How to check a plumber's reviews and complaints in Houston

Reviews on Google and other sites are useful, but they are easy to misread. Use them to find patterns, then confirm what matters in official records.

• Sort by newest. A company can change owners, staff or subcontractors. Reviews from the last year say more than the all-time average.
• Read the one and two star reviews. Look for repeated themes such as no-shows, surprise charges, pressure to replace instead of repair, or warranty disputes. One angry review is noise. The same complaint five times is a pattern.
• Look for specifics. Useful reviews mention the job, the price, the part replaced or how a problem was handled. A burst of short five-star reviews posted within a few days is a reason for caution.
• Check that the review fits. Reviews that describe a different service, a different city or a different company name may not be about the business you are calling.
• Read the replies. A calm, specific response from the owner to a complaint is a good sign. Blame, threats or no response at all are not.
• Search the name with the word complaint. A search for the company name together with words such as complaint or scam can turn up problems that a star rating hides.

1. Search the license. Look up the individual plumber and the company's Responsible Master Plumber in the Texas plumbing license search, which lets you search by name, license number, city or county.
2. Ask to see it. Texas law requires license holders to carry the license on their person while doing plumbing work, so you can ask the plumber at your door to show it and compare the name with the search result.
3. Ask who pulls the permit. Inside the City of Houston, permits for water heaters, fixtures, gas connections and sewer connections are obtained by a registered master plumber. Ask whose name will be on the permit.

The BBB suggests researching plumbers on BBB.org and reading customer reviews, getting detailed written estimates from several plumbers and checking that the company is licensed and properly insured. Read how the company answered each complaint, not only the rating.

A company that does the kind of job you need should be able to point to recent, similar work. Ask for the permit number on a recent similar job and whether it passed inspection. A passed inspection says more about the quality of the work than a star rating.

The Texas Department of Insurance guide to avoiding contracting scams warns that scammers may try to get you to sign a contract by calling it an estimate, that a contract assigning your entire insurance payment to the contractor can cost you control of the claim, and that a contractor offering to waive your insurance deductible is breaking the law. Plumbing adds a few warning signs of its own:

• a sewer replacement proposed without camera footage you can watch;
• a quote to reroute the whole house for a slab leak that has not been located;
• no permit for a water heater or sewer job inside a city that requires one;
• a license number that does not match the person's name in the state search.

Start by putting the problem in writing to the company, with photos, the contract and the invoice. If that does not resolve it, the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners accepts complaints through a General Complaint Form on its File a Complaint page; the board licenses plumbers under Chapter 1301 of the Texas Occupations Code. For billing or sales practices, you can also file a consumer complaint with the Texas Attorney General. The Attorney General's office says it cannot give you legal advice and that complaints are reviewed to help it monitor consumer protection issues, so it is not a substitute for a lawyer in a contract dispute.

For help choosing in the first place, see our guide on how to choose a plumber in Houston.

Plumber Houston Pros is an independent homeowner information website, not a contractor. We publish no reviews, star ratings, testimonials or customer counts, we never buy or write reviews, and we will not pay anyone for a review. The contractors listed on this site are listed without payment and without a rating, so the list is not a review or a ranking. Check each one with the steps on this page.

The Federal Trade Commission's Trade Regulation Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials was published in the Federal Register on August 22, 2024 (89 FR 68034) and took effect on October 21, 2024. It is codified at 16 CFR Part 465 and prohibits fake reviews and testimonials (section 465.2), buying positive or negative reviews (section 465.4), undisclosed insider reviews (section 465.5), company-controlled websites that falsely present themselves as independent review sources (section 465.6), certain kinds of review suppression (section 465.7) and fake indicators of social media influence (section 465.8).