The Plumber Who Tells You to Go Get Other Estimates

Most businesses spend real money making sure you never shop around.

This one published the instructions on how to shop him.

Streety Plumbing sits out on TX-154 in Marshall. Licensed Master Plumber. And the license number is printed right there on the home page. M-38762.

Not buried in a footer. Not on a credentials page nobody clicks. The home page.

What they put on their own front door

The Streety home page carries a long plain-English explainer on why you should hire a licensed master plumber. It tells you to get multiple estimates. It tells you to ask about licensing and insurance. It tells you to get a written estimate. It tells you to check references.

Read that again.

A plumber wrote a guide that sends you out to go price his competitors.

That is not a marketing move. That is somebody who is not worried about how he looks next to the other bids.

A number beats an adjective

Everybody says they are licensed. Almost nobody prints the number where a stranger can write it down.

That is the whole difference between a claim and a receipt.

A claim is what you say about yourself. A receipt is what somebody else can go check without asking your permission first.

M-38762 is a receipt.

I have built this entire site on that one idea. It is a good thing to see a plumber out on 154 running the same play.

Ten towns and a phone that answers at two in the morning

Streety publishes service area pages for Marshall, Longview, Hallsville, Waskom, Gilmer, Jefferson, Scottsville, Karnack, Harleton and Diana.

Their home page says emergency plumbers are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Their services list runs water heater repair and installation, bathroom and kitchen renovation, water meter repair and installation, gas pipe repair testing and inspection, water line repair and installation, sink repair and installation, water leak repair, electric drain cleaning, faucet repair, and emergency plumber.

Ten towns is a lot of windshield time. Read that list again and picture the driving.

Nobody told me the trades were the smart play

I sat through the same speech everybody else did. Get the degree. Get the desk. The trades were the backup plan, the thing you did if the front plan fell through.

Then I grew up and started needing tradesmen.

Try getting a good one out here on a Tuesday. Try getting one who answers the phone, shows up when he said he would, and does it right the first time so you never have to think about it again.

The good ones are booked. The good ones have been booked for years.

A booked calendar is not a complaint. A booked calendar is a market standing there telling you it is short on people.

Somebody who can make water go where it is supposed to go never wonders whether he will eat. He does not need a title. He needs a truck, a license number, and a reputation he can hand to a stranger.

That is dignity. That is also the math.

The hire check, written out

This is their advice, put in order. Steal it. Use it on your next plumber, your next roofer, your next anybody.

1. Ask for the license number. Not "are you licensed." The number itself, said out loud, written down.
2. Ask if they carry insurance, and ask what it covers if something goes wrong inside your walls.
3. Get more than one estimate. If a contractor gets weird about that, you just learned what you needed to learn.
4. Get the estimate in writing before anybody touches a pipe. Scope, price, timeline.
5. Ask for references, and then actually call one. Most people ask and never dial.
6. Ask who is physically doing the work. The person on the phone is not always the person in the crawlspace.
7. Ask what happens if it fails in thirty days. Get that answer before the invoice, not after.

Seven questions. Ten minutes. Cheapest inspection you will ever run.

The part I want you to sit with

A business published the exact standard you should hold it to, then invited you to go compare.

That is confidence. That is also just good work. You cannot fake it and you cannot buy it.

If your business had to print its number on the front page, would you print it?

And which East Texas business should I put under the light next? Tell me who is doing it right out here, and tell me why.