James Plumbing & Heating

Chris W.

I scheduled an appointment for an estimate to replace a water heater. They called me at the time of the appointment and said they needed to reschedule. We rescheduled to a later time. I went back to work and came back in the afternoon for the appointment. I waited for an hour, and nobody showed up. I called them twice, and finally got someone who said they would look into it. She called me back half an hour later and said ""he's on his way"". I guess he wasn't on his way, though, because it was another hour and a half before I finally got a call saying he was at the house.

I understand that plumbers are busy, and that they deal with lots of plumbing emergencies, but if you can't bother to pick up the phone to tell your customer that you're not going to make your appointment, or if you lie to them about being ""on the way"", you really don't deserve their business. This company is disrespectful and dishonest.

Todd N.

My advice is to seek a different Professional Service then High Desert Heating and Cooling. My experience with them has been troublesome. First of all they use deceptive internet marketing because I used Google to get me the phone number for a different company and instead the phone number for High Desert came up and was called. Due to the amount of background noise from the person who answered the call I could not hear that it was not the company I had intended to call. The quality of the work completed at my residence was very good. However, the office management is extremely poor. The credit card charge was done over the phone with an office person and the charge came up to the owner's personal name not the company High Desert Heating and Plumbing. Not exactly a professional setup. In the three-plus weeks since then I have not received a receipt by email even after three more phone calls asking for it. On the 4th phone call they told me it could not send it out because they needed information from me regarding the services rendered. This is really odd. They don't even know what they did for me but they charged me for it. The owner had to call me and ask what is done so he could then relay that to his office person to have an invoice formally made up. In the meantime I have arrived at the address for this company and it is the private home of the owner. Evidently their business is struggling and why they cannot afford a business office location. So now after a 35 minute wait at the owners home office I have finally been handed the receipt that I needed. This has taken me a total of about an hour of my time in the past 3 weeks to get a simple receipt.

garrett w.

1 year later and still working great. I am writing this review because I looked at the thermometer and thought of High Deserts great work. They were fast and installed my system exactly as I specified. This winter when my boiler broke I used this mini split system to heat my house for a week while I waited for another company to repair the boiler. It was a life saver. Now that its summer my house is cool and perfect. Who needs to go outside when its 96 degrees out there. Summers in my home used to be in the 100's now my house is as cool as I want. Thank you High desert...

Kerry K.

When I finally had had it with my main drain line between the house and the street backing up, I contacted several local plumbing services, and Omar gave me the lowest price with the earliest start time. I was incredulous when he said his team would dig the lines without killing any vegetation or bringing in any heavy equipment. Like some sort of superhuman beings, these very polite and courteous men went to it working nearly every minute they were there, hand-digging for hours. Their job was further complicated by the markings made by another contractor who said he had ""videoed"" the line. His markings were completely wrong, so Omar's crew simply re-routed the line, making the job take an additional day. For this Omar charged a tiny amount over the original estimate, but it was a bargain at that. Although it did become necessary to take out two large cactus plants (because of the erroneous info from another company), his crew of heroes, some without gloves of any kind, dug up and loaded them into a pickup and hauled them away. I was astonished at their professionalism and, frankly, courage. It has been about six weeks -- so far, so good. It is great to use water without fear of yet another drain back-up, and it only took Omar and his crew two days to change my life!

Jill W.

At the best this company is totally incompetent, at the worst they tried to scam me.

My carbon monoxide detector went off in the middle of the night and I tried a couple other companies to come out but none were available that same day so I called High Desert Air Conditioning and Heating based on the reviews here on Yelp. My boiler was also leaking a small amount of water, which I did not realize until the CO meter went off.

