Is Drain Cleaning a Scam?

Quick answer, no! But your neighbor got a huge quote for a slow bathtub, so it’s a fair question.

We should mention up front that we started offering plumbing this year, which makes us an odd choice to write this. We benefit when you call a plumber. But we’ve been in Tri-Cities homes for a long time doing heating and cooling work, and we’ve heard a lot of stories about the last plumber who came out. After a while the stories start sounding the same, and we figured we’d rather talk about it openly than pretend it doesn’t happen.

What a normal drain call looks like

Most clogs are pretty boring. Hair and soap scum in a bathroom sink, or grease that went down the kitchen drain hot and didn’t stay that way. Every so often it’s a toy, and nobody in the house knows anything about it.

A plumber comes out, figures out where the blockage is, and runs a cable machine through the line. He pulls out something you’ll wish you hadn’t seen, tests that everything drains, and he’s gone in under an hour. The bill is the kind you can pay without calling a family meeting first.

That’s the bulk of drain work, honestly. If that’s what you needed, that’s what you should have been charged for, and the visit should end there.

About that cheap drain special

You’ve seen the ads. Any drain, any clog, one rock-bottom price.

Sometimes that’s a real promotion from a company trying to win you over as a customer. Other times the price is just there to get a tech through your front door, because the actual money is in what happens once he’s inside. He runs the cable for a few minutes, tells you the clog won’t clear, and recommends a camera inspection, and wouldn’t you know it, the camera finds roots in the line. Now there’s a quote in your hand with a comma in it.

Here’s the complicated part: sometimes there really ARE roots in the line. The older neighborhoods around Kennewick and Richland have big mature trees sitting on top of clay sewer laterals, and roots go looking for water. It’s a genuine problem when it’s genuine.

What should make you suspicious is speed. When the diagnosis shows up faster than the diagnostic work did, somebody is selling to you.

The upsells worth thinking through (or getting a second opinion)

Hydro jetting for a simple clog. Jetting is legitimately great technology. Instead of punching a hole through a blockage the way a cable does, it scours the whole inside of the pipe with high pressure water, and for a grease-choked restaurant line or a main that keeps backing up, it’s exactly the right call. For one slow bathroom sink that’s never acted up before? That’s a very expensive answer to a cheap question. Ask what a cable machine would do first.

Enzyme treatments on a monthly plan. Think of these as the gym membership of plumbing. The product works, slowly, on organic gunk. It does nothing about roots or a damaged pipe, and the main thing it reliably produces is recurring revenue. If your drains are clear, you don’t need a subscription to keep them that way. Not pouring bacon grease down the sink will do more.

A full line replacement based on one camera pass. A camera shows you one moment in time. Some root hair growing through a pipe joint is not a failed pipe, and a low spot holding a bit of standing water doesn’t automatically mean somebody needs to dig up your yard. Before anyone opens a trench, you should be able to get plain answers about what actually failed, how urgent it really is, and what it costs you to wait six months. If those answers stay fuzzy, get a second opinion. We’d say that even when the second opinion isn’t ours.

The one that usually is legit

If the same line has backed up more than once in a year, pay for the camera. A repeat problem in the same spot means something structural is going on down there, and guessing at it with a cable machine over and over costs more than looking ever will.

So that’s the difference. A camera makes sense when there’s a pattern. As the automatic next step on a first-time clog, less so.

One last tip:

Ask the tech what the cheapest thing that might fix this is. Somebody who’s actually diagnosing your problem will have an answer, and usually he’s already tried it. Somebody working a script will explain why the cheap option is a waste of money before he’s touched it.

Ask what happens if you do nothing for a while. Real problems come with specific consequences, and a plumber who understands your line can describe them. Manufactured urgency tends to stay vague.

And if there’s a camera involved, ask to see the footage. From your pipe, not a stock photo of somebody else’s roots.

So, about the plumbing thing

We added it because customers kept asking for it. We’ve handled heating, cooling, and electrical work in Pasco, Kennewick, and Richland for years, and enough people said “you guys don’t happen to do plumbing, do you?” that eventually the answer became yes.

Drains, water heaters, leaks, fixtures, repipes, all of it, done by the same company you already know, with the same policy we’ve always worked under: we tell you what we’d do if it were our own house.

If something’s draining slow or backing up or making a sound you don’t love, call A-One. You can count on us for all your home services needs.