Lowe Plumbing Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc.

We’ve used Lowe for our plumbing for many years thinking that their expensive bills would ensure us ‘you get what you pay for’ in terms of quality of labor and parts. Unfortunately our last time with them was such a disgrace we have since moved on (cheaper bills and better workmanship).
We called them to replace a water heater that was failing after seven years or so (which seems to be what you can expect around these parts with our water’s mineral content). The failing one had been put in by a self-​employed plumber with a heater bought from a local hardware store. $ 1200 later the ‘new’ water heater was installed. Lowes makes you use their own apparently superior water heaters — they won’t install anything you have bought from a hardware store despite them charging ridiculous prices for theirs — and anyone in the business will tell you that despite all the branding you see, there is only one or two companies that actually manufacture water heaters.
Fast forward barely two years, and the water heater fails! We call the company who made the water heater and give the serial number only to find out that it had been sitting around at Lowes plumbing for five years previous to installation. We were told that with stock that old it will certainly degrade and wear out sooner than new stock. Make that a LOT sooner. Despite selling us an old water heater at premium prices, Lowes refused to replace it without charge. The best they would do was not charge for the labor. So $ 600 later, another water heater was installed to last who knows how long. At $ 1800, that’s an expensive water heater installation.
Not to mention the flooding of our finished basement and soaked Persian rugs etc.
So yeah, we don’t recommend the company anymore. They won’t sort out any issues that come up, they’ll just sell you more overpriced product. We love local business and try to find companies or people that will stand behind their work. We understand that sometimes things just don’t work out and things fail, but in this case it was obvious that we were sold an old water heater at premium prices (and spun a tale about how much better it was than anything we could buy ourselves at Lowes Hardware etc which was not true). If they had done the right thing and replaced it with a new water heater without cost to us for such an early failure and for installing such an old heater, they wouldn’t have lost some long term business. As it is, they didn’t care at all. I guess they’re big enough to lose business.