Don Dowling Plumbing & Heating

Matt M.

Dowling is a hack. Worst plumber and businessman I have ever encountered. I kept my mouth shut for 5 years, he re did all the plumbing in my house, charged me ridiculous sums of money and fuckked up everything. From bath tub leaking in a brand new addition to the first floor, washing machine on second floor leaking. 2 weather heaters broke within 2 years of installation. Cause the way he piggy backed it, and water softener fuck ups. Now the second sump pump he installed ducking came apart. He is the worst and never use him.

Jenee C.

Don and his company are always responsive, take a look and give options. I referred him to my cousin on a home inspection issue and he gave the peace of mind on the issue then was able to fix it after the purchase with no issues.

Gregory R.

In my recent interaction with Don Dowling, I found him to be dishonest and unethical. He put down his own employee, raged at his customer (me), and showed himself to be shrill and short-tempered.

People make mistakes. What matters is how you respond to them and make things right. After Don's apprentice made a series of mistakes when trying to fix a tankless water heater, Don agreed to ""make me whole"" (his words), after I spent $600 for basically nothing. Once his apprentice failed to diagnose the problem (let alone fix it), I felt no confidence in having him continue, so I hired another company, which fixed it successfully.

In response to Don's promise to ""make me whole,"" Don agreed to install a new dishwasher I had purchased, a job that could easily be completed in an hour. But when I tried to schedule a time for him to do the work, he basically ""ghosted"" me, and didn't respond at all, even after five texts and three phone calls over the course of a week. Only after I texted saying that I might share my experiences on Yelp did he respond to me, and did so angrily. Throughout this period, I had held out hope that he might do the right thing and fulfill his promise to me, or at least come up with some other way to make things right. But he did not.

In general, I live by the rule that people are basically good. So when I run into a situation like this, I lose a bit of faith in humanity. Good people don't run from their mistakes, they don't make promises they have no intention of keeping, they don't rage at their customers, and they don't disparage the people who work for them. Sadly, Don Dowling was irresponsible, angry and dishonest, and I don't advise anyone hiring him or his firm.

Lisa S.

I originally thought I would be writing a very different review. I had a leak in my kitchen sink faucet on a Sunday, and of the handful of plumbers that I called, Don Dowling Plumbing was the only one that answered. They were able to send someone over a little more than an hour and a half later. The plumber who came to my house was in contact with Don by phone about the situation. He said I would need a new faucet and here's where things went awry. When the plumber told me the rather steep price for the faucet itself, I said I could run down to Home Depot and get one while he was removing the old one. He said that the ones from Home Depot are not made as well as the ones from their plumbing supplier. He said they might look the same on the outside but that the internal materials are better on the ones they provide. Since I had once heard something similar about Home Depot's power tools and because I like to think people are basically honest, I was inclined to believe him and paid a rather hefty bill in order to get a good quality product installed. (I didn't begrudge the high labor charge, as it was a Sunday.) As it happened, the plumber left the box for the faucet in the trash, and I noticed it had an SKU sticker on it. Since, unlike UPCs which are the same on a product no matter where it is sold, SKUs are unique for each retailer, I decided to use Google to see who this good plumbing supplier was. Lo and behold, it was HOME DEPOT! The sticker even had the Dept, Aisle and Bay numbers on it. I feel immensely hoodwinked as I was charged $140 more than the Home Depot price. If a plumber wants to charge a modest convenience fee for supplying a fixture, I can understand, but the amount they added on was almost 1 1/2 times the actual price and more importantly, the fixture came from the store whose quality they disparaged. Just doesn't seem ethical.

Jason G.

He is a cheat. Stay far far way from this guy. He is our neighbor and scammed us out of thousands. Charging us for multiple bogus service calls. Avoiding the question when asked how much the project would cost. He charges us thousands for something that should have cost a few hundred dollars. Very difficult to deal with would not go down on price. So much for being a good neighbor.

Rusty W.

Great experience. My mom's radiators started leaking water all over the house (the boiler had become over-filled). I'm out of town, so I called Don Dowling. I got his voicemail, but the voicemail gives a cell number. I called that and got him immediately. He was friendly, professional and considerate despite that fact that he was in the car leaving town for the weekend. He had someone at the house within 45 minutes who identified and fixed the problem (drained the boilers, checked obvious places for leaks and broken seals). He suggested that we not replace the valves because it might have been human error rather than a bad valve. But that if it happened again, we should assume one or more valves had failed and replace them.It happened again a week later. He came back promptly and we had him replace the valves.

Both Don and the on-site plumber were professional, competent, responsive, and seemed to be personally invested in doing a good job. And the price was perfectly reasonable based on what we've paid to other plumbers in similar situations. I don't know what else I could expect from a service provider.