Verified Company
Quick to Respond, but Provided Sub-par Parts and Would not Warranty Their Work
I wrote a previous review about Bruce MacKay Pump and Well Service and as I submit this one it will be deleted, so I'm including it in this one. Please note that I am not an angry reviewer, but I am disappointed in the service we received from them. This is a somewhat long read, but I feel that people need to know that there was a lot that happened that did not make me happy and not all reviews can be good ones.
10 October 2026 - In May 2025, McKay sent out a crew to diagnose/repair our 300-foot deep well. They troubleshot and determined the pump motor was shorted and needed replacing. While pulling the motor out of the well casing, they snagged the Pitless fitting and broke the pump coupling pipe. The trainee quickly grabbed the pipe that was falling and prevented 260 feet of pipe and the pump from getting dropped back into the well - I definitely give huge kudos to him and his quick thinking.
They finished removing the pump and discovered it was a 2hp, 15-gallon per minute (gpm) unit, and also discovered they didn't have the same thing on the truck. Instead, they installed a 1.5hp, 10gpm pump and motor and got the well running again, telling me that their pump manager said "it would be fine". As they were dropping the well pump back down into the well, they skinned the power cable on the inside lip of the well casing. I called him on it and once again, I was told, "it'll be fine". They finished up with the install and, after our home warranty paid $1500 to them, MacKay charged us over $4500 for the rest of the bill. The pump they installed could never keep up with the demand of watering one zone of our drip systems, which means that it would cycle on but never turn off until the drip system was turned off and the pressure was allowed to build back up. Yesterday, Oct 9, 2026, the pump failed again. I called our home warranty company again and they sent out Bruce MacKay Pumps again. The technician, who was the one that grabbed and saved our well pipe last year, tested our pump and determined that we had a short in the well again. When we discussed what was in the hole he became super apologetic for being a hand in installing a 10gph 1.5hp pump and motor in a 300-ft well, especially after I told him that it struggled to support our drip-system watering. They did not warranty replace the pump/motor and he put everything back together. I called Mike Hack at Capital City Well Drilling and Pump and will have them replace the pump with the correct size.
19 October 2026 - Capital City Well Drilling and Pumps came out today and replaced our undersized well pump with the correct size. Before they got started I told them about our experience with MacKay last year, and as I expected/told Mike, we found the power cable skinned and burned on the constant hot (black) lead in the cable about 60 feet down in the well. It had arced against the inside of the well casing and was tripping the overload circuit breaker on the well control. Mike and his crew replaced the undersized 1.5Hp/10gpm pump with the correct size 2Hp/15gpm pump (which was the same as the original that Capital City Well Drilling & Pump originally installed) and control and replaced the power cable. The cost is approximately half of what MacKay charged and the job was done right, with nobody telling me that "it'd be fine". As I'm typing this, I am running a drip system, the washing machine and the dishwasher, and I've observed the well system switch on at 40 P.S.I. to demand, fill the tank to 60 P.S.I. pressure, and shut off again, just exactly as it is supposed to do. As I said previously in this review, I'm not angry; I'm just disappointed in the quality of service that we received from Bruce MacKay Pump and Well Service and feel that this review should receive only one star. Take it as you will, but be aware of what could go awry and how much it could cost.
Date of experience: 19 October, 2026
Date of experience: 19 October, 2026