Omar came out and measured the CO and it was running at 17 ppm based on his meter. He told me that my boiler, which is two years old, was corroded with mineral deposits from the hard water in Santa Fe and needed to be replaced. He said that the corrosion/deposits were because I had not ""flushed"" my boiler regularly and because I did not have a water softener. He told me I needed to replace my boiler and install a water softener. He also told me I needed a new water heater, as evidenced by a small amount of rust on the top of my water heater. At this point I was a little wary, as I've lived in multiple houses in Santa Fe and looked at many houses before I bought this one and none had water softeners. Also, it did not seem realistic that enough hard water deposits could build up that my boiler would last only two years. He then went on to tell me that he would ""do me a favor"" and bring my boiler into the warehouse to see if it was still under warranty. If it was under warranty, I wouldn't have to buy a new one! When I told him I wanted to think about it and get a second opinion, he kept insisting that he take the boiler to the warehouse and that he was doing this as a favor to me - that no one else would do this, they would just give me a quote for a new boiler. In my experience, things are either under warranty or not - you give the company a product serial number and they tell you if its under warranty. I've never heard of having to bring something in to see if it is under warranty. Anyway, he charged me $200 for the CO reading and insisted he disconnect my gas and take apart the pipes on the boiler because he needed to ""red tag"" the boiler because of the CO issue. I let him do that. After he left, I looked up in the owner's manual what the required maintenance for the boiler is and it did not mention ""flushing"" the boiler.

Then I called another company, who I trust and usually use, but was unavailable that day. They came out the next day and found that when Omar had disconnected the pipes he had taken $55 worth parts. They fixed the leaky pipe by changing out a fitting and did not detect any CO in the boiler/hot water closet. They said that a boiler doesn't require ""flushing"" and that my hot water heater was just fine and I don't need a water softener unless I want to get one. They charged me $220 fix the problem. Omar charged me $200 to steal $55 worth of parts.

At the best it seems like this person is totally incompetent and a thief, at the worst it seems like a total scam - what was he going to do with my boiler? Sell it back to me as new? Sell it to someone else? Either way, you should be wary of this company.

Jenni G.

I just love this company always so diligent with their work and they are so friendly. I had an issue with my radiant unit on thanksgiving and they where so nice to come out that same day to fix it. I highly recommend High Desert I support our local small business!

Kevin G.

The customer service and quality of this company is terrible. Omar ran a condensation line from the AC on the roof to my bathroom. He did not tie the line into the drain system. He did however set the AC to 64 degrees when it was 94 outside and then left the job site without even telling the line was not connected.

This produced a lot of condensation which just ran out onto my bathroom floor and vanity. He never apologized or took any responsibility,

He also did a very poor job of installing our ERV leaving the control panel wired up with the wires exposed laying on the unit.

I would advise avoiding this firm at all costs.

Marie J.

If I could give a zero, I would. Had a serious sewage back flow into 2 bathrooms. Called Roto-Rooter. Got a call from a guy named Santiago who showed up at my house with his ""camera"" which he never plugged in nor was there a video display. He never once tried to snake the evacuation pipe. After over an hour he said the pipe would need to be dug up (he still never snaked it) and he would be back later in the evening with a helper - he never showed, but did forget his ""camera"". He returned at 7am Sunday morning to pick up the forgotten camera saying he had an emergency in Los Alamos (wait... I have two sewage filled bathrooms - I'm not an emergency?) took off promising to return by 11am and that was the last I heard from Santiago. Called another local company (TLC) got a call back in 20 minutes and the guy was here in under an hour. He snaked the pipe and was done in under 10 minutes. Oh... and the final cost was less than 1/2 of what Roto-Rooter quoted.

Justin F.

We hired Roto Rooter Santa Fe to travel here to Taos. They were three hours past the arrival time window. They asserted they found the leak in a main water line. A full day on a backhoe did not discover any leak or water in this area. The equipment relied on my supplying a heavy metal bar to pierce the ground. The equipment they had was not able to do this. I was not provided with a price before services except for travel mileage.

Daniel D.

I have been calling the 24/7 number since 7:30 am, it is now noon on a Saturday. No one answers, no way to leave a message. Completed the online appointment request. No email, phone call or text acknowledgement. As far as I am concerned I will not be contacting Roto-Rooter again.