After Hours Home Improvement

Amanda V.

Beware. We hired After Hours several years ago based on a referral from a friend. At first, we thought they were great. We used them for all of our quick repair needs. Recently, we have become very concerned that they are not being honest with us. We got a notice from DC Water that our water bill was unusually high. We asked After Hours to come look and see if they could figure out the problem. They did a dye test and couldn't find the issue. Without doing any further research, they told us we had to replace the water pipe connecting our house to the city mainline that runs under our front yard. We had also asked them for a quote to fix the retaining wall. After they claimed we needed to replace the pipe, they said the retaining wall was just going to end up part of the project anyway and quoted us $34,000 for everything! We thought that was outrageous and got quotes from Magnolia Plumbing, Heating, and Cooling and another company as well. The Magnolia technician came out, did some more research and first said we needed to find our meter in the yard before we could confirm the pipe in the yard was leaking because we needed to turn off the water at the meter to see if the meter was still counting water usage--which would indicate a leak. After Hours never even suggested to do that before claiming we needed to replace it! In fact, After Hours didn't even look for the meter, which turned out to be buried in our front yard! Magnolia also said it was unlikely it was the pipe anyway and probably just a problem with the meter. And they were right! The meter was just miscounting the water usage! Thank God we got Magnolia's second opinion. In any event, Magnolia said it would only be $10,500 to replace the pipe even if we needed to. After all that, After Hours had the gall to charge us $375 for ""the diagnostic visit and dye test."" They didn't tell us this was the cost beforehand and it's almost twice as much as Magnolia charged us for the same service--and in Magnolia's case they at least gave us an honest assessment and saved us thousands of wasted dollars.

Robbie P.

Came over after hiring another contractor. They had all the necessary licenses and they are an extraordinary company and I highly recommend them for any of your home needs. They did a perfect addition to our home and were on time every day and extremely professional. Please give these guys a try before hiring another contractor!