The Plumbers.

K, I get home Monday after work and my husband tells me there's a leak in the basement. I go down and it appears that the leak is coming from one of the two bathrooms upstairs because the water is coming from directly beneath. I go up to check to see if there is any leaking from the bathrooms, but don't find anything. So, I call our home warranty company. We have a home warranty that we insisted the seller supply us when we bought the house, and we have subsequently renewed it every year to try and make sure we are always covered for whatever happens to our house. For the most part, between your home insurance and the home warranty, nearly every repair gets covered in some form. Anyway, I call the home warranty people to tell them that there's water leaking into the basement, but we can't determine the origin. Well, yesterday the plumber shows up and I show him where the water is leaking and he goes up to check the bathrooms. He runs the water in the sink in our half-bath, which is directly above the basement and we notice water starts leaking, so it's pinned down to that sink. He goes up and I notice water coming from under the vanity, but that there's still no water directly beneath the sink from the pipes. He decides it's time to tear up the wall because the leak must be coming from behind the wall. He pulls out the vanity, cuts open my wall but still can't find the leak. By this time his boss has shown up and they go check the other bathroom again, climb up into the attic, run water directly through the pipe in the half-bath, but can't make it leak in the basement again. So the boss asks me to tell him exactly what happened and I dutifully explain everything EXACTLY as it happened. I tell him the other plumber got leakage when he first ran the sink but before he ripped out the sink. The boss goes and looks at the basin, now sitting in my kitchen and notices that it's cracked at the drain. So that's why it leaked when the sink was still hooked up but didn't when the sink was taken off. Anyway, he calls the warranty company and they tell him the sink itself is not a covered item, which I knew. But I say what about the labor to replace the sink once I get a new one, and what about fixing the big hole in my wall? The plumber says the warranty company says that's not covered and if he comes out to reconnect the sink, that's its own independent visit. As far as the wall goes, I've got to call the company back and run it as a new service request. I said if you had come here and it was the faucet that had been leaking and you fixed it, that labor would have been covered. How is the labor involved (aka reattaching the sink) in fixing this leak any different? He says, "I understand, but you've got to talk to the warranty company." And then I said, "I've given you fifty dollars, you're not leaving my house until something is fixed." He said, "You got a lot of work for that fifty dollars." And then I said, "Yeah, which resulted in a hole in my wall." So I made them go up and fix the dripping faucets in my sink and tub upstairs. They were good sports about the whole thing, they weren't rude or anything, but you know how it goes.

After they leave, I call the warranty company again to ask who is going to fix my wall. As it turns out, surprisingly, they will cover the cost of fixing my wall and I won't have to pay another deductible. However, when I ask about them covering the labor to reinstall my sink, the girl starts to hem and haw. I point out that given the cause of the leak, they shouldn't have started pulling the vanity apart and busting out my wall in the first place. Obviously, the guy didn't check the sink enough before going to the power tools, which , hey, we all make mistakes, it doesn't mean he's a bad plumber, but I was taught when you make a mistake, you fix it. The warranty girl said they would talk to the plumber and encourage them to reattach the new sink without charge since it basically was their mistake for taking it out. I asked what happens if they don't do that? She responded, "Well, uh, then you'll have to have someone else come out and pay for it." I said, "That's not cool." Anyway, I'm still waiting to hear back from the warranty company to see how the whole deal is going to go down, but if I have to pay for anything other than the new sink, I am not going to be pleased. In fact, I'll be pretty angry. I will be very, very angry at the American Home Shield company for not being willing to take care of the mistakes made by their subcontractors, which translates into them not taking of their own mistakes. I'll keep you updated as the situation unfolds.