Clarke Kent Plumbing

I have used Clark Kent a few times now and have found them to be reliable, keeping me informed every step of the way. They have provided good service and patience in making sure I understand what is going on. The last service was complex but feel like my 2 problems have been solved.

Andrew from Clarke Kent was excellent to deal with and did a high quality repair. He had to dig out the line from the meter but did so without hesitation or complaint. The job took about 3.5 hour's and he kept me updated as the work progressed. Worthy of the five star rating.

Had to replace floor bolt on my toilet and had a small leak under my sink. They did a great job. The price was good. Plumber was friendly. Been a while since I needed a plumbing company but the last one was over priced, tried to upsell me, and just seemed greedy. Clark Kent didn't feel like that at all. I was very happy and will definitely use them again. Highly recommend them.

Never Again... Incomplete work. No recovery. Poor customer service. 1) Incomplete work - They were hired to install two appliances. One appliance could not be enabled. The technician told me to call someone else. Another appliance was found to be not operating after he left. (He didn't test his works.) 2) No recovery - Clarke Kent Plumbing didn't fix the issues. They took no immediate action after I told them that the appliance they had worked is not working. No one came that day or next day (or ever). I called again, and again. 3) Poor customer service - They kept changing their refund policy, depending on the information I gave them. After many back and forth emails, I got a half of what I had requested, that was after I pointed out their inconsistency in the email thread. Too much money/time/energy spent and still unhappy. I understand that mistake/forgetting happens; maybe it was his first day. The bigger concern is that they don't take responsibility on their works. It's not reliable if they don't recover their mistakes.

Took three visits of trial-and-error to locate the problem - while paying for replacements along the way that it turns out I did not need. But it was too late as the parts and toilets were already replaced. No sense of urgency on the call-backs. I've been waiting for three business days now for the supervisor to come out to offer bids on completing the job moving forward.

I don't know what has happened to this company in the past few years but a reliable plumbing service company has turned into the plumber from hell that you should never call and will soon go out of business (if they don't figure it out). We have spent thousands of dollars over the years with this Clake Kent Plumbing (CKP) and we have been loyal customers. In the past year, things have gone to hell. The latest (and likely, last) example happened yesterday, the day before Thanksgiving. A major appliance broke in our hme and needed to be replaced, which required a plumber to hook up a gas line. So, being a loyal CKP customer, I called and scheduled an appointment. I was told it would be after hours and there would be an additional charge, which I was all too happy to pay, in light of the circumstances. After all, I had spent hndreds of additional dollars mobilizing appliance vendors and hiring special delivery services to get everything to my home for CKP to hook up. So, then we waited... And waited... We called the 24-hour answering service at 7pm to ask what the status was, and received a very curt response from Amber at CKP saying, "our plumbers are still on other jobs... we will get to you"... I called back at 9pm, again leaving a message on the answering service requesting a status update, only this time, Amber didn't return the call. Being patient and understanding, I let it go. I called again at 11pm, leaving another message with the answering service, which again was not returned. It being the night before Thanksgiving, I again let it go, believing that at SOME point, our plumber would arrive and save the day. Surely, Superman, wouldn't disappoint a loyal customer and stand him up on a major appliance installation the day before Thanksgiving. We waited until 1am for the plumber and finally turned off the lights and went to bed. We are hosting friends and family in a few hours... We spent literally hundreds of extra dollars to get appliances in our home and ready for CPK to show up and do their 45-minute job of uncapping and hooking up a gas line. And NOTHING. I called the answering service Thanksgiving morning and left a much more detailed message and Amber called me back, displaying rudeness and an attitude. When she realized that we weren't someone calling out of the yellow pages, but a long-time customer, she switched to lying, saying she had returned my calls. She hadn't... I have an iPhone, there were no missed calls, nice try, but don't lie to a customer -- EVER! You know, Superman, there is an old saying... "Happy wife, happy life!". There's another older saying, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!!!" Well, this morning, and today, I don't have a happy life and ain't nobody in this house is going to be happy on this Thanksgiving Day because you have the wrong person scheduling and handling your after hours calls. I mean, come on, dude. Next time someone calls in the afternoon needing prompt service (you're a plumber, this can't be the first time this has happened), tell that customer that you can't get it done so they can find someone who CAN and WILL handle the job. But, don't handle it like this. Or you should expect a lot more negative feedback, just like this.

