A plumber who answers at 2am — and charges 2am the same as Tuesday.

Old tank died on a Friday afternoon. New one was in Saturday morning and they hauled the old one away. The quote matched the final bill to the penny, which after my last plumber felt remarkable.

Third plumber I called and the first one who actually put a camera down the line. Roots at a joint about twenty feet out. He showed me the screen, spot-repaired it, and did not try to sell me a whole new lateral.

Water bill had doubled and nothing inside was wet. They found it in the yard line, about sixty feet from the house, and opened one hole instead of trenching the whole run.

Pipe let go at eleven at night. A real person answered, talked me through finding the shutoff while I was panicking, and had somebody here by midnight. No extra charge for the hour, which I did not expect.

Nobody told us the tankless needed descaling when we bought the house. Five years of hard water later it had basically stopped. They flushed it, explained the annual thing, and it has been fine since.

Same outfit my father used in the nineties. Repiped the whole house in four days and we had water every single night. Still on time, still fair, still explaining things instead of talking down.