Bought a cheap snake camera for $25 and it found the clog my $200 plumber missed

My kitchen sink was backing up for weeks and the first plumber I called couldn't find the issue after an hour of snaking. I grabbed one of those basic endoscope cameras off Amazon and poked it down the vent pipe, spotted a plastic bottle cap stuck at a T-junction. Has anyone else had better luck with cheap tools over hiring pros for basic drain issues?

2 comments

2 Comments

robert2484h ago

Man that's a great example of how sometimes the simple approach beats the expensive one! I've noticed the same pattern with car repairs too - a $10 code reader told me exactly what was wrong with my truck while the shop wanted to charge me for diagnostic time. And look at @nancy929, she learned the hard way that cheap tools work better when you know how to use them slow and careful. It's like we've all been trained to just throw money at pros for stuff that's honestly pretty straightforward once you get your hands on it. Doesn't that make you wonder how many other everyday problems we could solve ourselves without the fancy price tag?

nancy92913h ago

Oh man that's amazing. I once spent $40 on a drain snake to clear my bathroom sink and ended up snaking it so hard I broke the pipe and flooded the bathroom. So at least you got the right tool for the job.