Ridgid K-50 (Have you heard of this?)

[Jetplumb7]

I have a customer that had a mainline stoppage. My technician tried running cable thru the main clean out and couldn’t clear the stoppage. Not sure why, but they also tried running cable thru the shower drain with a K-50 and they came up a vent in the wall so they stopped and told the customer we would not be charging him and recommended that he find another company with a jetter.
Customer calls me a month later and says that he had it cleared later the same day by a company with a jetter but in the last week he noticed a sewer smell in the master bath. So he had the company with the jetter come back and video the line and they found a break in his shower drain. (See pics).
He is claiming that we did this damage to his schedule 40 PVC drain with our K-50 and threatening to sue me. I’ve talked to 4 people at Ridgid who tell me that the only way a K-50 (with a drop head) which is what we used could put a hole like this in the pipe is if the pipe was already damaged prior to us running our cable. Has anyone ever seen damage like this is on PVC with a K-50?
The customer has said that he feels the “score” mark on right side of pipe is definitely from our cable.

 

[Lui]

I’ve been clearing drains for 19yrs and the worst damage you can do to a pvc pipe with a drain cable is break a joint apart from old glue or a bad glue joint. You can only break pvc with a cable if the pvc has been in the elements for many yrs and a has become brittle. It is more possible to bust through old cast iron. I’ve snaked and cut 50+yr old pvc in crawlspaces and it feels the same as new. A jetter is more powerful than a cable in the sense that it evenly scours vs sporadic touching of the cable in the line. They’ve been convinced by the other company because they’re trying to get them off of their back. Go there with your camera and redirect that customer back to them.
REMEMBER, if you had broken it you would have seen water right away and even if you hadn’t it would not have taken a month to find out!