Find Nearby Plumbers In Columbia, South Carolina

The Purple Plumber demonstrates strong technical competence and reliable project completion, with consistent praise for timely work and fair pricing across multiple reviews. However, professionalism scores are significantly dragged down by a detailed 1-star review describing the owner as angry, impatient, and unprofessional in customer interactions, which directly contradicts positive reviews praising his demeanor. The business appears to have experienced ownership or staffing changes, creating inconsistency in service quality. While pricing and completion metrics are solid, the severe professionalism concerns from a recent review substantially impact overall trustworthiness.

• CRITICAL: Significant contradiction between reviews — three 5-star reviews praise professionalism and demeanor, while one detailed 1-star review (dated 2020-12-09) describes the owner as angry, grumpy, and unprofessional. This suggests either a dramatic change in service quality or inconsistent customer experience.
• RECENCY CONCERN: Most reviews are from 2015–2020 (4+ years old). Only one review is from 2023. Current service quality cannot be reliably assessed with this age distribution.
• BUSINESS TRANSITION: Review from 2020-12-20 mentions the owner was considering selling or retiring, and the 2020-12-09 review references a replacement plumber covering during absences. Unclear if the business is still operating under the original owner or if ownership has changed.
• PROFESSIONALISM VOLATILITY: The 1-star review is highly specific and detailed (payment disputes, refusal to work on certain equipment, angry demeanor), suggesting a genuine negative experience rather than a fake review. This creates high variance in professionalism scoring.

This score should be treated with caution due to extreme inconsistency in professionalism ratings, significant review age (most 4+ years old), and unclear current business status. The WW Score of 68.3 reflects strong technical and pricing fundamentals undermined by serious interpersonal concerns documented in a detailed recent review. Recommend contacting the business directly to verify current ownership and recent service quality before engaging.

Ritz Plumbing shows significant internal inconsistency across its review history. Recent reviews (2025) demonstrate strong professionalism, responsiveness, and technical competence, with multiple mentions of same-day service and quality workmanship. However, pricing emerges as a critical weakness, with numerous documented complaints of inflated quotes, aggressive upselling, and bait-and-switch tactics. Project completion is hampered by documented no-shows and incomplete callbacks. The company's acquisition of Lucas Plumbing and subsequent rebranding without disclosure created substantial customer trust issues, with many older reviews (2017-2018) explicitly warning of deceptive practices and commission-based employee incentives driving unnecessary repairs.

• MAJOR: Ownership transition from Lucas Plumbing to Ritz Plumbing (2017) created widespread customer deception—company did not disclose the change, leading to systematic trust violations and accusations of bait-and-switch tactics.
• PRICING PATTERN: Consistent pattern of inflated initial quotes followed by pressure tactics, financing offers, and scare tactics to justify expensive work. Multiple reviews document quotes 3-10x higher than competitors for identical jobs.
• COMMISSION-BASED INCENTIVES: Multiple reviews explicitly state employees are paid by commission, creating systemic incentive to oversell repairs and recommend unnecessary work.
• NO-SHOW PATTERN: Documented instances of scheduled appointments with no-shows and no callbacks, particularly in 2014-2017 period and one 2025 incident.
• QUALITY INCONSISTENCY: While recent reviews praise workmanship, older reviews document incomplete work, leaks after repair, and code violations requiring city inspector intervention.
• RECENCY BIAS: Recent reviews (2025, 2024) are predominantly 5-star with specific praise; older reviews (2017-2018) are predominantly 1-star with detailed complaints. This temporal split suggests either genuine operational improvement or potential review manipulation.
• FAKE REVIEW RISK: Some recent 5-star reviews lack specificity and detail (e.g., 'Excellent staff,' 'unknown,' empty text fields with 5-star ratings). However, most recent reviews contain sufficient detail to appear authentic.
• EMPLOYEE TURNOVER: Multiple reviews reference original Lucas Plumbing employees leaving after acquisition, suggesting internal instability.

This WW Score should be treated with CAUTION. While recent performance metrics appear strong, the company's documented history of deceptive practices (ownership concealment, aggressive upselling, commission-based incentives) and the stark temporal divide between positive recent reviews and negative historical reviews create significant reliability concerns. The score reflects current data but does not fully capture systemic trust and pricing integrity issues that persist in customer complaints. Customers should independently verify pricing against multiple competitors before engaging this company.

