to where it wasn't properly sealed, because the smell remained. Also, the downstairs basement started flooding around this toilet. These symptoms came and went, to where we didn't immediately call Apex. But eventually we did. I talked to Jay on a morning my wife would be at home. He said he'd be there in an hour to 90 minutes, absolutely. He never showed and never called. We let this go until there was a lot of rainfall in Chicago and our basement flooded, again. So I started texting and calling Jay, admittedly very angry. But at this point we were - and are - in for about $10,000 worth of guaranteed work by Apex that they are not supporting. Jay came out. My wife dealt with him. He looked at the toilet producing the sewage smell, tightened the nuts around the base and told her, "That should do it." He told my wife he'd come back. In the interim, my wife started interacting with a woman at Apex named Christina. She took Jay's unpredictability very seriously and said she was going to make sure it was addressed. She told us Jay came out and checked our pipes via a port in the front yard and found no issues. Here's where the situation gets even more disturbing. We had another company come out to power rod our sewer line. In doing so, they needed to access that same port in the front yard. They told us, "Someone really told you they came out and checked this? It's covered with dirt and was really hard to open. No one has touched this thing in months." So Jay had blatantly lied about coming out and checking it. Moreover, this other company ran a camera down in the sewer and found that the work Apex had done the second time we hired them was bad and had allowed giant concrete chunks to block the line between the old pipe and the new pipe, which had caused massive amounts of toilet paper and waste to back-up in the line to the sewer. They showed us a picture of the problem. So my wife called Jay and discussed all this with him. He was with what he said was his boss at the time and expressed his concern. He questioned the findings of this other company. He said what they did was not going to fix the smell in the basement, which he caused. Even when my wife told him she considered the matter resolved, he insisted he or his company needed to come out and look into this, and said they'd be calling us and coming out. They didn't. So, today, I started calling Jay. No answer. I called Christina. She answered. Now, if you've been reading Yelp reviews of Apex, you'll note that Christina responds to them. There's even a picture of her attached to her response. But she told me that she does not write these responses; that her boss or Apex's "social media manager" does this. Regardless, Christina moved to distance herself from the situation, saying she is just the office manager and has no real responsibility here. She also threatened to call the police on me for "harassment." In the interim, Jay had called me, so I called him back. He refused to commit to coming out at any set time; saying this would be determined on Monday. He also insisted he was off today, Saturday, when Christina had just told me that he was on an "emergency job" with his boss. When pressed about his failure to show up in the past, he started shouting. He cursed at me using the F-word six times and, as Christina had, threatened to call the police on me for "harassment." He hung up on me without us reaching any conclusion about this situation. I guess we're done then.

Apex Plumbing and Sewer proved incompetent at every level, from craftsmanship, to professionalism to service. They failed spectacularly at two separate jobs, the first of which was forgiven as I assumed the poor workmanship was on the individual and not necessarily reflective of the company. That proved to be a poor judgement as the second botched job was handled even worse than the first, as the company refused to respond and correct their mistake. Speaking to the first assignment, I called them out to fix a leak, which at the time was located in small area of the kitchen ceiling. I noted to them the leak seemed to be contained to about a half dollar section, were there was a copper pipe running. The two technicians correctly noted that the leak could be coming from several places and they'd need to open the wall up to see. That would have been fine, but instead of checking at the site of the leak first, they FORCED water on the bathroom floor and side of the tub to see if there could be a leak in the grout. Expectedly, there was a new leak, one they caused, that now made its way near the living room. After that experiment went poorly, they finally looked direct beneath the area of the original leak to discover that a copper pipe fitting caused the issue. Their incompetence forced me to to remove drywall and paint in another 3ft. area of my home. In the second incident, which proved to be the most insulting and egregious. they sent someone to change a faucet cartridge, a job done well until I realized the technician hadn't adjusted the cartridge to provide hot water. Assuming the fix would be simple and guaranteed under their warranty, I called...and called...and called. After 10 messages to their answering service and no reply, I finally called using my wife's number. They called back immediately, only to recoil upon learning this was the same job they hadn't responded to. The same tech responsible for the botched cartridge job - Brandon - replied that he'd "let the office know." They again never responded, and when I contacted Brandon directly via his provided work line, he became belligerent, and threatened me if I continued to contact him. Needless to say, the business etiquette was embarrassingly absent and the work done was so poorly done that it actually cost me more money to fix problems they created than what existed prior. Do yourself a favor and keep them away from your home, especially Brandon, as his work and attitude are equally as poor.

