Benjamin Franklin Plumbing - Dallas

John O.

STAY AWAY! Benjamin Franklin Plumbing caused over $31,000 of damage to our home and the repairs took four months to complete. In the process of unclogging a bathroom sink, they created a slow leak that went undetected for 10 days. At that point, the cabinet was saturated. They attempted to dry the cabinet for 10 days with multiple exceptionally noisy dehumidifiers. This just added to inconvenience and annoyance. In the end, we had to remove the cabinet, rip up the floor, detach plumbing/electrical and start rebuilding from scratch. Dealing with Benjamin Franklin, insurance adjusters, multiple contractors to restore the bathroom to its original condition took months. I also need to add that Benjamin Franklin was difficult to deal with during this process and focused more on their potential losses and less on making it easy on their client. The work is now complete, but they have offered us NOTHING for our extreme inconvenience.

Jack D.

Called and scheduled service to clear clogs in the kitchen sinks. Arrived quickly and went right to work cleaning out the pipes. Athens got stung by a wasp while outside but kept working. Would definitely recommend Benjamin Franklin for all your plumbing needs.

Greg S.

After having several sewer clogs in my house I knew I had a big problem brewing and did not want to call some small shop. A plumber I know in Greenville said Benjamin Franklin does good work, so I called to have someone assess the situation. They sent out Corey Greenwood, who is project manager level, along with a more junior person. The two of them spent a total of 5 hours trying to scope out the problem with two sewer cameras. My 1953 sewer lines only had one sewer cleanout, and even going through the roof vents they could not beging to map out the entire path of the sewer line because it was such a pretzel. Corey was able to give me a firm quote on replacing a single cleanout with a double cleanout and another quote to get to the first bad spot in the sewer, but he said there was no way to tell where it went until digging it up. He also found out the remodeled mother-in-law suite attached to the garage does not even have a P-trap under the shower. I was loking at about $20,000 so far, do I decided to hold off a little longer, and he left without even charing for the combined 10 man-hours they spent, but he did a great job reinforcing my decision to call his company. He is 100% dedicated to sewer line work every day, and he has the crew to handle a large project like this. A few months and a couple of stoppages later I called him back and said to get this started. He installed the double cleanout and cut through the pool decking to get the first trouble spot he identified. From there he was able to run the cameras more and discovered that the sewer line ran under the entire pool deck, under the hot tub, and could not tell beyond there. Tunneling under the hot tub was not an option, and there was no cleanout at the sity sewer tap, so he had no way of knowing for sure where the line went after going under the hot tub and to the edge of the grass. He suggested rerouting the line around the hot tub and then cuttting over to intersect the line, but he was very clear there was no way to know what we would find. I said to gather the data and see where it leads us. He found out that it went under the outdoor kitchen (which I did not want to saw cut) and under the fence to the alley, and the sewer line was collapsing at the edge of the alley also, so Corey suggested having a bonded city contractor relocate the city sewer tap and extending the existing trench to the alley and under the fence to be in position when the contractor got the new tap installed. Meanwhile he went back to the original hole (the original problem spot) and ran the camera to map out what was underneath the house. That turned out to be cast iron also and was leaking really bad in one spot, so we agreed to tunnel under the house like El Chapo and replace all the cast iron. The bedrock is close to the surface, so the trenching and tunneling was more expensive due to all the rock. While they were at it I had Ben Franklin install a whole house water filter and replace the leaking riser on the natural gas line and install recirculating pump to prevent frozen water lines. Now at least I have 6 cleanouts instead of one, and everything is up to code except fixing the issues in the mother-in-law suite. Corey was the project manager over the sewer line, Ben was the supervisor over the water filter installation, Lionel was the plumber who did most of the hand-on work, and the trenching and tunneling was outsourced to a company that does nothing but digging. At the end of the day I spent $111,129 on everything. Unfortunately there was no way to know how big the project would be without starting it. Their pricing is all based on a menu of fixed charges - $X for tunneling based on distance, $X for trenching based on distance, installation of the sewer line is based on distance and size of pipe, etc. I may or may not have been able to get it done for less with someone else, but at the cost of it being not up to code or causing other issues. Everyone I dealt with was professional, punctual, service-oriented, and a pleasure to work with, and I felt good knowing this company was not going to take shortcuts and do a hack job.

Paul B.