This contractor's review profile is heavily split between a cluster of older positive reviews (2010–2016) and more recent, detailed negative reviews (2019, 2024) that raise serious concerns. The 2024 review is particularly damaging, alleging unlicensed workers, parts installed incorrectly, no permits pulled, price gouging on parts, and unprofessional conduct by the owner on-site. Pricing is the weakest dimension, with two separate reviewers explicitly calling out significant overcharging — one citing a $459 bill for roughly $15–$20 in parts, and another alleging hundreds of dollars charged for a $20 part. Project completion scores moderately because while callbacks were honored in several cases, multiple reviews describe work that required return visits to fix errors. Professionalism and experience scores are dragged down substantially by the 2024 and 2019 accounts, which directly contradict the praise found in older reviews.

• RECENCY CONCERN: The majority of positive reviews are from 2010–2016, making them 8–14 years old. The two most recent substantive reviews (2019, 2024) are both 1-star and contain serious allegations. The business's current quality may be significantly worse than the older positive reviews suggest.
• FAKE REVIEW SUSPICION — LOW LEVEL: Two reviews contain only the text 'unknown' with 5-star ratings and no detail (2015, 2016). These provide no usable data and may be placeholder or manipulated entries.
• SERIOUS ALLEGATION — 2024 REVIEW: Reviewer alleges unlicensed workers performing work, no permits pulled for excavation, parts installed backwards or omitted entirely, price gouging on parts, and the owner verbally abusing employees in front of the customer. These are not minor complaints.
• SERIOUS ALLEGATION — PRICE GOUGING: Two independent reviewers in different years (2019, 2024) explicitly describe being charged dramatically above market rate for parts, suggesting a possible pattern of deceptive pricing practices.
• PATTERN — BLAME SHIFTING: Both the 2024 reviewer and the 2013 reviewer (minor issue) note that the company pushed blame onto the customer or a fired employee rather than accepting responsibility.
• UNLICENSED WORK ALLEGATION: The 2024 reviewer states that only the owner holds a license and that unlicensed employees performed the actual work. If accurate, this is a legal and safety concern that significantly undermines the experience score.
• NOTE: Two reviews appear to reference HVAC and electrical work rather than plumbing, suggesting this may be a multi-trade company or that some reviews may belong to a similarly named entity. Scores have been calculated across all reviews as provided.

This WW Score should be treated with caution — while the volume of reviews is sufficient for calculation, the stark divide between old positive reviews and recent serious negative reviews, combined with allegations of unlicensed work, price gouging, and permit violations, means the score likely overstates current service quality.

Red Dragon's reviews present a mixed picture across a very small sample. Positive reviews highlight a technician (Kevin) who is punctual, communicative, thorough, and technically competent, with one reviewer specifically praising his honest and detailed explanations. However, a detailed 1-star review describes a serious failure in professionalism and project completion — technicians who refused to work without extra payment, attempted to upsell unnecessary services, and ultimately left the job unfinished, with a subsequent plumber completing the same task in 45 minutes. This single negative review carries significant weight given the small review pool and directly contradicts the positive experiences described elsewhere. Pricing feedback is limited but leans positive, with one reviewer calling the contractor reasonably priced.

• VERY SMALL SAMPLE: Only 5 reviews total, spanning 2012–2020. This is insufficient for high-confidence scoring and the WW Score should be treated as indicative only.
• RECENCY CONCERN: All reviews are older than 3 years (most recent is April 2020), with several dating back to 2012–2016. Current performance cannot be reliably inferred from this data.
• ONE REVIEW IS UNUSABLE: The review dated 2016-03-02 ('Waiting for WJA construction to come and repair problem. Meantime no water') references a different company (WJA construction), contains no evaluative content about Red Dragon, and was excluded from scoring.
• SINGLE SEVERE NEGATIVE: The 1-star review is highly detailed and credible, describing specific behaviors (refusing to work, demanding tree removal, leaving job incomplete). This materially drags down project completion and professionalism scores and cannot be dismissed.
• POSSIBLE INCONSISTENCY IN SERVICE QUALITY: The contrast between the detailed positive review (Kevin) and the detailed negative review suggests quality may be technician-dependent rather than consistently company-wide.

