Is a four figure bill normal for clearing a backed up main line?

Worked drain side for about a decade, and I can answer the pipe question first: yes, the cleaning was worth doing even if the line is failing. When a main backs up into a shower, the house still has to function while he figures out what comes next. A jetting or even just a good cable job buys him weeks or months to get real opinions and line up a repair without sewage coming upstairs. Nobody shold skip clearing a blocked main just because replacement is on the horizon.

On price, a phone quote for a clog clear is almost always based on a standard cable run through an existing cleanout. Jetting is diferent equipment and more time, and a camera adds more on top. Where I've worked, a jetting job ussually lands somewhere in the few hundred to maybe a thousand range depending on access and how long it takes, and camera work is often a couple hundred, sometimes bundled. Two grand for a couple hours is the very top of what I'd call defensible, and only if they hit something ugly like heavy roots. The first thing your friend should do is call and ask for an itemized invoice. If they billed hourly, he was entitled to be told the rate and to stop the clock at any point. If it was flat rate, he should ask what that rate covers.

Can he hold them to the phone number? Realistically no, a verbal estimate isn't a contract, and jetting is a different service than what was quoted. But plenty of states and cities have rules about exceeding an estimate without approval, and even where they don't, a company that never called to authorize the upgrade is exposed. A calm call asking for a partial refund, with a mention of a review if they stonewall, often gets money back.

And yes, he absolutely needs a second opinion on the broken pipe. Ask for the actual camera footage, not just thier word for it. Some drain outfits call every bad spot a collapse to sell a dig. An independent plumber or even the city water department can sometimes verify the lateral's condition before he lets anyone with a backhoe near the yard.

Something similar happened to my mom years back. Company told her the clay lateral was broken and needed digging up. My plumber friend ran his own camera and it turned out to be roots poking through a joint, not a collapse. He ran a cable with a root saw head through it, dumped some root killing foam down after, and that line is still going fine almost six years later. So yeah, get the footage file before anyone with an excavator quotes anything. Also tell your buddy to ask every company what the phone estimate covers before they pull up, not after. Lesson I learned the hard way.

Agreeing with the point about demanding the actual footage. When I had my lateral scoped a couple years back, I asked for the video file plus the depth and distance readings off the sonde, and that changed everything. The first company said my line was bellied where it crossed the driveway. The readings showed the low spot was actualy right at the city tap, wich is the utility's side, not mine. Saved me from paying to dig up my own yard. Numbers on the recording beat someone's word every time.

This thread makes me a little nervous for my own house honestly. I had water pooling around my basement floor drain last fall and nearly called the first company that showed up in a search. A neighbor talked me down and lent me a small snake instead and it turned out fine, but I had zero idea what any of it should cost if I'd gone the other route.

One thing I'm wondering for your buddy though. When he gets the other companies out, should he tell them a previous company alredy scoped the line and called part of it collapsed? Or does that just anchor them to the first story and the price? I genuinely have no clue which way is better.

One thing I'd want to know before anyone digs anything up is wether the replacement estimate is for the whole lateral or just the bad section, because those are wildly different jobs and some companies quote the full run when a spot repair woud do. Also worth asking whether the work includes restoring the yard, sod, concrete, whatever gets torn up, since that line item alone can double the paper number. My neighbor got three bids last year and the spread between them was bigger than the difference between the cheapest and most expensive contractor on labor once you compared what each bid actually included in writing. Makes you wonder what the dig quote in this case actually covers.