Plumber Returns To Re-Clog Pipes After Restaurant Refused To Pay Their Plumbing Bill

Repossessing his services.

An Indiana plumber decided to take matters into his own hands when a restaurant decided that his bill was too steep – and refused to pay it.

According to WFIE, Thai Bistro & Bar in Evansville had called on Heavrin Plumbing Company to fix a block in their grease trap when it started overflowing. The company came out and fixed the problem, the restaurant paid their bill, and everybody was happy.

But a couple of days later, the same thing happened again, and the restaurant once again called the company to come out and clean their grease trap – but this time it was after hours, and the plumber charged them nearly double what it cost the first time.

Well the restaurant wasn’t happy that their bill had increased from $235 to $390 for the same service, so they just refused to pay it.

According to the manager of the restaurant, it wasn’t about the money but was the principle of the matter:

“I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. Like, OK is this really happening? It’s not about the money.It’s about him just standing behind his work.”

But the plumber decided that he too was going to stand up for his business – and returned the next day to re-clog the pipes:

“The following day we received a text message saying that he’s on our property. He put a balloon into our grease trap, and he’s not going to remove it until we pay.”

I guess that’s one way to make sure you get paid.

The restaurant manager said they ended up having to shut down to prevent further damage to the restaurant and the plumbing system:

“If we were to leave the balloon in there, it would overflow the restaurant with water, dirty water from the grease trap. Basically, we would’ve had to shut down.”

But the plumber says the work was completed properly both times, and he decided to take matters into his own hands because it wasn’t worth taking the restaurant to court:

“I don’t have a magic wand I can wave and remove all the garbage and debris the drain line. What we can do is, we can snake it; we can make sure that it’s open and working correctly. Which is what we did.

Frankly it was not worth me pursuing it in court. It was not worth my time, just wasn’t worth it for me.”

Ultimately the restaurant decided to just pay the bill after police were called to the scene to mediate the dispute, though they say they were only paying it “under protest” so they could get the clog removed and get back to business. And they had a warning for other clients of the plumber:

“Being a small business owner, we don’t want that to happen to other customers and clients of his. It’s just ridiculous that it had to come down to this.”

I dunno, seems to me the lesson from this one should be “pay your bills.”