The Calamitous Summer of '23

The money pit sinkhole that swallowed my retirement

Prologue

After a calamitous summer that began on the 6th of June with a growling clogged toilet followed by a mandated demolition of both “toxic” bathrooms, followed by weeks of privy deprivation, followed by more weeks without an air conditioner in Hellish July, I thought our nearly 6-month long saga had finally ended in early October. And then after three-days in the hospital for a heart issue I came home and decided to tackle my emails in which I found a bill I’d overlooked that made me clutch my chest.

June

On the warm evening of June 6th my youngest son stopped by and on his way out needed to use the guest bathroom. From that end of our hacienda I heard shouts of horror mixed with disgust and cursing. Racing to the scene of the crime I found him plunging away, at an overflowing toilet, cursing his older brother David’s “%#! high fiber diet.”

We have two bathrooms in our home that sit back-to-back.

It was late and my son and I were unable to unclog both toilets, which were now coughing up more wastewater with each desperate plunge of our plungers. And the tubs were filling with muck. Unable to snake or plunge our way to a solution I desperately contacted the first 24-hour plumber I found online. A Rooter Ranger plumber arrived, a man I came to call the compassionate plumber, and he sent his snake down the master bath toilet and it snaked up into the guest room toilet, sparks flew and it cracked. The compassionate plumber apologized and informed me he would return with a crew of Rangers in the morning to locate the blockage which was most likely between my hovel and the street.

Perhaps a stent would be the answer. Worked for my blockage.

I couldn’t sleep. My head was spinning. What? Demolish both bathrooms? Really? The guest bathroom and our master bathroom? Whatever. I’m exhausted. And overwhelmed. Wait and see what the experts say. A Wiley Coyote boulder had fallen on my jagged path to heart health.

The next morning a team of plumbers returned to begin their detective work and the compassionate plumber told me I probably had water damage at the base of the sheetrock in both bathrooms that required assessment and possible demolition. The compassionate plumber recommended Quick Restore to rescue me.

That afternoon I learned the main line between our hovel and our street needed to be replaced and another team of men showed up to begin digging a deep grave-like hole in the front yard.

Meanwhile we began using the toilets at a nearby mall like a homeless couple. Ellen was remarkably good-humored about the situation, regarding it as akin to our camping experiences. “Hell of a woman,” I told everyone.

The next morning a shiny young man named Andrew knocked and handed me a Quick Restore packet with a contract permitting them to collect samples for lead and asbestos in the sheetrock. Seeing I was devastated the shiny young man named Andrew also graciously offered to call my insurance company on my behalf to initiate the claim. “You’d do that for me?” I thanked him and sat across from him at our dining table as he made the call. I signed the papers, giving no thought to the fact I had agreed to rely on Quick Restore without seeking any competitive bids. When my insurance company recommended their own list of water mitigation companies for me to consider, I said nope, at the urging of the shiny young man named Andrew. I had been rescued by Quick Restore. Sure, go ahead. Check the walls. What’s a little water damage? Things dry fast in Tucson. My mind was elsewhere. My heart. My retirement savings. My new life. Are the bathrooms at the public library cleaner than the ones at the mall? Will we be brushing our teeth over the kitchen sink?

In the days that followed the men from Rooter Ranger continued digging in the midday heat and other men from Quick Restore began to show up. Some hauled dehumidifiers and fans into the bathrooms. Other appeared with handheld machines that went beep informing us the walls have water in them. And the vanities, too. What? The vanities? I saw little damage, but I trusted the men with name tags and the handheld machines that went beep.

I was rooting for the Rooter Rangers when they reached the busted line. I was surprised when another Rooter Ranger arrived whose specialty was sending new lines down into the earth up the middle of the old lines, replacing them, without having to dig trenches.

I started estimating the cost, counting the number of laborers who had come into our home. Five, so far, including the overseer, who just dropped by, to oversee what he could see.

I had just happily retired, and the fixed income mantra was ricocheting in my anxious head. “We have a little nest egg.” I nervously reassured Ellen. “We should be fine.”

A young lady arrived to take core samples from both bathrooms to test for asbestos. We waited 3-days and learned asbestos was detected. And the vanities had moisture and had to go as well. Which meant our home would soon resemble the set of a science fiction feature with the bathrooms covered in vinyl tarps festooned with warning sings by a demolition crew.

Again, I couldn’t sleep, thinking of how the Master Sergeant would have handled clogged toilets without relying on anyone. With his bare hands. In the middle of the night Ellen suggested the toilets at the library might be better than the ones at the mall.

My home insurance company and agent could not have been better, responding quickly and reminding me our policy gave us a stay at a nearby hotel.

