How to Find the Best Plumber (and Other Services) in Portland

Often when a faucet leaks, am outlet frizzes out or something else goes wrong in your home, the occurrence is unexpected. When emergency situations arise, scrambling got a repair service is quite a challenge, on top of an already stressful circumstance. Endlessly reviewing reviews on Yelp and Google for plumbers, electricians, washing machine repair services and heating and cooling services, etc. can eat up an entire day. When the kitchen sink is backed up, you don’t have time for that.

So how do you quickly and efficiently find the best person to come help fix the problem? Here are a few of our tips.

Maintain Excellent Relationships

Keep a running list of your preferred service companies for each aspect of your home. If you like the work they do, go the extra mile to be friendly to the staff at every stage of the relationship, from booking on the phone to the person who walks in your door. Let them know you appreciate their work.

Try to be flexible with your schedule. The more you can work with the scheduler, the more likely it is you’ll get someone to your house in a short time. If you were planning to go to yoga at 6pm but could skip it, perhaps today you take a pass in order to expedite the repair process. You can always stretch out and do a few Down Dog poses at home while your repair person is hard at work fixing the problem.

Services often book up quickly, making emergency circumstances extra challenging. But sometimes the companies can make an exception and squeeze you in. If they know you and have a relationship with you, they’re much more likely to do this.

Reach out on Social Media

Facebook has an excellent feature for soliciting recommendations. Though Facebook users don’t see every post by every one of their friends (an aspect of the Facebook algorithm), Recommendation posts have stronger visibility, and they target people in your vicinity.

So how do you activate the Recommendation feature? Simply start a new post in Facebook and being with the word “recommendation.” Facebook automatically recognizes that you’re looking for recommendations and turns the post into a Recommendation post. After you finalize your post, you will be prompted with the option to allow a map to show. This additional feature makes it easy to see where the recommended services are located, which can often be handy.

When asking for recommendations, be clear about exactly what you need so you can get the best possible results. For instance, if you need a repair person, what is the nature of the repair? If you need a contractor, what is the scope of the work? If you’re not comfortable telling the world, “My toilet is clogged!” it’s okay to be vague, but definitely say “plumber for emergency repair” as this will help focus the recommendations. But telling the world “My toilet is clogged!” very well may elicit a lot of sympathetic responses, and sometimes it’s nice to experience a dose of group commiseration.

You may get a flood of suggestions. Thank everyone who posts a response (simply liking their comment will suffice) and keep track of the recommendations. Don’t delete the post - you may need it later. It’s not a bad idea to take a screenshot of the post and the responses, and save that in a folder on your computer.

Create a Post on Nextdoor

In some cases, you’ll want to reach out regionally. Some lawn services, for instance, prefer to keep their work focused around a preferred area of the city. 

Nextdoor is a message board for neighbors. Once you join, you can post messages that are only seen by the people who live in your neighborhood, or the adjacent neighborhoods, depending on what post settings you select.

Even though many of these people may be strangers to you, you’ll be surprised by the outpouring of heartfelt recommendations that occurs through this platform. People are very generous in talking about the companies they like working with. Nextdoor can be a very quick way to get a response.

Like any message board, Nextdoor is sometimes busy with chatter. If you don’t want to be flooded with neighborhood notifications all day, you can alter your settings to get only a daily digest of messages or none at all. There is a setting that allows you to only receive notifications when someone comments on your post.

Ask Your Urban Nest Realtor

Urban Nest realtors are a wealth of information, and one of the things they do best is to store that information. Your realtor maintains a list of the best contractors and repair services. They know who is fast, who is cheap and who does the best quality work, based on their experience. 

Often in the home buying and selling process repairs need to be made very quickly to satisfy all involved parties, and ensure the sale goes through in a timely fashion. That means the demands of a realtor are fairly steep, and they hold contractors to high standards. The ones who work out well are swiftly graduated to the top of your realtor’s list.

Lean on your Urban Nest realtor as an ally in the home maintenance process. 

Should You Subscribe to a Consumer Review Platform?

There are several companies out there that offer a paid service to give you access to seemingly top-recommended service providers in your region. Though these types of service seem like a good idea, the results aren’t always what they are cracked up to be.

Some of the services receive a significant portion of their revenue from advertising, which may alter the search results and placement of top recommended services.

When you need the best plumber, electrician, window cleaner or lawn care service, a recommendation from someone you know is one of the surest ways to find quality results.