There was a time, many moons ago, when we could visit your bathroom or kitchen and almost 100% of the time, easily identify the manufacturer of your faucets. There were a handful of popular manufacturers, with very specific handle styles, along with (quite often) an identifying mark on the faucet body or possibly the valve stem inside.
Fast forward to today...
Enter the internet, stage left. There are now hundreds of faucets available, in thousands of handle styles and finishes. Many manufacturers are sharing faucet bodies and parts and then designing their own trim packages. Others are ordering parts from dozens of different vendors and trim packages from yet dozens others.
It has come to the point that if there is no identifying mark, and you don't have paperwork, we've entered the world of Vegas gamblers; the part locator crap-shoot! Ever play the match game when you were little? Your Mom would only set out a dozen or so cards initially, and as you got better and older, she set out more and more until all the cards were on the table. Bet you didn't always get it right..We don't either.
Hop online sometime to any online re-seller and just look at how many manufacturers are represented. There are thousands. Even some that we have never heard of. Even worse, some manufacturers don't even display a name or logo on their products!
Now check out how may different styles each manufacturer or faucet line has to offer. Now compare the styles. Ever play the 'Find the differences' game? We play it every day. When we can't find them all, the client gets very angry with us.
Yes, I know you're the one living with the faucet that doesn't work or you're watching your money drip down the drain (especially with the cost of water these days), and you've charged "professionals" with the task of correcting the problem, and you're just waiting and waiting and then the wrong parts come; we don't know they're the wrong parts until we waste more of your time trying to get them to work in your faucet. You thought we knew what we were doing. That's your side of the story and you're sticking to it.
Enter our side, stage right. Your faucet is leaking. We come to fix it. The inner workings are not field serviceable. The faucet looks pretty expensive and you want it repaired, not replaced. Your plumber takes pictures and/or measurements, and brings them back to Michelle at the shop. And now the fun begins. Well, in all honesty, it ceased being fun years ago when we realized a roulette wheel had better odds of paying out.
Michelle will proceed to spend whatever time it takes, sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes HOURS trying to match up faucets and repair parts to fix your problem. This is not an exact science. There is no crystal ball we can look into that shows us the parts. It's more like a magic 8-ball that reads out "signs point to NO" or "Outlook not so good". There's also no huge local warehouse that stocks thousands of obscure faucet parts from countless manufacturer's and dozens of countries that we can go to in order to physically play the match game.
More often than not, Michelle will work her magic and manages to locate the correct parts. Sometimes fate steps in to keep her humble and she is unable to match them. Or the parts look similar enough to give them a try. So we schedule another visit to give it a whirl, and if they don't work we have to re-assess, make comparisons and try again.
You think YOU are frustrated by now? Michelle has been paid to do the research, often the parts have already been paid for, our guys and/or girls have been paid to run the trial and error scenario, and now you, the customer, are unhappy. Typically the client hasn't been charged (and won't be until we find a solution). You certainly aren't being charged for all the time that went into the process.
We usually will charge you simply for the repair after the dust has settled. And guess what? If Michelle managed to find the parts at no charge from a manufacturer, we pass that savings on to you!
We try very hard to get it right the first time in order to keep our cost low, and your satisfaction high. Sometimes it is no easy task and now you know why.
--Melissa Cary