The stairs at the hotel left me curiously winded. I paid no attention to it. I returned daily to our beloved abandoned home to oversee the repairs. A hostage to the schedule of the contractors I lost my regular exercise mojo. I fretted over my stent salvaged heart.

The machines that went beep told us the vanities had to go. We took out the drawers and scattered them throughout the house. Where’s the aspirin? Guestroom. Where are the Q-Tips. Check my studio.

Days later I welcomed two large men into our chaotic home who hung the clear vinyl tarps and “WARNING ASBESTOS” signs and left, returning the following day to demolish the vanities and tear out the bottom halves of the sheet rock in both bathrooms. They left the countertops and dissembled vanity parts scattered throughout our home.

I had no clue what Quick Restore was going to charge us for their service.

On top of it all this was the relentless summer from Hell, an endless season ruled by a punishing sun that blazed over our calamity day after broiling day.

Laying in the hotel bed next to Ellen I fell dead asleep thinking, “I remodeled our money pit by myself a decade ago…I’m a handyman.. I could have done all this demolition by myself with a crowbar and hammer for the cost of a U-Haul to the dump… I wonder what it will cost.”

Instead of counting sheep I fell asleep counting workmen.”Seven workmen..eight workmen..nine workmen..”

I wheezed up and down the stairs at the hotel, returning to our beloved house every day, in the early morning, to open the doors, greet contractors and water the plants and sit in the heat and write, sweltering like an extra in “Casablanca” beneath a spinning ceiling fan. Our dining table was covered with bank statements, bills, estimates, vanity catalogues, receipts and an upright file stuffed with more estimates, catalogues, and receipts.

We celebrated the day the main line was replaced, the hole was filled, and our water was turned back on, serving the Ranger cold drinks on our back porch and offering our pool up for a swim. Before the Rangers left to do more Rooting elsewhere, the compassionate plumber handed me a bill for $19,000. I smiled and thanked him, concealing my shock. Nineteen-thousand dollars! I pretended that paying a nearly twenty-thousand dollar bill was no problem for the likes of me. My vanity would not permit me to reveal the lump in my throat or the moths fleeing my wallet. I did the math as we said our goodbyes. Let’s see. The buyout I got from the Star? $30,000. Minus taxes it came to be a little more than $21,000. All that money, that cushion, had just vanished down a voracious toilet.

We walked back into our house, shut the front door and struggled to cheerfully spin this with Ellen, “We’re making progress!”

And then we heard it. Before she could even answer. From the roof over our heads. The silence. Our air conditioner had stopped. I lamented, “What? After 16-years it decides to die today?”

Our bathrooms still looked ghostly and empty with our sinks and vanities gone. The bottom halves of the bathroom walls were stripped of sheetrock revealing their amputated plumbing pipes. Two toilets sat on our back porch collecting dust like a pair of hillbilly planters. Our hallway was filled with two countertops and rescued vanity drawers were scattered around the house, holding our cosmetics, medications, brushes, razors, lotions and grooming articles. A guest room was crowded with the demolished remains of the old vanities and more cartons of cosmetics, medications, and a collection of my tools and some salvaged hardware. Our home had become a hovel. I told Ellen, ”To complete the look I’m getting some tires from the landfill and tossing them on our roof. And a rusted pickup to put up on blocks in the front yard. White trash chic is so ‘in’ these days.”

July

It was now July when the average temperatures were in the triple digit range. Now we had no air on top of having no bathroom toilets. One afternoon I was alone at Rancho Calamity going after the math and our finances and I snapped. I stormed outside to the backyard, grabbed my son’s old aluminum baseball bat and out of sight of the world I beat the sand. Gritting my teeth, I cursed my misfortune and beat, beat, beat the sand into diamonds. I roared and my blood pressure soared. And I beat it until the earth at my feet had been mutilated into a crater.

That night back at the hotel I confessed my distress over the bill to Ellen. Ever positive, eternally supportive, my sweet girl responded, “We’re lucky we had the money on hand. That’s what it was for. Emergencies.”

I called our air conditioning company, and I learned a new compressor, costing roughly $6,000, would be installed soon.

“How soon?”

“As soon as it arrives from Phoenix.”

It took more than a week to arrive from Phoenix. One week without air conditioning in July? Why not? “What else do you got,” I asked the powers beyond the ceiling in our hotbox. Throw in termites, too. And a little pestilence. How about a flood and a freak tornado?

Finally, the compressor arrived from Phoenix.

An HVAC savior arrived at our hovel and ascended his ladder up to the furnace of summer where he repaired our air conditioner beneath a giant parasol he brought with him. I listened for the sound of a human collapsing onto our roof from heat stroke but I never heard a telltale thump. By sunset, I heard our air conditioner whirrr back to life. I gave our young sunbaked savior a generous tip, my gushing gratitude, and a caricature that made him smile. I drew him as a red devil, repairing Lucifer’s air conditioner in fiery hell.

