American Leak Detection

I no longer have confidence in this company and would not recommend them after my recent experience.

Backstory:

My neighborhood (about 3035 years old) has ongoing issues with leaksboth under the slabs and between the meter and the road (which falls under the water companys responsibility). In fall 2019, I used this company based on a recommendation from my insurance provider, USAA, and was satisfied with their service.

Their technician arrived, listened for a bit, marked the leak location, I paid, and he left. When we dug in that area, the leak was within a foot or two of where he marked, which I considered accurate and valuable service.

2025 Experience:

After receiving a water bill nearly four times my usual rate, I knew we had another leak. I called the company through their 800 number (not a local one), and the only option was to leave a message. About an hour later, I received a callback from a non-local number.

The representative was polite but had to follow up with the local technician before confirming an appointment.

The next day, a two-man team arrived. They were friendly enough, though one had a thick accent, which caused some minor communication issues (not a problem for me). However, before even beginning the inspection, one technician started talking about how if you have one leak, youre twice as likely to have another, and if you have two, youre four times as likely to have a third. He then suggested boring a new line, which would cost thousands of dollars.

I explained that my insurance company and plumber instructed me to locate the leak first, and i am following their advice.

While I acknowledged he was probably right about the likelihood of future leaks, we still needed to confirm the exact issue before taking drastic action. I even told himnever a good sign for a customer to saythat if he wasnt interested in detecting the leak, I could find another company.

Since I had to leave, I put my dad in charge. The technicians drilled three holes through my flooring and slab, something the previous technician did not need to do, and then supposedly located the leak, marked the spot with blue tape and left. Unfortunately, my dad is hard of hearing, and with the technicians accent, communication was difficult for him.

They probably did try to tell him more details, maybe.

Later, I had to call the 800 number again to request a report because my plumber needed more details. The technicians claimed the leak was under the slab beneath my sink, but my plumber couldnt determine whether it was in the main line (which runs under the sink to the valve in the garage) or in the branch line that supplies the sink, toilets, etc. Without this information, we were left uncertain about how to proceed.

Final Thoughts:

My experience this time around was frustrating.

The lack of a clear report, the upselling before even investigating, and the additional drilling made me lose confidence in this company. Based on this, I can no longer recommend them.

American Leak Detection came out and found about a 5 foot section of broken sewer pipe - charged almost $9,000 to fix this. Then tells me I have a lot more (based only on the employee's experience, not because they actually saw the leaks with any camera), and they will fix one at a time.

I had a plumber come out and run a camera through ALL of the pipes, and all were either broken, cracked, or collapsed (and he didn't charge me for the camera work).

He replaced ALL of the pipes under the house for $25,000. ALD would have put me into bankruptcy before we even fixed 3 more of the leaks they couldn't find, but knew were there.

Came out promptly. "Found" leak in sun room.

Plumbers busted tile floor and concrete then dug 2' in red clay (inside the house). No pipe nor leak. Plumbers figured it out that leak was outside the house. Had plumbers just waiting on them for about 4 hours so he could comet back out...he was a ways away.

However, the company is literally 1.2 miles away. Plumbers were right. Leak outside under patio. So, more busting up of concrete.

Needless to say, ALD costed me about $1300 extra (not including their $) to locate a leak that was 10' away from where he said. Office manager's response when I inquired..."It's not an exact science." May not be exact, in the vicinity would be nice, especially when you prodded outside and water came up out of the ground.

A horrible experience with American Leak Detection in central Virginia. They estimated the job to take 2 hours costing $550.

We have a very small yard and house but for some reason it took nearly 3 hours and we were charged $700.

While that was bad, they were off on their location by over 20 feet!

Plumbers came out to fix the leak and had to jackhammer a big hole in our concrete slab only to find that there was no leak where American Leak Detection said there was a leak. This error by American Leak Detection cost us $1,200 and they would take zero responsibility for being so wrong.

I reached out and said that I would be very reasonable for some solution but they would not provide any support whatsoever.

DON'T USE AMERICAN LEAK DETECTION unless you are OK with getting ripped off.

I phoned ALD and they said they can come out to locate a water leak, but they will not repair it. Their service technician Nick was nice when he came out and marked an X and square box with black electric tape on my concrete driveway where he said he detected the leak on my main water line under my concrete driveway.