I requested Ben Franklin to service my 16 year old Norwitz tankless water heater. They installed it in July of 2007 & have serviced it since. I couldn't get any water from my hot water fawcets & controller wouldn't show the burner was on.
Tech said I had to replace the unit but since it was a Saturday I would have to apply for financing on Monday.
I got a quote for $10,300 to replace an existing system.
Several cold showers later I was able to get the unit back up. I just unplugged the unit from power for a few minutes, tapped on the heat exchanger and exposed water lines with a rubber mallet. Presto, my unit was back in service.
I had another company check my unit and he said he could replace the unit with a Navien for $2500. He said since it was 16 years old it would probably be best to replace.
I am retired and on a fixed income. $7800 is a big deal to me! I will never use Ben Franklin again.

Melissa C.

The work was good but would highly suggest quoting around first or at least getting detailed estimate of damages and detail invoice with square footage for reference. I had them come out to check out my washer but was told I had a broken sewer pipe as well that would end up flooding my crawl space if I didn't replace. So they suggested I replace the cast iron. I had two bathrooms lines and washer line replaced. Quoted over $15k financed with them. At least I don't have to worry about my plumbing.

Wilfred O.

Thank you. Your plumber did a great job. I will call you again if I need plumbing work done.

Nicole S.

Would not recommend this plumber--they operate on commission and will try to upsell you on everything.

My fiancé and I recently purchased our first home and identified a hot water leak at our house, which we believed to be a slab leak. We called Benjamin Franklin Plumbing to help us detect the exact location and quote us for the repair. Their technician came out and only used a heat gun to attempt to locate the leak. He did not use sonar equipment--standard practice for a leak detection service--and proceeded to quote us a minimum of $7k-$12k for the repair in an area in which he "thought" it was located. He also told us we that needed to replace our water heater and replace a toilet. His quotes for those repairs were $4,800 and $1,000, respectively. Keep in mind that water heaters average about $500-$600 to replace...and do not typically require an additional $4,000 in labor costs to install. The same can be said for toilets.

Prior to sending us his quote, he verbally shared that "this is a business and he is here to take our money--just not all of it."

Little did this man know that my fiancé is in the construction industry and we are well-versed in typical costs for repairs. This company is highly unprofessional and inappropriate.

We ultimately used Ken Wade with Leaks, LLC to detect the leak (he showed up sonar equipment and immediately located the spot and identified the exact problem). We also used Dried Piper Plumbing in Richardson to fix the issues. In total, we payed a fraction of the cost for the hot water slab leak repair and a sewer line repair--and, we don't need to replace the hot water heater.

Do your research before calling Benjamin Franklin--the name of their company is quite ironic given the repair quotes they throw out. For reference, slab leak repairs typically cost between $2k-$4k.

John S.

BFP was my goto plumbing company however my last experience has motivated me to find another company.
Basically I was charged $99 service fee after they couldn't recreate the issue I described. The issues being the commode flooded after a flush and the adjacent bath tub had brown stuff coming up the bathroom drain after the flush. Because I failed to mention the adjacent bathtub in their online form they want to charge me an additional fee to send out another technician to check the tub drain. I asked the rep if I could speak to the technician that came to my home however, this request was denied by the service rep I talked to (William).

Also I'm not crazy about their pricing. When I employed BFP to install a new garbage disposal the pricing going from a 1/2 HP to 3/4 and 1 HP was an outrageous upcharge. I had price disposals at Lowes/HomeDepot and BFP pricing does NOT reflect the real world for the higher HP disposals... The labor to install a 1/2 HP versus a 1 HP should be nearly the same but not at BFP. Next time I will buy my own full One HP disposal and hire a handy man to install.

Dot S.

Would not recommend pricing outrageous and no detailed breakdown of labor, parts just one lump charge almost $600 with $289 trip charge and refused to honor the coupon for a discount. So sorry I went to them I should have reached out to a more local individual company. Oh, they also refuse warranty on their work. Do yourself a favor and go elsewhere

J W.

Absolutely horrible and a rip off. Not only are you charged a $59.00 trip charge for them "just to show up" as the technician said, they wanted to charge over $200.00+ dollars to write up an estimate (which is what I thought I was getting for the trip charge). Said they had to measure and use a camera for the sewer line even though I have pictures and measurements available from the City. Then to pay by check, they wanted every personal identifiable piece of information from me....asked for just about everything but my first born. The technician was argumentative and sarcastic. I would not recommend them at all. I will also post this on the next door app in my neighborhood to warn others so that they do not get ripped off by unreasonable pricing.