Quick Restore sent their bill for their water damage mitigation services and the machines that went beep to my insurance agent. I was informed the bill for the testing, analysis and demolition was $15,948.21.

What? I was numb. I thought of the compassionate Rooter Ranger plumber. Why did you recommend a company that charged such outrageous fees? Was it my zip code? Did we look like the Beverly hillbillies of Barrio Volvo?

I told myself, “Relax. Be optimistic. Your home insurance will cover the tab.”

Suddenly our long-planned summer trip purchased months before was upon us. We had an escape to organize, and pack for, a family trip to New York, which I promised my son a lifetime ago. “To Hell with this chaos,” I thought to my weary self. We needed to be transported from calamity. We needed a restorative week. And I needed the health giving exercise that walking up, down and across Manhattan would offer.

While there I enjoyed writing about my love affair with Manhattan and my family’s roots there. I was surprised at how winded the walking left me. I blamed it on the heat and humidity. Ellen and I gave no pointless, fruitless, anxious thought to the calamity back home for one whole beautiful week,

Our last blissful day in NYC, we were walking around Central Park when I saw a voice mail on my phone, a message from Tucson. “I should check this.” We stopped in the shade along 5th Avenue. I learned my homeowner’s insurance would only cover a portion of Quick Restore’s tab. And “You will be responsible for the remaining sum.”

How much was it? $11,043.34.

My insurance company mitigation team had reviewed the mitigation documents and they determined that Quick Restore’s estimate was "out of line for the scope of work completed.” Quick Restore had been advised that they “would not be paid in full. We did issue a settlement for mitigation of $4904.87 to them in July for the portion we were able to approve.”

What? The Quick Restore bill was three times beyond what was considered “acceptable”? Triple? Thanks, compassionate plumber for the terrific recommendation. Thanks, Rooter Ranger.

I raged and carped and bitched as we walked back to our hotel. In NYC a raging man does not stand out as unusual. I could not control my sputtering anger. Poor Ellen could not bear to look at me. “There goes our entire retirement nest egg! What if I’m hospitalized again? What if I need another stent? All because of one fucking toilet!”

We flew back to Tucson and arrived at our house at midnight to find the air conditioner was blowing hot air into our home. In Dante’s “Inferno” the 14th century poet described only 9-circles of Hell. We had stumbled into the 10th. We looked at the thermostat. It was 100-degrees inside our hotbox. The A/C had stopped functioning sometime after we had left for our vacation. Exhausted from flying we collapsed onto our hot bed and tossed in the sweltering heat of late July with the doors open and a worthless ceiling fan whirring overhead, The next morning we dragged our groggy selves back to the hotel and said, ”Remember us?” to the familiar receptionist. She did. She checked us in. More stairs.

I called the air conditioning folks, informed them our “fixed” air conditioner needed additional repair. They apologized, responded immediately and tweaked the unit and got it working. At no additional charge.

By this point my homeowners insurance had covered some of the expenses but, including the A/C, our out-of-pocket bathroom expenses and the deductibles, the summer of ’23 had cost us roughly $30,000.

We huffed down the hotel stairs for the last time and moved back into Rancho Calamity.

My home insurance agent gave me the approval to buy two new vanities to replace the old ones and she encouraged me to open the sheetrock repair and painting for bids, which I did. I had learned my costly lesson. I had begun to sense my signing on with Quick Restore without going to through a bidding process had been a huge, stupid mistake. I was ashamed of my weakness at a moment when I should have been decisive and discriminating.

I was stunned when the bids I got for the simple task of putting up a few short sheetrock panels and painting the two small rooms ranged from $2,000 to $11,000. Really? $11,000? “Jesus. I’m going to do it myself,” I told Ellen. “No, you’re not. You look wiped out.” At the hotel we escaped by binge watching the “Sopranos”. I phoned the best bid.

August

It took more than a month for the simple master bath vanity to arrive. Perhaps an assault by an armada of woodpeckers had slowed the craftsmen. Or bandits had attacked the rail lines west.

In the meantime, I was so exhausted from overseeing the chaos and struggling to maintain the illusion of an outwardly normal life that I had not considered a very simple solution to having no toilets at the house. I hauled one of the exiled toilets inside and reattached it myself so we could have a functioning toilet. Hello, first world. Duh.

On Quick Restore’s 6-page invoice I noted they charged me $175.33 to unscrew both toilet’s nuts and “detach” them.

