Josh Parks of Madison County realized his house was having some plumbing issues a few months ago.
“The house just started basically filling up with water,” said Parks. “Nothing would flush, nothing would drain.”
Josh’s wife was four months pregnant at the time, so he called a professional plumbing service. Once they began excavating through the property looking for the source of the backup they noticed something out of place.
“They dug up my driveway,” Parks added, and “there it was, just a large, orange, cable going right through my sewer line.”
According to WHNT, the plumbers discovered the cable after digging a 10-foot hole in the driveway. The cable came from an AT&T U-Verse installation in his neighborhood, but Parks and his wife are not AT&T customers.
“For probably about two-and-a-half to three days, we couldn’t use any of the plumbing in our house,” added Parks. “We had to travel to family members’ houses and things like that just to get ready for work and to even take a shower or use the restroom.”
Given indoor plumbing’s history, which reaches as far back as 2500 B.C., this isn’t the first and only time AT&T has had this kind of mishap.
Residents in a neighboring Alabama area said that contractors for AT&T left trash, dirt mounds, and large holes in their yard for weeks.
Josh and his wife had to shell out $6,000 for all the plumbing services and an additional $700 to have the driveway filled.
It’s now been two months later, the bills are piling up, the repairs still are not finished and their newborn baby is on the way.
“It definitely gets your mind racing a little bit on how you’re going to handle things when that time comes,” said Parks.
Parks tried to resolve the issue by contacting AT&T, filing a claim and having an investigator take a look at the situation. The AT&T investigator determined that it was the drilling company’s fault that the cable was there and that AT&T had no responsibility for the damage.
So Parks went to the drilling company, Delta Directional, to try and get them to help. “I’ve spent the last two months,” he added, “trying to get the drilling company to take responsibility and pay for it and they’ve refused too.”
Parks is continuing to reach out to both Delta Directional and the higher-ups at AT&T but to no avail.
“I’m just waiting to see if one of these two companies is going to accept responsibility for what they’ve done,” said Parks.