This WW Score is based on only 4 usable reviews spanning nearly a decade, with no reviews from the past three years, making it LOW reliability — the score should not be used as a definitive indicator of current contractor quality.

Brasington Heating & Air receives a deeply mixed record across all four dimensions. Professionalism is heavily dragged down by repeated no-shows, missed appointments without callbacks, a technician who disabled a unit without informing the customer, and a customer service representative who said she would be 'glad' to cancel a long-standing contract — though a handful of positive reviews do praise courteous and timely technicians. Pricing is the weakest dimension, with multiple reviewers explicitly calling out excessive charges, a $375 seal replacement, overpriced HVAC quotes that were significantly undercut by competitors, billing discrepancies, and allegations of deceptive financing practices. Project completion is mixed: some jobs were completed cleanly and on time, but there are documented cases of wrong equipment being delivered, work left unfinished, gas not being turned back on, a code-violating drain installation, and a subcontractor who failed to show. Experience scores modestly above average due to several reviewers praising skilled and knowledgeable technicians, but is offset by a case where a technician missed a simple capacitor fix and recommended full unit replacement, and another involving a code-violating installation that required a third party to correct.

• Two reviews dated 2022-03-31 and 2022-04-01 appear to be written by the same person about the same incident (elderly widow charged $375 for a toilet seal). Nearly identical content and phrasing. These were counted as two separate reviews but represent a single experience — scores adjusted conservatively.
• The review dated 2012-07-16 contains only 'AS above.' with no usable content and was excluded from scoring.
• The review dated 2017-07-17 contains only vague negative adjectives ('Poorly and horrible and lousy and untrustworthy') with no specifics — treated as a sentiment signal only, not scored on individual dimensions.
• The majority of reviews are older than 12 months relative to a current date, with only 2 reviews from 2022–2023. Most data is from 2008–2019. Recency weighting significantly limits confidence in current performance.
• Several positive reviews (2008–2013 range) are brief and generic, though most contain enough specific detail to be considered credible.
• No fake review pattern detected beyond the duplicate incident noted above.

This WW Score is based on a reasonable volume of reviews (29) with high mention counts across all dimensions, but the overwhelming majority of reviews are more than 5 years old, and the pattern of negative experiences — particularly around pricing transparency and professionalism — is consistent and specific enough to be treated as credible, making this score a moderately reliable but temporally limited assessment of the contractor's performance.

Crew Plumbing presents a deeply mixed picture across all dimensions. On professionalism, two older positive reviews praise communication and politeness, but a serious 2023 incident involving a contractor photographing a customer's property and making fraud accusations after only 24 hours of non-payment significantly drags the score down. Pricing is a notable weak point, with two separate reviewers explicitly stating they were overcharged — one calling it three times the normal rate — while one reviewer praised the fair pricing, creating a conflicted signal. Project completion scores moderately as most reviewers confirm the work was actually finished, but timeliness and follow-through concerns exist. Experience scores are modest given limited explicit mentions of technical skill, with positive comments about qualified workmanship offset by the overall pattern of complaints.

• RECENCY WARNING: Three of five reviews are from 2015–2016, making them 8–10 years old. Only one review is from the past 12 months (2023). The business's current quality and conduct may differ significantly from older reviews.
• SERIOUS CONDUCT FLAG: The 2023 review (most recent) describes alarming contractor behavior — arriving at a customer's home after hours, photographing property and vehicle tags, and accusing the customer of fraud within approximately 24 hours of non-payment during a documented medical emergency. This is the most recent data point and carries elevated weight.
• PRICING CONCERN: Two independent reviewers from different years (2019 and 2023) explicitly complained about excessive pricing. One consulted another plumber who confirmed overcharging. This is a consistent pattern, not an isolated complaint.
• LOW REVIEW VOLUME: Only 5 reviews total span nearly a decade. This is insufficient to draw reliable conclusions about consistent business practices. Score confidence is inherently limited.
• NO FAKE REVIEW PATTERN DETECTED: Reviews vary in tone, detail level, rating, and date. No suspicious uniformity was identified.

This WW Score should be treated with LOW trust — the extremely small review sample (5 reviews over 9 years), the heavy age skew toward outdated reviews, and the presence of a serious recent misconduct allegation make it impossible to reliably characterize this contractor's current performance.