We used Apex's emergency line to get a plumber out for a basement toilet that started running overnight and was leaking out the back onto the floor. 2 plumbers came out that morning and tried to diagnose the issue. They removed the toilet and after some arguing back and forth, they came to the conclusion that the toilet had an illegal boot at the base leading to the local pipe and that the pipe was clogged and had to be rodded. They also told me the toilet was irreparable. They got their rodding machine and told me they could make it only 2 feet before they hit what they believed to be dirt and couldn't go futher. They hinted the pipe may not be connected to the sewer. At this point, I cut my losses with Apex but they still charged me $900 for essentially removing and moving a toilet (and giving me a bunch of inaccurate assessments...read on). I hired a sewer specialist I trusted from previous work for a video scope (William Sommerville at Sewer Viewer). He hit the blockage but said he could make it at least 14 feet into the pipe by hand (strike 1, Apex). It was tree roots with a blockage in front of normal toilet waste, not dirt as Apex guessed. He got his rodding machine which seemed much more robust than the one Apex brought and got through the waste blockage but was worried the rod would get stuck in the roots. He advised on a herbicide since the local pipe was too narrow for a root rod used in sewers and that has seemed to clear the blockage. So, Apex's rod machine was underpowered for the job and only made it 2 feet, but they still charged me about half their usually rodding fee (strike 2). Next, I had John Baethke Plumbing out to see if the toilet was salvageable. Mind you, this is a 3 year old Kohler toilet, not off brand, but Apex said it had an illegal boot and could not be repaired. The plumber at Baethke laughed off the illegal boot assessment. It was the piece that came with the toilet, it was fine (strike 3, Apex). He also said the toilet was in great shape. It was the ring at the base of the pipe that was corroded and badly installed. He fixed the ring and the pipe connection and the toilet works no problem now (strike 4, Apex did such a poor job that I can't even use a baseball analogy?). Maybe just a bad crew and not Apex as a whole, but why charge $900 for a bunch of bad guesses and no repairs? I will not be using Apex again and will stick with the expensive but always quality John Baethke plumbing.

We called them about 6 weeks ago because our sink was backing up occasionally when we ran it. The technician came out, charged us $400 for about 45 minutes of work and told us things were good. Since then, the problem has gotten worse, as now our sink backs up nearly everyday even when we're not running it. We called the technician back this past Thursday, and he still hasn't responded. We called Apex directly yesterday. The person I spoke with assured me that she would mark this as an emergency and that someone would get back to me that day. Not surprisingly, I'm still waiting for that call. I just called them again for the third time and was assured they would get back to me. I'm not holding my breath. Long story short, they'll take your money ($400 for 45 minutes or so of work), make the problem worse, and then ignore you when you practically beg them to return your calls. Stay away!!!!! There are lots of competent and ethical plumbing services in the city, but Apex is not one of them. Update 1: Once again, they failed to call me back as promised. They have no problem charging you $400 to break your sink, but after that, you'll never hear from them again. Once again, please stay away from Apex unless you like spending nearly $600/hr to have someone not only not fix your issue, but to actually make things worse. Incompetent and Dishonest-Apex Plumbing. What a joke. Update 2: After seeing my 1-star review, the owner contacted me. Shocking how he had no problem ignoring my calls and charging me $600/hr to break my sink until I let other people know about it on the internet. Anyway, he told me they were closed when I reached out to them, even though the business claims to be 24/7 and someone spoke to me when I called and promised that a plumber would get back to me that day. The owner asked for my name and address to pull up my records. I sent him my information four days ago. He has not gotten back to me yet. Maybe they've also been closed for the past four days? This is the fourth time Apex has ignored me after breaking my sink and charging me $400 to do it. I can only assume they can't get back to me because they're too busy spending the $400 I gave them to break my sink. LOL Apex. What a bunch of clowns. I sincerely hope people read this review and decide to stay away from this incompetent, unethical and dishonest company.

