The burst pipe at 2am rings someone. It should be you
Vandial picks up every plumbing call, works out whether the water is off and whether it can wait until morning, and books the visit into your calendar. It states your service call fee and nothing else — it will not guess at a repair price down the phone.
From $99 a month · Robocalls are never billed
Incoming callDave Whitfield“Hi — my water heater's leaking all over the garage floor.”
Booked — Tue 8–12, Google Calendar, text sent
- No voicemail
- is left by someone standing in water — they ring the next plumber instead
- 128 hours
- of every week fall outside a 9-to-5. All of them answered
- $0
- billed for robocalls and sales calls, on every plan
This is what your callers hear
The same receptionist a plumbing company gets, answering as the trades we already run. Yours is in the middle — press play.
One plumbing call, and what it left behind
Answered on the second ring. Every field below was captured during the call — nobody typed it in afterwards.
“Hi — my water heater's leaking all over the garage floor.”
Classified0:11
- new job
- emergency
- plumbing
Captured0:34
- address, access, make & model, dog on site
Booked1:04
- Google Calendar
- Tue 8–12
- Dave
Booked — Tue 8–12, Google Calendar, text sent
Read the whole plumbing call, line by line
- 0:02Dave Whitfield: Hi — my water heater's leaking all over the garage floor.
- 0:04Vandial: I can get someone out. Is the water still running, or have you shut it off?
- 0:09Dave Whitfield: It's still going. I don't know where the main shutoff valve is.
- 0:11Classified — new job · emergency · plumbing
- 0:14Vandial: It's usually under the kitchen sink or where the main comes in. Turn it clockwise while I book you in.
- 0:26Vandial: Is this 14 Marlow Street, and is someone home tomorrow morning?
- 0:34Captured — address, access, make & model, dog on site
- 0:47Vandial: The service call is $99 and that comes off the job. I can't price the repair until Dave has seen it.
- 0:58Vandial: Tomorrow morning it is. You'll get a text confirming it shortly.
- 1:04Booked — Google Calendar · Tue 8–12 · Dave
Answered, understood, booked
One number, picked up on the second ring — at 2am, on a Sunday, while you're already working. By the time the caller hangs up, it is in your calendar.
It answers
Two rings, at 2am on a Sunday, while you're already under someone's sink. No hold music and no “our office is currently closed”.
- 0:00Incoming call
- 0:02Answered by Vandial2 rings
- 0:05“Hello, Marlow Plumbing.”
It understands
It asks what you would ask — what's leaking, is the water off, is it coming through a ceiling — and writes the answers down as it goes.
- Job
- Water heater — leaking
- Where
- 14 Marlow Street
- Access
- Side gate, dog in yard
- Urgency
- Today if possible
- Still on
It books
A real slot in your real calendar, with the service call fee stated, and a text to the caller before they've put the phone down.
Text to Dave · 13:01
You’re booked for today, 1–2pm. Reply R to move it.
It asks what you would ask
These are the questions the agent runs for plumbers, and the operational reason each one exists. Change them, add your own, or take them out — they are configuration, not code.
What's leaking, and where is it coming from?
Decides whether this is a two-hour job or a half-day, and which van goes.
Have you shut the water off?
A running leak is an emergency. A stopped one can usually wait until morning — and that is the difference between a 2am service call and a booked slot.
Is it actively flooding into the property?
Water into a living space escalates to you immediately rather than joining the calendar.
House, apartment or commercial — and which floor?
An apartment above other apartments changes the urgency and the liability. A third-floor bathroom changes the kit.
What's the make and model, and roughly how old?
Whether the part is on the van or has to be ordered, before anyone drives out.
How do we get in, and is there a dog?
The two things that turn a booked job into a wasted trip.
More than a plumbing answering service
An answering service takes a message and charges you for it. Vandial knows your prices, your patch and your diary — so it books the job, or puts a real emergency straight through to you.
It picks up out of hours, and while your line is busy
Plumbing emergencies do not happen during business hours; they happen at night, at weekends, and during the freeze when you are already on a job. Vandial covers the other 128 hours in the week — and the calls that arrive while your line is engaged, which is where most of them actually go.
It knows your prices, your patch and your hours
Tell it your service call fee, how far you travel, which systems you're certified on and what you charge after midnight. It answers the questions a message-taker has to say “I'll get someone to call you back” to — and that callback is usually to a customer who has already rung the next plumber.
What it knows
Service call
$99, comes off the job
Service area
12 miles
After hours
$189
NATE-certified work goes to
Dave and Priya only
What matters reaches you. The rest waits
You decide what a real emergency is — water through a ceiling, no water at all, a gas smell — and who it reaches. A tap that drips waits until morning, written up and ready, instead of waking you.
Your rule: if they say gas, flood or no heat — ring Sam, then me.
Every call written up, tagged and searchable
A summary, the full transcript and the recording of every call. When a customer says they were quoted something different on Tuesday, you can go and listen to Tuesday.
Dave Whitfield · Sunday, 4m 12s
Water heater, leaking
Leaking from the base. Booked for Tuesday 1–2pm. Side gate open, dog in the yard. Asked whether the service call fee applies — told $99, waived on repair.
The freeze, and the thaw after it
A hard freeze does not produce more calls; it produces all of them in the same ninety minutes. Pipes burst as they thaw, so an entire town rings between 7 and 9am on the same morning — and your line is engaged from the second call onward. Vandial answers all of them at once, triages by whether the water is off, and hands you a queue ordered by damage rather than by who redialed hardest.
When it happens · Hard freeze, and the thaw 24 hours later
A normal month, then a surge month
- Billed per minute
- Your baselineTriples with the calls
- The bill peaks in the same week your phone does.
