In their own words
Rated 4.9 by the people we work for.
Thirty-nine years in Southampton and most of our diary still fills up the old-fashioned way — one neighbour telling another. Here's what they say when we've packed the van and gone.
4.9
★★★★★
Burst pipe under the stairs at half eleven. Robert was here by midnight. That's the whole review.
GW
(Fictional review for demo purposes)
Gemma W.Freemantle · March 2026
★★★★★
Our old boiler gave up the week the clocks went back, typically. Priya surveyed on the Tuesday, talked us into the Silver package at £2,650 and — more impressively — out of the Gold one we didn't need. Fitted Thursday, house warm by teatime, paperwork emailed before her van had left Hill Lane. You can see why half our street uses them.
CB
(Fictional review for demo purposes)
Colin B.Shirley · October 2025
★★★★★
Full refit of a very tired ensuite just off Portswood Road. Fifteen working days quoted, fifteen delivered, and the grout lines are honestly a work of art. They even rehung the door so it stopped catching on the new tiles.
AK
(Fictional review for demo purposes)
Aisha K.Portswood · May 2026
★★★★★
Kept getting a blocked gully every few months and other firms just jetted it and left. Solent & Sons put the camera down, found root ingress nine metres in, showed me the footage on a tablet and priced the repair there and then. It hasn't blocked since.
TH
(Fictional review for demo purposes)
Tom H.Bitterne · January 2026
★★★★★
No hot water, December, three-week-old baby in the house. Rang at 6:50am; Marcus was on the doorstep at 7:45 and had the diverter valve sorted before nine. He even boiled the kettle for a bottle while he worked, which tells you everything about how this firm trains its apprentices.
LD
(Fictional review for demo purposes)
Laura D.St Denys · December 2025
★★★★☆
Boiler swap done well and the price matched the quote to the penny. Four stars not five because the install ran into a second day and I had to chase for the flue paperwork rather than it arriving as promised. The engineers themselves were faultless — tidy, polite, good with the dog.
SM
Steve M.Sholing · November 2025
Response from Solent & Sons
Fair comment, Steve, and thank you for letting us put it right. Your job overran because we sent one engineer to what should have been a two-person flue run, and your certificate then sat in an inbox for four days — both our fault. Installs like yours are now scheduled as two-person jobs as standard, and commissioning paperwork goes out automatically within 48 hours.
— James Draper
(Fictional review for demo purposes)
★★★★★
They turned my mother's bathroom on Victoria Road in Woolston into a proper walk-in wet room in eight days — level access, grab rails exactly where the occupational therapist wanted them, no fuss made about any of it. Mum is 87 and told the engineer he was "a good boy". High praise indeed.
PR
(Fictional review for demo purposes)
Pauline R.Woolston · February 2026
★★★★★
Blocked loo on the Sunday of a heatwave. £95 quoted on the phone, £95 on the card machine forty minutes after Marcus arrived. No drama, no "while I'm here" upselling.
JF
(Fictional review for demo purposes)
Jordan F.Swaythling · July 2026
★★★★★
I manage four student lets in Highfield and a tenant rang me in a panic about water coming through a light fitting. One call to Solent & Sons at 10pm; Robert had it isolated and made safe within the hour, and I had photos, an invoice and a repair quote by breakfast. For a landlord, that communication is worth more than the fix itself.
NS
(Fictional review for demo purposes)
Nikhil S.Highfield · April 2026
★★★★★
Annual service and the landlord certificate for my flat, £75, booked for 8am and the knock came at 7:58. Same engineer as last year, which I like.
MO
(Fictional review for demo purposes)
Margaret O.Bassett · September 2025
★★★★★
Cracked basin swapped and a new mixer tap fitted in under two hours. Priya spotted the isolation valve was seized and replaced it on the spot, without adding half a day's labour like the last lot tried to. Straight talkers, fair bill.
DC
(Fictional review for demo purposes)
Dave C.Totton · June 2026
★★★★☆
Drains jetted and running properly for the first time in years, and the camera survey afterwards was genuinely interesting to watch. One star off as the arrival slipped to the very end of the afternoon window — though the office did ring twice to keep me posted, which softened it.
FL
(Fictional review for demo purposes)
Fiona L.Eastleigh · August 2026
All reviews on this page are fictional and written for demonstration. Names, dates and any prices mentioned are illustrative (demo).
Behind the rating
We read every single one.
Friday morning, 7:30, the yard: the week's reviews get read out over tea before the vans roll. The engineer who's named takes the credit — and, by tradition, buys the biscuits the week they get a mention.
Anything under five stars gets a phone call from James the same day. Not to argue — to find out what we'd do differently. Two of the biggest changes to how we run the firm started life as four-star reviews.
- Every review answered within 48 hours, good or bad
- Never paid for, never cherry-picked — the awkward ones stay up
- Complaints go straight to a Draper, not a ticket queue
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