Rude and dishonest. Short version: one of their technicians left me without hot water for a week because he insisted that instead of quickly replacing a $10 part, I needed an entire new water fixture. I called b.s., ordered the part, replaced it in under 5 minutes, and totally fixed the issue. The hot water in my shower wouldn’t turn off, so I had my landlord hire a plumber to fix it. I looked up the issue myself, and was pretty sure it was as simple as needing a new hot water cartridge - a cheap and easy fix - but as a tenant, my lease requires a professional to handle maintenance work. Since the hot water wouldn’t turn off, I had to shut it off at the water heater. Meaning my whole house was without hot water. The landlord told me that someone from CK would be reaching out to schedule a time for the visit. After waiting a day to hear anything, someone from dispatch called to tell me that a tech will be there in 15-20 minutes. I told her that I was at work but that I could meet the tech there closer to 4pm. She told me that they close at 5, so that probably wouldn’t work. Despite her rude tone and weird excuse (can’t do work an hour before closing… what?), I made arrangements at work to accommodate the no-notice-given visit. The tech arrived, tracked his dirty work boots all over my living room and bathroom (guess they’ve never heard of booties at CK?), and started tinkering with the faucet. He then asked me to go turn the hot water back on. I went outside to the water closet, switched it on, and came back inside to find him BANGING on the wall with his fist yelling “OFF, OFF…”. My dog was shaking and cowering in the corner. After shutting it back off, he goes on to tell me that the whole shower faucet fixture needed to be replaced because “someone cheaped out when buying this current one.” I pushed back and asked if replacing the cartridge would fix it, to which he condescendingly said “no, the whole thing is broken.” Okay, whatever, I just want it fixed, so I tell him to ask the landlord for permission to do the job. He leaves, and then I hear nothing for two more days, all while still having no hot water. After my landlord prodded them twice, another dispatcher calls me to tell me that they wouldn’t be able to schedule the job until the following Monday (the initial call to them was on Monday). At this point, I decided that trying to replace the cartridge myself couldn’t make matters worse, so I did. And what do you know… problem solved. Instead of just doing the quick, simple job he was hired to do, the tech tried to squeeze hundreds of dollars out of my landlord and leave me without hot water for a week. When I tried to call and report this internally, I was given the run around, and as far as I know nothing came of it. If the owner reads this, please reach out for dates and times. If this doesn’t represent how you want to conduct business, then fire the individuals responsible, and I’ll remove my review. Otherwise, people should know that this is how Clark Kent Plumbing treats its customers.

I thought the pricing was arbitrary. The original technician who had to leave due to a personal emergency quoted ~$700.00. The estimate said "Shop Charge / Destination Charge" I didn't expect that amount for replacing the toilet gasket and flapper which is available at Walmart for $24.95 (https://www.walmart.com/ip/Fluidmaster-Toilet-Tank-Complete-Repair-Kit/15788371?) and doing the work as described in YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUl3duqRUkw). I also didn't realize travelling from Hwy71 and Congress to South Lamar had a "destination" charge. I told the technician that I thought the quote was high. He pointed out that it will take him about an hour and a half per toilet and labor costs were high. So I agreed. The replacement technician arrived and asked me what the previous technician quoted, and I was tempted to ask him to re-quote, but told him just the same. We are all honest and upstanding here. Less than one hour of work later, he wrote up the invoice for $600 and said he knocked of $100 since it took him so quick (I guess I should be thankful for that?). So readers, please be the judge: 2 toilet kits for $24.95+tax=$54.02 (at Walmart) away from $600 total means the labor/service was $545.98. I made a mistake choosing college and grad school because I could be student-loan debt free and making more as a plumber. $545.98 per hour at 40 hours a week means an income of $1,113,799.20 per year. In short, OVER A MILLION / year. Let's keep it simple and say the technician gets half and the company gets the other half, that is still a CoooooooooooL $557,000 per year each! Heck, we should all be plumbers and work for five or six years then retire to make room for the new plumbers. I have nothing against going to college or taking up a vocation or focusing on a craft. Everyone of us deserves honest pay for honest work. What I am against is the lack of transparency and integrity. Why weren't the material costs filled in the quote sheet? Why was the hourly rate for the job not specified and adhered to? So readers, what do you think? Was I gouged?

