plumber's crack pipe

By Margaret -
I had a little plumbing problem a month ago. The snowbird upstairs returned from her real home and decided to wash her dishes. The water emptied into my closet. She called Empire Plumbing which is a local company that runs a lot of advertising on TV. They came over and determined the old drain pipe in my ceiling is cracked. They would get back to me the next day with an estimate and the charge for the estimate was $150. It took them TWO weeks to get back to me with an obviously inflated $1750 (not including replacing the ceiling.) Yes, I called them several times to only be told "the estimate guy is out." I found another company which would do the repair and replace the sheetrock for hundreds of dollars less.
I got to thinking. Why did Empire so obviously not want to do the repair? Do they just make their money off estimates? Not a bad business that but how long can you pay for relentless ads on those amounts?

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