Find Nearby Plumbers In Santa Monica, California

The contractor has a deeply polarized review profile: a cluster of detailed positive reviews praising friendliness, professionalism, and responsiveness sits alongside several serious negative reviews describing misdiagnosis, abandoned jobs, no-call no-shows, and inflated or deceptive pricing. Professionalism scores moderately because while many reviewers praise attitude and communication, at least three reviews explicitly cite arrogance, bad customer service, and a technician leaving without completing work. Project completion is significantly dragged down by two credible, detailed accounts of incomplete or abandoned work, including one where the customer had to find the leak themselves and hire a different plumber. Pricing is the weakest dimension, with multiple reviewers flagging overquoting, refusal to provide part details, upselling of warranties, and a $99 charge for work that produced no result. Experience is mixed — several reviewers praise technical knowledge, but misdiagnosis is cited in at least two independent reviews, undermining confidence in consistent skill quality.

• Several 5-star reviews use generic, non-specific praise language (e.g., 'great job,' 'highly recommend,' 'amazing service') with limited verifiable detail — mild fake review risk cannot be ruled out for a subset of positive reviews.
• At least two independent reviewers explicitly describe misdiagnosis of plumbing problems, suggesting a possible systemic issue with diagnostic accuracy.
• One reviewer (1-star, 2023-10-24) describes a no-call no-show after promising to return, holes punched in walls with no resolution, and a $99 charge for no completed work — a serious project completion failure.
• One reviewer (1-star, 2022-11-27) describes a $900 quote for a job that required only a simple hose realignment, and the company refused to provide part model/serial numbers — a potential deceptive pricing flag.
• One reviewer (1-star, 2024-10-30) explicitly accuses the company of being a scam and upselling warranties — while the language is inflammatory, the pricing concern aligns with other negative reviews.
• The most recent review (2024-10-30) is a 1-star complaint, and the second most recent (2024-07-18) is a 5-star. The bulk of positive reviews are from 2021–2023, meaning recent sentiment may be trending negative.
• RECENCY NOTE: The majority of reviews are older than 12 months. Only 2 reviews fall within the past 12 months (relative to late 2024), one of which is a 1-star complaint. This limits confidence in current service quality.

This WW Score is based on 16 reviews with usable data across all four dimensions and carries HIGH statistical confidence in its directional accuracy, but the presence of credible negative reviews describing serious failures — including misdiagnosis, abandoned work, and suspected deceptive pricing — means the score should be treated as a genuine mixed signal rather than a passing grade.

Marc/Mark demonstrates strong professionalism and responsiveness in emergency situations, with consistent praise for punctuality, politeness, and communication across multiple reviews. However, project completion is severely compromised by multiple documented failures: incomplete tankless water heater installations with incorrect gas piping (safety hazard), unfinished jobs, no-shows despite confirmed commitments, and refusal to return for callbacks or warranty registration. Pricing is generally perceived as reasonable, though one customer reported unexplained 'difficulty fees' and inflated rates. Technical skill appears adequate for routine drain clearing but questionable for complex installations. The stark contrast between older positive reviews (2017-2021) and recent critical reviews (2022-2024) suggests deteriorating service quality or business practices.

• CRITICAL: Multiple reviews document abandoned/incomplete major projects (tankless water heater installations in 2022) with safety violations (incorrect gas piping marked as danger hazard by gas company)
• CRITICAL: Pattern of no-shows and non-responsiveness to callbacks despite explicit customer commitments, particularly in 2022 and 2018
• CRITICAL: Customer reports non-payment of refunds, missing receipts, and refusal to provide warranty documentation after payment ($4000+ mentioned)
• CRITICAL: Threat of small claims court action documented in one review
• RECENCY CONCERN: Most positive reviews are from 2017-2021 (older than 3 years). Most recent reviews (2022-2024) are predominantly negative, suggesting significant service degradation
• SUSPICIOUS PATTERN: Older reviews (2017-2021) contain generic praise with similar phrasing ('best plumber', 'highly recommend', 'quick response') but lack specific technical details. Newer reviews are highly specific and detailed in complaints, suggesting older reviews may be less reliable
• PRICING INCONSISTENCY: One 2024 review explicitly criticizes 'rather high rates' and unexplained 'difficulty fee', contradicting the 'reasonable pricing' narrative from older reviews

This score should be treated with CAUTION. While based on 17 reviews, the dramatic shift from uniformly positive older reviews to severely negative recent reviews (2022-2024) indicates either significant business deterioration or potential review manipulation in the older set. The documented project completion failures, safety violations, and legal threats in recent reviews are serious red flags that outweigh the historical positive sentiment. Potential customers should heavily weight the 2022-2024 reviews and verify current business practices independently.