Here's my personal opinion and why i think you should consider any other plumbing company besides APEX - No care for customer service. They're disrespectful, awful communication, and lie and make false promises of solving the problem. I hired them to address my low water pressure in my multi-unit building. At the time of estimating the job, I was extra clear that pressure is my underlying problem and gave them as much information as I could. They said they could do the job and solve my problem because it seems like my rising pipes were really old galvanized piping. 2 days later they started and collected half the payment over the phone through credit card. I did not allow them to keep it on file and said I would pay again at the end of the job. They started and "finished" 3 days later but I still had little to no water pressure and after getting frustrated that they couldn't solve the problem, one of the plumbers blew up on me and said the "contract" was complete because all it said was the risers needed to e changed and his job was done and they'd put a LIEN on my house if not paid. Issue was still not resolved and I was out of pocket $10k I find out they charged my credit card and illegally stored my info when I asked not to. Chuck the owner/boss comes the next day and says hell try to find a solution and all he did was simply walk to the main city pipe and say this is another $30k job because you need to change the main pipe but hell keep looking for an answer. 2 weeks go by and he never called, and when i called him he accused me of being impatient and rude. When i asked what he came up with in 2 weeks, he said honestly hadn't given it much thought. This whole time my walls are still torn out and I have families living here. They also never provided me the copy to the contract until my last conversation with the owner. I can understand if it was 1 employee, but the owner himself provided this type of service - which says a lot about the company. Save yourself the trouble, pay a little more and go with any other plumbing company.C

This place has really dropped off. Over the past 4-5 years they have helped me in a number of situations but the price has started to get out of control. For context of this story they charged 900 for an emergency rodding and toliet removal/reinstall ~two years ago and 500 for a regular sink line rodding that they fumbled and took longer than needed. In each case they were here for multiple hours with two plumbers. I asked for a quote on installing a powered anode rod in my water heater. It’s a 200 dollar product and I needed the bend taken out of this pipe (minor copper work). They quoted me 987. 700 dollars to cut a pipe and put on a new fitting. I had to educate the plumber on why I needed it, that the product existed, and where to order it from. I texted him the exact model. When I refused the quote he said it was 197 for the “service call”. Nothing was serviced or touched, he added no expertise and relied on me for the product info. I contacted the office and the response was that 700 to cut and refit one 7 inch piece of copper pipe was justified and that they had to “source” the product and pay their overhead. They sell the rod it at Home Depot. I refuse to pay for a quote on work, that is beyond absurd. The whole point of a quote is to get price without commitment. I repeat, not a single thing was touched, serviced, or properly inspected. They spent 30 mins in the truck writing up a quote and justify the service call with an hour of “research” that I did for them. The result is they backed out of working with me when I questioned why it was 700 dollars and refused to pay for a quote. IN RESPONSE TO REPLY: Shutoff water = turn a valve, shop a part I specified = press order, so we are agreed I was quotes 700 to make one copper cut and sweat on a fitting. Is this a legit response?

