Old Towne Plumbing is a scammy company. I have a tenant who believed she had mold in her unit, so she called this company. Carl Shields came out and told her it was bad. I spoke to him and he told me it was bad and would need all sorts of expensive work. To prove it, he told me would come back to the unit with a camera and take pictures of the insides of the walls. He said he would hire a 3rd party company to take samples and do testing. Shields quoted me at $800 for the testing and told me that everything else would be part of a free estimate.

Everything about him seemed fishy, but I was very busy with other work at the time and my tenant was so convinced she was getting sick due to mold. I told Shields to send me a work contract before doing any testing. He never sent the work contract nor did I sign anything; he scheduled with the tenant and came in there to do the testing anyway and tried to bill me for $1,210.

When I objected to the extra $410 in extraneous charges, instead of addressing them, Shields started to accuse me of being an absentee landlord.

I don’t know how many plumbing companies out there make their work on predatory practices like this, but this is the first time I’ve ever come across it. Steer clear of this company!