While I can't fault thier actual service, I have used them twice now and I can say that scheduling an appointment with them is nothing more than a cruel joke that they play on people. You will not, almost guranteed, get your serviceman anytime near when you are scheduled. More then likely it will be days... I repeat DAYS... past when you have an appointment. I have to assume that if it is an emergency repair they are prompt... because they are always cancelling my appointment for some "emergency" that is happening elsewhere. Not to Clark Kent... You are not the only plumber in town... if you make an appointment with someone, then you tell the emergency that you are sorry to be all booked and refer them to someone else. this last time I didn't even get so much as a phone call warning me... I waited around the damn house for 6 hours the first day... called multiple times the second day... and then finally when one of the pipes I was trying to get repaired broke, they sent some one "just to turn off the water"... I had made many MANY adjustments to my schedule to accomodate them. When the guy did show up I convinced him to do a temprorary repair so that I wouldn't be without water... that fix was nearly 300 dollars because its now an "emergency" call... and by the way they are cancelling my appointment for today and might... MIGHT... be able to come by and actually do all my repairs in a couple of days. I have used other plumbing services before, and have had some similar treatment before but never as bad. The first time I used them I'd have given them 3 stars (the work was good, the price was competitve and I only got bumped off the schedule like twice). However, this last time I have to go with zero stars for the unbelievably crappy treatment they gave a repeat customer. Again, even one flippin phone call from the company early on explining they can't make the appointment would have gone a long way. But 2 days of this and then an "emergency" charge on something I would have paid to have fixed in the first place is just beyond the pale.

I called Clarke Kent recently about a leaky water line in my front yard. I paid for a plumber to come out and find the leak, but the job of replacing the old galvanized line had to be scheduled. He gave me a verbal quote and said he could do it in one week, and that the office would email a written quote. I agreed. Four days later at 4:30pm I received the quote. The description of work was a single sentence, and didn't mention the customer shutoff valve that the plumber had said he would install. So the next day I called to ask about it and was told the person who wrote up the quote would call me back. The day after that I hadn't heard back, so I emailed my questions. The next day was when the plumber had said he would do the job, but I still hadn't heard back, so I called again. I was told the job hadn't been scheduled because I hadn't signed the quote, and that jobs are not scheduled until after the quote is signed and 50% has been paid. It would take some time to schedule because the job would require two people for a full day. Mind you, by this time I had already dug up the old water line myself. They also quoted me an additional $450 to backfill the 20ft trench. I called around and was lucky to find another local plumber who came out that day to give a quote, and who did the job the next morning. It took 1 plumber and an apprentice 2 hours, and they didn't require any payment up front. They backfilled the trench and the total cost was what Clarke Kent quoted without the backfill. I've had Clarke Kent come out for other jobs in the past, and they've generally done a good job. I did have one issue where a water heater they installed stuck too far out of the existing enclosure, making it a headache to get a door installed. Overall, the high price and poor customer service have turned me off from using them again.

Smell from toilet. Kitchen hot water stop not turning off. Verbal estimate of $450 total. 9/8/23 plumber turns off water to complex. Told water stop ok and would drop price by $200. Found flange needs replacement in toilet New total $750. At end of service charged $1,000. Plumber says he saved us money. Plumber says he will send itemized invoice with photos. None ever received.. After water turned on & plumber gone, kitchen hot water stop still not shutting off water. New estimate could be as high as $605. New plumber different day. Turns off water for complex. Installs 1/4 turn. 1st plumber had said this was impossible. Final charge $650. Total charge from initial verbal est. of $450, is $1,605. Even if we possibly heard the verbal estimate wrong, the final charge should not have been more than $905 assuming the first plumber had done is his job correctly replacing the kitchen stop on at first visit. Spoke to rep at Clarke Kent Plumbing. Asked company for itemized invoices. Told owner said that is not their policy. According to Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners, such an invoice must be provided if asked for one. Owner says he is not required to give one. When told we would file a complaint with the Examiners and with the Better Business Bureau, we were told owner said he does not care. NOTE: The actual work that was done does seem to have been done well, at least as far as we can tell to this point. This is the only reason I give two stars instead of one.