- Billed per call, like a human service
- Per call, every callEvery extra call, billed
- Including the robocalls and the wrong numbers.
- Vandial
- From $99 a monthThe same
- Call flows are unlimited on every paid rung, and there is no per-minute billing. The rungs differ only in how many unique customers you answer for — and a surge is mostly more calls from the same people.
Robocalls and sales calls are identified and zero-rated on every plan. They never count toward your included customers and never create a customer record.
What it will never do
You are handing your phone to something that talks to your customers when you are not there. These are the lines it does not cross in plumbing, and the words it uses instead.
Gas is never our call
If a caller mentions a gas smell, the agent stops qualifying immediately. It does not book, price, diagnose or reassure. It tells them to leave and call the gas emergency line, then alerts you — a single mishandled gas call ends a company.
What it actually says
“If you can smell gas, please leave the property and call the gas emergency line on 0800 111 999 now. I'm alerting Dave as well.”
Sewage indoors goes straight through
Foul water in a living space is a health matter, not a scheduling one. It is transferred to a human on the spot rather than added to tomorrow's calendar, and it is flagged in the record.
What it actually says
“That's not something I'll book in for the morning — let me put you through to Dave right now.”
It never prices a repair down the phone
It states your service call fee, because that number is fixed and you gave it to us. It will not estimate a water heater swap or a re-pipe from a description, because the confident wrong number is the one that loses the customer at the door.
What it actually says
“The service call is $99 and it comes off the job. I'd rather not guess at the repair — Dave will price it once he's seen it.”
The job lands where you already work
Google, Outlook, Apple, Exchange, CalDAV — whichever calendar you already keep. Then your payments, your CRM, and whatever you automate with.
…and a lot more besides
- Warm transfersWarm transfersAnnounced — who is calling and why, before you take the line.
- Spam never billedSpam never billedRobocalls are spotted, zero-rated, and never become a customer.
- A number per sourceA number per sourceVan, yard sign, Google listing — see which line brings the work.
- Team & on-callTeam & on-callTries you, then a second number, then whoever is on call.
- Run it by textRun it by textReply to a text to move a job, block a morning, clear a day.
- Clear a day, everyone toldClear a day, everyone toldCall off a wet Tuesday; every customer is told and re-offered.
- Never invents an answerNever invents an answerNo price or slot it was not given. It takes a message instead.
- Any trade, no codeAny trade, no codeGoal, questions and guardrails are settings, not a rebuild.
What plumbers say before they say yes
Three objections, in the words they are usually put in. Where the objection is right, it says so.
“My customers will know it's not a person.”
Some will, and the ones who do mostly don't mind — they mind waiting. What loses a plumbing job is a fourth ring, a voicemail beep, or a hold tone at eleven at night. The agent says what it is if it is asked, books the job, and the customer has a text thirty seconds later. Nobody ever chose a plumber because a human answered; they choose the one who turns up.
“My jobs are too complicated to book over the phone.”
The booking is not the complicated part — the diagnosis is, and it does not attempt one. It finds out whether the water is off, whether it is coming through a ceiling, and whether it can wait until morning. That is the same triage your partner, your apprentice or your answering service already does, done identically at three in the morning.
“What if it says the wrong thing about a price?”
It can only say numbers you gave it. Your service call fee is a setting; a repair price is not, so it refuses to guess and says so out loud. That refusal is the point — the confident wrong quote is what loses the job when you arrive and the real figure is different.
Plumbing questions, answered
What plumbers ask before handing over their phone number — and what a plumbing answering service can and cannot do for you.
Will it quote a price for a repair?
No, and that is deliberate. It states your service call fee, because you gave us that number and it is fixed. It will not estimate a repair from a description down the phone — the wrong number quoted confidently is what loses the job when your plumber arrives and the real figure is different. It books the diagnostic visit instead.
What happens if someone rings about a gas smell?
It stops. It does not book, price, diagnose or try to be reassuring. It tells the caller to leave the property and call the gas emergency line, and it alerts you at the same time. The same rule covers sewage in a living space and water anywhere near electrics.
Can it tell a real emergency from someone who just wants it done today?
That is the triage. Is the water still running, is it coming into the property, is anyone without water entirely — those three answers separate a service call from tomorrow's first slot, and you set where the line sits. Everything below it is booked normally and written up for the morning.
What about the freeze, when every phone in town rings at once?
It answers all of them simultaneously. There is no queue and no busy signal, so the customer who rings you third gets the same two-ring pickup as the first. They come back to you triaged and ordered by damage rather than by who kept redialing.
Does it know which of my engineers can take which job?
Yes, once you tell it. Gas work goes to whoever holds the ticket; an unvented cylinder goes to whoever is certified for it. It books against the right person's calendar rather than against a generic slot someone then has to reassign.
Do I have to change how I work?
No. You can run it entirely by text message. Reply to a notification to move a job, block out a morning, or clear a day you have lost to a big leak and have every affected customer told automatically.
What does it cost?
There are three paid rungs — Starter, Professional and Business — and the only thing that changes between them is how many unique customers you answer for in a month. Call flows, engineers, transfer destinations and full call history are unlimited on every one of them. Robocalls are identified and never billed. See the plans at the bottom of this page.
Already decided you want AI to answer it?
Then the question is which one, and that is a different page: what a generic AI receptionist gets wrong on a plumbing call, and what is configurable about this one.
Not your trade?
The agent's questions, urgency rules, escalations and vocabulary are all configuration. Nothing about a trade is hard-coded, which is why there are 31 of these and not one.