I walked up to the front of that booth, past the tents and the food truck and the live radio crew, in my clean shirt.
The installer saw me and reached for his coat, same as the day he shrugged and left my basement underwater.
I did not cuss him out. I had a folder, and the folder was enough.
He told me the warranty was void because I had not paid for annual service. So I asked him the same thing I asked myself. How does a man get annual service on a water heater that did not last a single month?
But that was not even the worst of it. Because I had done one simple thing. I had called the manufacturer and read them the serial number off the tank.
You sold me a brand-new heater, I said, but the maker says this tank was built six years ago and installed once already, so it was never new, and every dollar of that four thousand was for a lie.
A used water heater, cleaned up and sold as new, is fraud. The manufacturer said so. The state plumbing board said so when I brought them the folder, and mine was not the only serial number that had come back wrong on this outfit.
The radio crew was live twenty feet away, and they wanted the story, and I gave it to them plain.
A fall festival does not survive that kind of truth spoken out loud.
Between the manufacturer and the plumbing board, the company folded. They refunded my four thousand, paid to dry out and repair my basement, and installed a genuine new heater, this time inspected by the city.
My grandkids had their hot baths at Thanksgiving, splashing and hollering, not a cold one among them.
That is the whole reason I paid for the thing in the first place.
The plumbing board did not stop at my one tank, either. Once they started pulling serial numbers on the units that outfit had installed around the county, they found a pile of old heaters sold as new, to old folks mostly, people who trusted a handshake the way I did.
Every one of them got a letter telling them what they were owed. Some never even knew they had been cheated. That is the part that stays with me, how many quiet people get taken and never find out, and how one serial number read over a phone can crack the whole thing open.
I keep the receipt for my new heater in a folder now, right where I can find it. I keep receipts for everything these days.
I did not raise my voice. I just read a serial number off a tank and let the truth pour out of it.
Have a blessed day, I told him. Mine has been dry ever since.