I can't say this enough, avoid this company like The Plague. My clients needed a slab leak inspection outside of Pflugerville and after making several dozen calls on a Friday afternoon, and getting the same, "We don't service that far out." I discovered Clarke Kent Plumbing could service the area. The scheduler said they would come by that Monday between 10am-5pm. The 7 hour service window was odd as all other plumbers I had used would, at worst, give me a 2 hour window, but I was just glad to have someone coming out. At 1pm that Monday I called to check the status of the arrival. The scheduler had forgotten to put me on the schedule. There went my Monday. Since we still needed this inspection I made an appointment for Tuesday with the same 10am-5pm window. I rearranged several appointments to be sure I was available when the call came on Tuesday to open the door for the inspector. I called every hour to check the status and was finally asked at 3:00 to please stop calling, they would get there before 5:00. I could hear the scheduler roll her eyes! At 4:27 pm I received a call from the scheduler to inform me, "Sorry, we don't service that area." Un-be-lievable. There was no remorse for the problems that their poor service had caused or the loss of yet another work day. Nothing. Like I said, avoid this company like The Plague. I wish there was a "No Stars" rating!

I haven't dealt when any other plumbers here besides Marcel, but as far as I am concerned he is the best. He is just a friendly and pleasant fellow as well! I needed some new sink plumbing hooked up in our remodel and an RO water filter. I ordered the RO off of Amazon. When it came I saw the tank was HUGE. Since we'd bought a 9" sink and larger disposal I was convinced the RO system would have to be mounted in the cabinet beside the sink, thus losing precious storage space. Was I ever wrong. Marcel made everything fit neatly! And we still have plenty of room for soap/cleaner storage below. Amazing. Marcel also offered a some suggestions with the kitchen sink faucet arrangement I hadn't even considered. Like installing a pneumatic button for the disposal right on top of the sink next to the faucet and soap dispenser. I didn't even know such a thing existed! But wow, is it ever handy. The other 4 sinks were hooked up very quickly and again the results look beautiful. The piping is metal, stainless steel I guess. Looks like it will last for years and years to come! At the end of the day, the bill came in right in the middle of Marcel's estimate. No surprises! I'll definitely be calling Clarke Kent and Marcel again if we have any problems!

Had to create a simple connection to the main water line, something that should have cost ~$10, but ended up paying them over $170 for 5 minutes of work! Couldn't do it myself because of the type of PVC pipe in place. The guy who came out was ok, and friendly enough. However, over the phone I told them exactly what parts I needed them to install and they still showed up empty handed (and consequently had to have someone else deliver the parts while they waited). Once they got the parts in, it took all of 5 minutes to create the connection (with a simple little wrench-looking tool). They ended up charging me for 30 minutes of work, $50 for using a tool (was I renting a tool they used for themselves?!?!), and 2-3 times the actual cost of parts. We tried to argue, but they threatened to rip out what they had done and leave us with no water. Not much of a choice there, and talking to the owner over the phone didn't help much either. He basically said he could care less, and threatened to rip the parts out (again) if I kept trying to reason with him. Do NOT do business with Clarke Kent, they're not very honest and up front about their pricing, and worst of all, they threaten their own customers!

We had an emergency situation requiring a plumber to be on-site same day. After calling several of the big name companies supposedly offering emergency plumbing services 7x24 only to be told nope, not until tomorrow (looking especially at *you* Abacus; maybe spend money on plumbers instead of hundreds of commercials) I spotted a recco for Clarke Kent and pinged them via their chat. They immediately agreed they could send someone out by late afternoon, which was acceptable. In reality someone showed up before noon, and it was a gentleman by the name of John Garlow who explored the situation, presented options, and quickly went about repairing the problems he found. The ancient design of our house and tiny working areas meant some creative solutions had to be found, and in one case he literally built something that would work so that the wall wouldn't have to be ripped out. Throughout the whole process, John was happy to answer questions and showed his dedication to providing quality work. We are leaving the area (tomorrow, which is why this had to get done today), but we heartily recommend Clarke Kent to anyone in the Austin area needing plumbing work done.