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Roto-Rooter Repair Scam Class Action Lawsuit
By Sarah Pierce
A class action lawsuit filed in Minnesota claims Roto-Rooter is running a sewer line repair scam in which it lies to homeowners about the severity of their plumbing problem in order to charge them unnecessary repairs or replacements costing thousands of dollars.“This case arises out of Defendant’s common pattern and practice of systematically pressuring homeowners into unnecessary repair jobs by misleading them into thinking they had a much greater plumbing problem than they actually did,” the Roto-Rooter class action lawsuit states. “Defendant preyed on the desperation and inexpertness of consumers seeking emergency plumbing services — often homeowners suffering from the sudden complete loss of water use in their residences — to charge exorbitant sums.”
The lawsuit cites an investigative article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that uncovered numerous homeowners who were told by Roto-Rooter they needed to spend as much as $15,000 to repair or replace their sewer lines, despite plumbers from other companies telling the homeowners the damage “was grossly exaggerated.”
“Roto-Rooter even tried to charge a homeowner $3,600 to repair a water line its own workers broke,” states the article quoted in the lawsuit.
The class action lawsuit claims the main problem is that Roto-Rooter mainline technicians are required to refer a fixed percentage of all jobs to have a camera inspection and excavation to diagnose and fix the problem. If the camera and excavator team sell excavation services, the mainline technician receives a referral fee.
“Because Roto-Rooter’s focus is to increase the excavation business, it sets quotas for mainline technicians to refer lines to excavation teams whether the repairs were necessary or not,” the Roto-Rooter scam class action lawsuit states.
The Roto-Rooter class action lawsuit is brought on behalf of all persons or entities located within Minnesota who, since May 17, 2005, purchased a ticketed camera job, a mainline excavation service, or both, from Roto-Rooter.
A copy of the Roto-Rooter Repair Scam Class Action Lawsuit can be read here.
The case is Dawn Mills, et al. v. Roto-Rooter Services Company, U.S. District Court, State of Minnesota, County of Hennepin.
Updated November 21st, 2011
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47 thoughts onRoto-Rooter Repair Scam Class Action Lawsuit
Know: Corporate Office is heavily monitoring and all review sites – Google, Yelp, etc. so that gives them a false amount of positive reviews as well as they actively remove legit negative reviews. I got into with them at corporate about this. So if you are trying to understand if they are worth it or not the information/reviews are heavily positive.
My experience is terrible – and each interaction – worse.
My experience was almost identical as above. Sink was clogged and I was told it was a sewer line issue. Camera man was called spent hours here for sink to still be clogged the next morning. Was charged over $1000 …. very unfortunate scammers
Currently going through the same problem with this company, being charge for work that was never done.
Don’t even know where to start! They ripped off my wife for 20,000 bucks To unclog a pipe, its still clogged. do not call ro-to rooter
I have a monstrosity in my front yard for 10 thousand dollars and the issue is not fixed. RotoRooter of Sanford has scammed me.
Dec 23′ our toilet decided to fill for several hours, getting water to every square inch of my home. Rotorooter originally said it would cost somewhere in the vein of 60k just for mitigation. I had a panic attack and signed the iPad contract after being told, “If you don’t sign this then your house will just rot and your INS won’t pay to fix it at all.” I said at the beginning there would be no way I could afford this. My insurance accepted the claim. While my ins was waiting for third party estimate we started getting the collections threats through multiple paths of communications. For two months on a weekly basis we were getting calls, emails, letters. My insurance had accepted the claim and has paid 48k of the 76k bill, because that’s what the third party reviewer said was fair and reasonable. Still receiving threats, my ins company has sent out a demand saying that rotorooter must get a third party estimate and both must go before a judge because since the INS accepted the claim, they never legally could chase us for the money. So now I’m curious if I can go after them for pain and suffering. Being harassed for two whole months about being sent to collections when they couldn’t legally do that?? And how many people fall prey to the scam? It’s so sad this is happening and so unfair. That’s financial future ruining money, collections for 28k. Pah.
I had rotor rooter out to clean the main line and the tried to sell me on getting the main line replaced when I had no previous issues. Minneapolis Star Tribune had an article about how the have been scamming people in Minnesota