September

The sheetrock man, Oscar, finally found time in his busy schedule to replace the sheetrock and paint both bathrooms. In just two-days. His price was more than fair. He was fast and his workmanship was flawless.

We matched the old vanities as closely as we could and to save money, when they arrived, I hauled them inside, assembled both, took an angle grinder to the tile floors to insure a perfect fit, saber sawed the holes for the plumbing, installed them, set the old countertops, installed the new faucets, plumbed the two sinks, secured the plumbing below, turned on the water, checked for links and danced a modest jig.

October

In mid-October, a few weeks ago, microvascular heart disease had sent me to the ER. After three-days in the hospital I came home to find a courteous email from One Claim Solution, a legal firm in Phoenix that represents companies like Quick Restore reminding me the bill for $11,043.34 from Quick Restore was now due.

I did the math. Now the toilet from Hell was costing us over $40,000. And the bills for whatever my Medicare and Advantage Plans did not cover were yet to appear in my inbox.

Curious, I googled One Claim Solution and found a shiny company in Tempe that serves the needs of contractors and subcontractors who have trouble getting their bills paid on time. One Claim Solution’s website claimed their service could “Accelerate Your Cash Flow! We help you get paid more, faster. Our team of experts understands exactly how to justify your invoices and streamline your insurance billing process to maximize overall collections. Enjoy faster, more predictable cash flow.”

It doesn’t matter to a thriving company like One Claim Solution that they are representing a company that is charging three times what a traditional established insurance company feels is acceptable. And getting a percentage I assume. Business is business in this dog-eat-dog world. And in this scenario I was the Chihuahua.

Seems I did so much wrong regarding the entire calamity. Last week I did something I should have done a lifetime ago, back on the morning of June 7th, I should have looked up the Better Business Bureau’s website to see what consumers had to say about Quick Restore and their competitors before I ever signed anything.

But, I trusted the compassionate plumber. Foolish old man.

For the Tucson branch of Quick Restore there were no reviews. The BBB gave it an A+ rating. But for the Tempe mother ship in Phoenix there was a different story. There were many negative reviews. See for yourself:

Better Business Bureau Quick Restore

What? Quick Restore rated only 2-stars out of 5-stars? What the Hell? They had such shiny trucks. And machines that went beep.

“Ryan” commented, “!!!DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!!Had a water leak originating from master shower that penetrated bathroom wall into master closet. Called a plumber out. Plumber immediately recommended Quick Restore LLC (QR). Plumber contacted QR..”

Allow me to cut to the chase by editing Ryan’s rant. Ryan went on to complain that Quick Restore had “Grossly over charged labor hours and equipment rates… Disputed most charges and ended up sending in a lower payment…In the end the damage wasn't as severe as QR indicated and I feel taken advantage of. QR's business practices are borderline criminal. Save yourself some money and hassle and avoid this company at all costs.”

“Judy H” offered a succinct critique that reassured my sense of it all. “Quick Restore … They charged way too much… Do not use this company!!”

“Deb” lamented a familiar pattern. “He wanted to work directly with my insurance company so I wouldn't have to deal with all of that. When it was after hours and I couldn't reach my agent … I'm disabled not stupid.”

I was beginning to feel very, very foolish. Deb, you may be disabled but you are not stupid. I certainly was stupid.

“Cynthia N” scalded Quick Restore with a familiar tale. “...The plumber who was doing a repair on a leaking supply line in my foundation brought this company in, saying that they could help with restoration after the repair and possibly get my insurance to cover some of it…”

So here I was, feeling stupid and foolish. And the reviews kept resonating.

“Susi” commented, “DO NOT DO ANY BUSINESS WITH THIS COMPANY…I have already alerted the plumbing company that it they want to maintain their reputation they should not be referring any of their customers to Quick Restore.”

Are you listening Rooter Rangers? Compassionate Plumber? Listen to “Rachel R”, who wrote “Where to begin? This is the worst company ever. It started with a leak under our kitchen sink and the plumber suggested this company: Quick Restore…”

Quick Restore remains popular with a number of plumbers.

“Michael Bays” wrote, “Dear Quick Restore, I have a clear understanding of how Quick Restore operates now. The worst thing about it, beyond the realization and regret that I’ve been conned and scammed is the disgusting feeling that my family and I have been violated by your company…”

Beyond this drumbeat of criticism, I did find positive reviews, but not enough to move the Better Business Bureau needle off the pathetic 2-stars out of 5-stars rating for the mother ship in Tempe. Seems to me the Tucson crew was following the same business model.

November

It is the first week in November and our bathrooms are completely finished. And the air conditioner is humming.

References:

The Better Business Burea: Better Business Burea

To file a complain: Arizona Registrar of Contractors