When my head explodes – blame plumbing

Last week, the faucet on our big whirlpool tub broke.  The water could be heard running, but no water came out of the faucet.  Now, that’s a lovely situation to be in – where is all that water going???  I called my favorite plumber, trusty Jason.  He crawled around, brought a helper into the works (I’m not kidding – ‘Boo’), and finally figured out that the parts that mix the water and lead up to the spout had ‘blown off’ and were no where to be found.  (Of course, this was installed by the infamous Steve the World’s Most Incompetent Plumber, which is a whole entire series of posts!)  So, easy enough, order the required parts and he’ll put it back together.  Oh, no – not so easy.  Did you know that most manufacturers do NOT mark their faucets with either their name or a model number?? Anywhere??

I thought it was an American Standard Jasmine but wasn’t positive.   Again, easy enough – hop on the web and find it. Oh no.  I could find a similar faucet, but it was only available as a sink faucet, so I couldn’t find the parts that we needed.  Ah ha!  Customer service. Oh no. It was 4:35; they closed at 4.  So, first thing Monday morning I called.  The ‘customer service rep’ was absolutely no help.  ‘Ma’am, I can’t help you if you don’t have the part number.’  ‘How can I give you the part number, IF IT’S NOT MARKED ON THE FAUCET?’  She kept insisting that the faucet would be on the website if they still manufactured it; but if I really couldn’t find it, she referred me to their sanctioned parts company (not actually part of American Standard).  I even asked if I could e-mail a digital picture and they could help me identify it.  The last thing I wanted to do was spend $100 on parts to the wrong faucet or from the wrong company.  Because apparently, ‘Standard’ does not refer to using standard parts – different faucets, even though they are for the same tub, use different works. Huh?  Back to the rep – she couldn’t help me with that.  So, I call this parts guy, he CAN identify it from a digital picture.  WooHoo!  “Nope, I don’t know what it is, but it’s not American Standard.”  Great.

Next, I tried the local distributor where Ol’ Steve probably got it.  I asked the receptionist if there was someone, anyone, who could please help me identify this five year old faucet.  I was sure they carried it.  She wasn’t sure if there was anyone there that could do that, plus they don’t have computers.  Huh?  Now Kim, I know you think I live in Hooterville, but this is a company in a +100,000 population city, that has branches in at least 5 other similar sized cities.  They don’t have computers.  What year is this??  But, she suggested, I could bring in a picture and maybe someone could take a look at it. Thanks.

Next stop, an old fashioned, idependent, small hardware store.  The very helpful employee, thought it looked like a Delta, but couldn’t be sure; if I could just detach the stem from under the handle, he could probably identify it.  As a last ditch effort, I tried Home Depot – thinking they carry a big line of American Standard.  I was still sure that this was A.S.; but need confirmation.  My new best buddy Herb, worked with me for 2 hours, trying to solve this problem.  By the way, I had been carrying this 3-4 lbs. faucet around and started to think it would make a wonderful weapon on Ol’ Steve.  Images from Pulp Fiction danced through my head; I really wanted to just jam the faucet into his fat, round belly.

Herb thought it was also A.S., and finally got their customer service to fax us the parts sheet.  Ok, so assuming this is the right faucet, and we order all the right parts, I can expect to get the parts in 3 weeks.  Huh? Three weeks is a long time to be without your main bathing tub (the kids use this one every night); plus there is this really odd odor in our bathroom from the open pipe and opening to the crawl space.  Don had given me an imperative, to either get the parts or buy an entire new faucet set so we could get back to normal.  I, on the other hand, was not quite willing to so quickly replace the $400 faucet with something even more expensive. 

Now, here’s where my head started spinning.  Home Depot’s special order catalog has the *&%$@ tub faucet!  But, I can’t find it through American Standard?!?  But, of course, not so easy.  The faucet comes pre-packaged with the working parts; they can overnight the faucet & workings kit, but to order the parts alone will be 3 weeks. Thinking there’s no way I can wait three weeks and have the wrong parts, I order the set.  I pay $500, including a whopping $10.95 to have it overnighted, and I’m done.  The faucet arrived this morning by 10 am (that was pretty impressive!).  And……. it is the exact American Standard faucet I thought it was!!!  If that ‘expert’ parts guy would have known his a** from a hole in the ground, I wouldn’t have had to do all this crazy running around! ARGGGGGGHHHHHHH