Humanist Plumbing

What happened was, a faucet started dripping. And then I managed to route around the malignant machineries of late-stage capitalism. These days, that’s almost always a story worth telling.

Normally, faced with a drip, we’d pull out the old cartridge, take it to the hardware store, and buy another to swap in. But the fixture in our recently-acquired place was kind of exotic and abstract and neither of us could figure it out. We were gloomy because we’ve had terrible luck over the years with the local plumbing storefronts. So…

The neighbors · Our neighborhood has an online chat; both sides of the streets in a square around a single city block. This is our first experience with such a thing. I gather that these don’t always work out well, but this one has been mostly pretty great.

So at 9AM I posted “Hey folks, looking for a plumber recommendation” and by ten there were three.

[Late-stage capital: “You’re supposed to ask the AI in your browser. It’ll provide a handy link to a vendor based on geography and reviews but mostly advertising spend. Why would you want to talk to other people?”]

Thomas · I picked a neighbor’s suggestion, first name Thomas, and called the number. “Thomas here” on the second ring. I explained and he said “What’s the brand name? If it’s one of those Chinese no-names I probably have to replace the whole thing.” I said “No idea, but I’ll take a picture and send it to you.”

Turns out the brand was Riobel, never heard of them. I texted Thomas a picture and he got right back to me: “That’s high-end, it’s got a lifetime warranty. I’ll come by a little after 5 and take it out. Their dealer is in PoCo (an outer suburb) and I live out there, so I can swap it.”

[Late-stage capital: “You’re supposed to engage with the chatbot on the site we sent you to, which will integrate with your calendar and arrange for a diagnostic visit a week from Wednesday. You could call them but you’d be in voice-menu hell and eventually end up at the same chatbot.”]

When Thomas showed up, with a sidekick, he was affable and obviously competent. Within five minutes I was glad I’d called for help; that faucet’s construction was highly non-obvious. Thomas knew what he was doing and it still took him the best part of a half-hour to get it all disassembled and the cartridge extracted.

Nothing’s perfect · The next morning, a text from Thomas: “Bad news. That part is back-ordered till May at Riobel’s dealer. We can maybe get it online but you’d have to pay.” He attached a screenie of a Web search for the part number; there were several online vendors.

It’s irritating that the “lifetime warranty” doesn’t seem to be helping me, but to be fair, the part was initially installed in 2011.

[Late-stage capital: “Lifetime warranty? Huh? Oh, of course you mean our VIP-class subscription offering, that’s monthly with a discount for annual up-front payment.” (And the part would still be back-ordered.)]

Kolani · High-end plumbing parts are expensive. But one of Thomas’ recommendations, Kolani Kitchen and bath, was asking less.

They had a phone number on their Web site so I called it and the voice menu only had three options: Location, opening hours, and Operator. The operator was an intelligent human and picked up right away. “Hi, I’m looking at ordering a cartridge and wanted to see if you had it in stock.” “Gimme the part number?” I did and she went away for a couple of minutes and came back “Yeah, it’s in stock.” So I ordered it and I have a tracking number.

[Late-stage capital: “There aren’t supposed to be independent dealers; the manufacturer has taken PE money and eliminated the middlemen to better capture all the value-add. Or maybe there’ll be a wholesaler, but just one, because another PE rolled up all the distributors to maximize pricing power. Either way, you won’t be able to get a human on the line.”]

Payment · Next morning, I got an email that my order had been canceled. So I called that intelligent operator and she said “I was going to email you. Our system won’t take payment if the billing and delivery addresses are different. Sorry. If you’re in a hurry you could do an e-transfer?” (In Canada, all the banks are in a payments federation that makes this dead easy.) So I did and the part has shipped.

[Late-stage capital: “What? If you’d used our Integrated online payment offering, it would all just work. What if it doesn’t, you ask? Yeah, sucks to be you in that situation, of course there’d be nobody you could talk to about that.”]

Thomas came by again to put the old cartridge back in for now and said “This thing, don’t worry about a drip, it’s not fast and it probably won’t get worse. Text me when the new part gets in.”

Late-stage capitalism · It won’t be missed when it’s gone.

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