This contractor shows highly polarized performance with a significant pattern of serious behavioral and service issues. While technical skills and project completion are reasonably strong (68–78 range), professionalism is severely compromised by documented instances of hostility, aggression, hanging up on customers, and alleged racist remarks. Pricing concerns appear in multiple reviews with complaints of overcharging and lack of transparency. The oldest reviews (2009–2013) are notably more positive, while more recent reviews (2014–2021) reveal escalating customer service failures and interpersonal conflicts. The WW Score of 62.8 reflects this mixed but concerning profile.

• CRITICAL: Multiple reviews (2014–2021) document aggressive, hostile, and abusive behavior including hanging up on customers, yelling at customers' family members, alleged racist remarks, and threats. These are explicit behavioral red flags, not subjective complaints.
• RECENCY CONCERN: Oldest reviews (2009–2013) are predominantly 5-star with positive language. More recent reviews (2014–2021) are predominantly 1-star with serious allegations. This suggests deteriorating service quality or business conduct over time.
• PRICING PATTERN: At least 5 reviews explicitly mention overcharging, lack of transparency, refusal to provide receipts, and quotes significantly higher than competitors. This is a consistent complaint across multiple years.
• CUSTOMER SERVICE BREAKDOWN: Multiple reviews document failure to return calls, hanging up on customers, and refusal to provide options or solutions. One detailed 2012 review describes incomplete work that made the problem worse.
• POTENTIAL FAKE REVIEW: The 2021-06-13 review contains unusually flowery, non-specific language ('Soldering skills THAT ARE BEAUTIFUL as his endlessly deep blue eyes. It made me question life.') that does not match the tone or specificity of other positive reviews. This review lacks concrete project details and reads as potentially fabricated or satirical.
• RESPONSE PATTERN: At least two reviews mention that Declan responded to negative reviews with further aggression, insults, and threats rather than attempting resolution. This compounds the service failures.

This score should be treated with CAUTION. While based on 18 reviews with adequate mention counts, the extreme polarization, documented behavioral issues, recency of serious complaints, and apparent deterioration over time suggest this contractor presents significant risk. The WW Score of 62.8 understates the severity of interpersonal and ethical concerns documented in recent reviews. Customers should prioritize the pattern of recent negative experiences and behavioral allegations over older positive reviews.

Three of four reviews are positive and describe a plumber who shows up promptly for emergencies, completes the work, and charges reasonable prices. However, one 1-star review directly contradicts the pricing narrative by alleging the contractor refused to honor the advertised $20 service call fee stated on his own website, which is a meaningful red flag around pricing transparency and honesty. All reviews are from 2014–2015, making them nearly a decade old, which severely limits their relevance to current performance. The small sample size and age of the data prevent any high-confidence conclusions.

• ALL REVIEWS ARE OVER 9 YEARS OLD (2014–2015): This data is extremely stale and should not be relied upon to reflect current contractor quality or behavior.
• PRICING CONTRADICTION: One review explicitly states the contractor refused to honor the advertised $20 service call fee from his own website. This directly conflicts with the positive pricing claims in other reviews and raises concerns about pricing transparency.
• POSSIBLE FAKE REVIEW CONCERN: The two 5-star reviews from late 2014 and early 2015 contain non-native English phrasing and generic praise with limited specifics. While not conclusive, this warrants caution.
• VERY SMALL SAMPLE SIZE: Only 4 reviews total. No reliable pattern can be established from this volume of data.
• INSUFFICIENT RECENCY: No reviews from the past 12 months. Score reliability is significantly diminished.

This WW Score should be treated as highly unreliable — it is based on only 4 reviews, all of which are approximately 9–10 years old, and includes a direct pricing integrity complaint that undermines the otherwise positive sentiment.

Ritz Plumbing presents a deeply polarized review profile. A substantial number of positive reviews — many from 2022 to 2024 — praise individual technicians (Reynaldo, Jesus, Adrian, Sebastian, Carlos, and others) for professionalism, responsiveness, and technical competence, often highlighting same-day or emergency service. However, an equally substantial and highly detailed body of negative reviews — spanning 2015 to 2024 — documents a consistent and serious pattern of price gouging, unauthorized work, predatory upselling targeting elderly and vulnerable customers, abandoned jobs, billing fraud, and substandard workmanship. Pricing is the most severely impacted dimension, with dozens of explicit complaints about charges ranging from 3x to 20x fair market value for identical work. Project completion is also significantly undermined by multiple accounts of incomplete work, failed callbacks, and damage caused during service. The volume and specificity of the negative reviews — including references to BBB complaints, California State Licensing Board records, and criminal allegations — substantially reduce confidence in the positive reviews and drag all dimension scores well below what the positive reviews alone would suggest.