Would not recommend Apex. Had 3 negative experiences with them. 1. I called them to fix a drip leak where two water pipes connect. They quoted $1,200 for what was, realistically, no more than 1.5 hours of work and less than $20 in parts. I thought it was overpriced, but since there was an active leak, I went ahead. On their website, they have a $25 off any repair coupon. When it came time to pay, I presented it—and they refused to honor it because I hadn’t mentioned it before the work started. That’s ridiculous. That’s like having to show a store coupon when you walk in the door instead of at checkout. Coupons are always presented at the time of payment. I feel that refusing to honor a $25 coupon on a $1,200 repair is just bad customer service and a bad look. 2. For my HOA (I am on the HOA board), we had an owner experiencing a plumbing issue, so we asked Apex to come out and provide a quote. Their website clearly says “on-site estimates are free.” Despite that, they still charged the owner a $150 service fee even though no work was performed—just a quote. I feel that is false advertising. 3. Lastly, we had them perform some rodding for $500 to clear a laundry drain clog. They spent 15 minutes on it and didn’t fully resolve the problem (the flow improved slightly, but water still backed up). They then said the only solution was to re-pipe everything for at least $4,000. We called another plumber, who charged $470, spent 1.5 hours rodding thoroughly, and now the drain works perfectly. I understand rodding can be a temporary fix, but given we’d already paid Apex $500, I expected more than 15 minutes of effort before being told to spend thousands more.

Avoid This Company At All Costs (Updating Review after additional service) This was one of the worst service experiences we’ve ever had. We hired this plumbing company to install a valve leading to an outdoor water spigot. The workmanship was so poor that the pipe burst during cold weather, forcing us to have the valve replaced a second time. When they came back out, we were explicitly told the new installation would be “good to go for the winter.” It was not. The valve failed again, despite following their guidance. At that point, instead of standing behind their work or taking responsibility, they attempted to charge us an outrageous amount of money to fix a problem that was clearly caused by their own improper installation and bad advice. To make matters worse, when we escalated the issue to the owner, Chaz, the conversation was completely unprofessional. He was belligerent, dismissive, and offered zero help or accountability. No solutions. No ownership. Just attitude. This company demonstrates: Incompetent workmanship Misleading assurances No accountability Absolutely terrible customer service If you value your time, money, or home, do not use this company. Poor quality work combined with hostile customer service is a deal-breaker. We deeply regret hiring them and hope this review prevents others from making the same mistake.

We weren't even given the opportunity to use their services because of an issue that happened. My husband scheduled someone to come out from Apex and give us a quote at 8:00am on a Saturday morning. We also booked another company to come out and give us a quote at 9:00am. Apex was running late, and did give us a call to acknowledge their tardiness and state they would be at our house in 20 minutes. Meanwhile, the other company showed up at their scheduled time, looked around, gave us a quote and was proceeding to leave, when my husband and I see the Apex van pull away from our house. My husband immediately calls them and they state "we aren't getting into a bidding war. We're a professional company and don't do that." I completely understand that they didn't want to get into a "bidding war," but they could have called my husband, asked to reschedule (especially considering they were so tardy!), or even waited outside more than two seconds to see that the second company was leaving. It seems odd that they made an error coming so late, but then accused us of starting a bidding war and refused to come in. The point of getting quotes is that you do so from more than one company so you can find the best fit (and price!) for yourself. We definitely choose not to work with Apex, and wouldn't recommend you give them business either.

Chas and his team were awesome! Thank you so much for saving us. Our laundry utility tub was backing up into a neighboring sink, so I called Apex to schedule a free estimate. They were able to come same or next day, but I was fine waiting a couple days until we could schedule around my work day. As promised, they called 20 minutes before showing up. Chas showed up right on time, and was there for about 30 minutes making his assessment. He gave us a quote based on what he was very sure was the problem, and then told us a worst case scenario quote in case he was wrong. I always prefer receiving a range for estimates. We had our catch basin pumped and cleaned, and the main to the sewer and into the house rodded. They were extremely quick and professional, and were able to find the blockage right away. I saw A LOT of build-up pouring into the catch basin, I will spare the description of what it looked like. They guys with the truck that came to pump the basin said that it hadn't been cleaned for over 10 years. Recommended cleaning is 2-4 years to avoid situations like mine. We will definitely be pumping it every few years. For maintenance, Chas recommended filling the kitchen sink to the top with water and some dish soap every few months to use as a gentle degreaser that blasts through the pipes.