Elite Rooter Santa Barbara

Gretchen S.

people be aware of this company price gauging you. the technician was here for less than an hour to fix a pipe and they charged us an exorbitant price. never do business with them again

Sayed K.

Had a leak on hot line to the sink. JR came and said the whole house had to be repiped for $22, 850. And he said ."" Don't worry; your insurance will pay for it. I was desperate and accepted the offer and naively paid $850 in advance. He stated the work immediately and fist thing he did was to remove my water heater that left me with no hot water. Later on, I did some research and found out that it was far too expensive and the insurance would not pay for it. The next day he demanded more money, but I refused to pay. So he stopped the work and left in the cold for a week until I found the honest Jim Lee of Tectonic.

Sayed 11/25/2023

Jacqui C.

Called for a clog. Plumber came and tried to snake the clog, but couldn't. Said they needed to drain the septic to find the issue, so they drained the one septic tank. THEY CHARGED US DOUBLE THE COST OF A SEPTIC DRAIN BECUAUSE THEY DRAINED THE SINGLE TANK OUT OF TWO PORTS. Turns out, it was just a clog, and they successfully snaked it clear with a second attempt. Total bill for clearing a simple clog: $2,500.

When my roommate discussed with the plumber about charging us double the cost of draining a septic, he THREATENED MY ROOMMATE WITH PHYSICAL VIOLENCE before eventually agreeing with us that we should only be charged the cost of draining one septic tank. It's been two months, and the $825 that they agreed to reimburse us has not been reimbursed. We call every couple days, where we are connected with a call center that tells us the issue will be passed on, and then nothing happens

If I could give this business 0 stars, I would. It's a literal scam.

Brady K.

Called to have an emergency bid on the demo/removal of an old water heater and separate holding tank, and installation of a new in-line tankless system. I'll give them credit for responding quickly for the estimate, but thats about the only positive I saw in working with them. We executed 4 bids on the project, that should have ran around 5k all in... their's was almost 13k, and it came with a lot of talk about ""pencil sharpening"" and getting us a really good number. The reason I'm taking the time to write a review is because their bid was so egregious for the work that was scoped. We moved forward with another local plumber that completed the work in one day and for about 30% of Elite's bid. I can only speak to my experience here, but the pricing appears to be inflated and overly opportunistic, especially for residential customers that may have less experience working with plumbers... even for an emergency service. I'd recommend shopping around before pulling the trigger with this company.

John C.

Absolutely do not hire these guys. Last month I hired them after seeing they honor military discounts. We had a drain in the backyard that got backed up. The person on the other end of the phone at dispatch said they would apply the military discount. My 20 year old daughter remained at the house to receive the workmen as we had to be at work. I was called by a team member who told me there were excessive rocks in the drain and they would need to excavate the drain at an approximate cost of $6500. I told them I could not afford that, could you just snake and blast it. They did and pulled a 3 foot molding of twigs from the drain. (So they never needed to excavate in the first place). Unbeknown to me at that moment, my daughter was then given a $1500 bill for the 3 hours of work which she signed, then she said, after they got in the truck that they did not apply the military discount. They said to call in the morning to get them to apply. THEY DID NOT EVEN GIVE HER A RECEIPT. I called several times to speak with the manager, Rachel to ask about why they did not apply the discount. Rachel never called back. When I called again, I asked for the name of the owner. Despite my being very kind on every single call, the receptionist hung up on me when I asked that question. I researched the owner's name myself, called several times to speak with the him--never a reply. Not sure if he ever got the message so I wrote him a letter. Again, never a reply. In the end, NEVER A DISCOUNT AS PROMISED, NEVER A RECEIPT, NEVER A CALL BACK. Elite Rooter, I was very nice and gave you every chance in the book; at this point, I'm not stopping here with just this review.

Natalie N.

The good: they are responsive and can be quick to come out.
The bad: they intentionally misled us about our sewer main in order to upswell services.

We had a root intrusion on our main line, they were able to come out same day, but manually sent a blunted snake down the line. That cost $450. It didn't clear anything we still couldn't use our water. They said that they had to hydrojet and had one that went up to 4000 psi. That cost $1,450The next day they came out, jetted just enough to get a flow through and then said that in order to fully clear it the line needed a full liner. That would be $28,000. They said our main looked really old and pointed to gaps in the clay piping.

At that point we started calling around for second opinions and we're very quickly informed that this was intentional, and that their known in the industry for preying on people and continuing to force them into higher tiers of service. I asked JR about this and and how high of a PSI they ran the jetter at, he said 2000, which confirmed to me that they were intentionally providing poor service to make us pay more.

The second plumber we hired cleared the line with just a snake. The root was completely gone. He video inspected the line and told us the gaps in the piping were fine and intentional. He said there was no reason to line it at all.

I do NOT recommend Elite Rooters.

Mikka P.

We just spent $20k to have our drains cleared and lined last week... the first wknd of ""full use"" (both of us home, laundry, etc) and this happens... thoroughly disgusted and more than furious.

Dasa M.

Wow! So impressed. I had a clocked shower drain and called them because they had good reviews. I thought it was going to take days to come out. They had appointments just a couple hours from my call, even showed up early. Fixed the drain super quickly and it was a great priced. Totally impressed by the experience. Only complaint is that they guys did not have masks when I had requested that they have them. So I gave them extras that I had. They are my go-to from here forward.

Janet S.

We had previously used this company and had a good experience so once our gas line needed replacing we called them again. Needless to say, it was not a good experience the second time. If you as a homeowner have a warranty company, Elite is not the plumbing company to work with. Their pushback and delay in providing us with the requested information needed by our warranty company, which was basic estimate information, was ridiculous and caused a major delay in us following up with the warranty company. This in turn put us in a position of possibly not getting reimbursed at all. Elite was well aware of the urgency in our getting the estimate information to provide but as stated by Elite they do not work with warranty companies hence their delay. Again, if you are a homeowner with a warranty company, DO NOT use Elite.

Henry O.

I Called in the morning and they came within a couple hours (our normal go-to plumber was booked). We had a simple kitchen sink clog so nothing too crazy. Snaked the drain in about 10 min. All in all everything went as we could have hoped and for a good price. Thanks Jose!