I hired Construction R Us to repair the leak, and unfortunately after cutting *** through my concrete driveway and digging down several feet where ALD marked, there was no water pipe or leak found (Richard the owner of Construction R Us said the mark was *** But after digging around more, Richard's crew noticed the leak appeared to coming from a couple feet away, so they told me in order to fix the leak they would need to take an extra day and charge an extra $500 to re-dig and extend the hole under my concrete driveway. Because of that extra cost, I didn't ask ALD for a refund, but I did ask if they could at least discount their $425 charge. They said there'd be no discount because they refused to believe their mark was off, even after I emailed them photos of their mark and the repair patch for comparison. They didn't believe what I said or what the photos showed.

They told me their technician marked the leak correctly and have no control if/when a plumber doesn't completely excavate the marked area indicated, and they were successful and did exactly what they were hired to do.

ALD argued with me lot back and forth several times before they finally decided to send their tech out with a tape measure and measure the concrete repair patch that confirmed I was right about their repair being outside of their mark. ALD's tech then said he'd charge me $325, but his attitude turned very unprofessional and he started arguing with saying the customer isn't always right before speeding off in his van very angry.

They came out for $575 and patched two small leaks in the low end of our underground pool and said the lines were good, as was the pump. He was there for less than an hour.

I noticed we were still losing water and had them come out again for $225 a week later. He said he found about five new scratches from what he thinks was the pool brush. He patched those and left. When I noticed we were still losing a lot of water, I called them and talked with Ann and basically, they said there was nothing more they could do.

I feel like for $800, there is definitely something they missed and I think we deserved another, more thorough examination of the pool to find out what is really leaking. I am more than disappointed and frustrated at their customer service and will not recommend or use their services again.

I spoke to them first on the phone. at this time I was told they could find my pool leak an fix it.

In most cases it would be completed in 1.5 hours gor a cost of $800.00 he first checked to see how fast the leak was 30 minutes sitting there. I told him when he arrived to the speed, it was loosing water. Then the liner was scanned twice. 40 minutes.

Said liner wasn't leaking. Then he told me to dive to the bottom and plug the main drain. Waste of my time and money. $10 of die (what I originally wanted to do) and would have been done.

They repaired nothing and never found the leak. Stay away, they are a fraud.

On the home page of American Leak Detections website they make the promise, We are the experts in leak detection. You can trust us to get the job done right the first time.

This was not our experience with using their services. We were required to pay the plumber for excavating twice. Each excavation cost us over 2K. The delay causing the leak to continue for days longer than necessary.

When we tried to contact them regarding their invoice, our multiple emails and voicemails were ignored.

We paid the invoice but will not use their services again. Their lack of communication to resolve this issue was extremely unprofessional in my opinion.

Run from these people. The foundation repair people told me I had a sewer line leak and I need a leak detection.

I called American leak detection and Josh came out, no face mask breathing in my face. Josh did not do a leak detection. He said my home has a 3 inch pipe and needs to be a 4 inch pipe and he can't do a leak detection but still charged me $275. there are hundreds of homes just in this HOA subdivision alone and all have 3 inch pipes.

why was I not told that before they came out? He also said to change the pipe would be another $750. so that is $750 plus another $275 a total of over $1000 and that is not to repair anything, that is not even for a leak detection, that is just so they can come out again and charge me again to finally do a leak detection. so they want over $1300 for just a leak detection.

I told him the company said I get a $25 military discount from the $275 and he called me a liar. after going back and forth he lied and said the $275 is including the discount. he finally called someone, took the $25 off and told me to sign his tablet for the $250. it was blank, nothing on the tablet just a place for a signature.

I asked why is it blank and he said that is just how the company has it. I signed and 2 days later some papers showed up with my signature attached to some fake documents saying I agreed the work was professional and I was satisfied with the professionalism. That was fraud, complete lies. I NEVER signed any of that.

Josh should be in prison. I don't understand how they can get away with the government not shutting them down. also when the papers came they changed the numbers from $750 to change a pipe to $950. They just decided to add another $200 so they want $1200 to do nothing, not fix anything and not even do a leak detection.

that is just so they can come out again and charge another $250 on top of the $1200 after that for a leak detection. Josh should all be in prison for attaching my name to some fake documents.

Run from these people. Total scam