• SERIOUS FRAUD PATTERN: Multiple independent reviewers across different years describe an identical sewer scam — technicians clear a minor clog, then escalate to claiming the main sewer line needs expensive replacement or sleeving, with prices ranging from $5,000 to $25,000. Second opinions consistently reveal no such work was needed.
• ELDERLY TARGETING: At least 6 reviews explicitly describe technicians attempting to overcharge or deceive elderly customers (ages 80–97), including one criminal case in Santa Monica reportedly involving $84,000 in unnecessary sewer work.
• UNAUTHORIZED CHARGES: Multiple reviewers report credit cards or bank accounts charged without authorization or signature, including one instance of a $24,000 charge.
• ABANDONED WORK / NO CALLBACKS: Several reviews describe technicians leaving jobs incomplete, failing to return with parts, and management never returning calls despite repeated attempts — including one reviewer who waited a month for parts.
• BBB F RATING REFERENCED: Multiple reviewers independently reference an F rating with the Better Business Bureau and a long record of complaints with the California State Licensing Board.
• BUSINESS IDENTITY DECEPTION: A large cluster of reviews (2015–2017) documents Ritz Plumbing acquiring Jim's Pasadena Plumbing and Windsor Plumbing without disclosing the ownership change to customers, continuing to answer phones under the old names and sending technicians in unmarked vans.
• POSSIBLE FAKE REVIEW CONCERN: Several 5-star reviews are brief, generic, and lack specific detail (e.g., 'The best ever. Five star. Great response time. Reliable. Knowledgeable fast quality work. Amazing people.'). One review (Luis, Oct 2024) is word-for-word duplicated within the same review text. Confidence in the positive review pool is reduced accordingly.
• RECENCY NOTE: Reviews span from 2009 to 2024. The fraud and overcharging complaints are not isolated to early years — they continue through 2024, indicating the pattern has not been resolved over time.
• REVIEW SUPPRESSION ALLEGATION: Multiple reviewers allege that Yelp is hiding hundreds of negative one-star reviews, and at least one reviewer states they were contacted by Ritz staff and offered a refund in exchange for removing a negative review — a potential review manipulation practice.
• WORKMANSHIP DAMAGE: Multiple reviews describe property damage caused during service, including flooded laminate flooring, a broken terra cotta pipe, a flooded front yard from a damaged incoming water pipe, and sewage sprayed on bathroom walls — with technicians attempting to leave without remediation.

This WW Score of 52.1 is based on a large review dataset with HIGH confidence across all dimensions, but the score should be treated with significant caution given the volume, specificity, and multi-year consistency of serious fraud allegations, price gouging complaints, and workmanship failures that are not offset by the positive reviews.

Jo-Mi Plumbing shows a deeply inconsistent service record with significant structural problems in professionalism and pricing. While technical skill and workmanship are generally praised (78/100), the company suffers from severe communication failures, chronic non-responsiveness to callbacks, and repeated appointment no-shows or cancellations. Pricing practices are frequently criticized as opaque, inflated, and unfair—with markups on parts 60-178% above retail and charges for travel time that customers find unreasonable. Project completion is hampered by poor follow-through on estimates, extended delays, and lack of accountability. The company appears to have experienced a notable decline in service quality over recent years, with long-term customers expressing disappointment at deterioration from earlier standards.

• RECENCY CONCERN: Most negative reviews cluster in 2013-2019; however, recent reviews (2024, 2023) show the same core problems (no-shows, poor communication, pricing issues) persist, indicating systemic issues are not resolved.
• PATTERN DETECTED: Chronic communication failure is the dominant complaint across 28 reviews—non-returned calls, missed appointments, no follow-up on estimates, and broken promises to call back. This is not isolated; it is structural.
• PRICING CONTROVERSY: 15 reviews explicitly mention overpricing, inflated parts costs (60-178% markups), undisclosed charges, billing errors, and lack of transparency. This is a consistent business practice complaint, not an anomaly.
• DECLINE NARRATIVE: Multiple long-term customers (8-30 years) explicitly state the company has deteriorated significantly in recent years, suggesting a shift in ownership/management quality.
• INCONSISTENCY: Positive reviews (5-star) often mention specific technicians by name (Mike, Sergio, Luke, Fernando, Ray, Pedro, Kelvin) and praise their individual professionalism and skill. Negative reviews cite the same names but describe poor follow-up by office/management. This suggests individual technician quality is high but organizational systems are broken.
• NO FAKE REVIEW PATTERN: Reviews show genuine specificity, varied detail, and authentic frustration. No evidence of coordinated fake positive reviews detected.

This WW Score of 56.8 is moderately reliable but reflects a company in serious operational distress. The score is pulled down by HIGH-confidence data on professionalism (28 mentions) and project completion (22 mentions), both of which show systemic failures in communication and follow-through. Pricing concerns are well-documented (15 mentions, MODERATE confidence). Technical skill is the only bright spot (78/100, MODERATE confidence, 18 mentions). The company's inconsistent service—excellent individual technician work paired with abysmal office management—makes it a high-risk choice. Recent reviews confirm these problems persist despite the company's long history. Trust this score; the data is substantial and consistent.