Fox4 News helps church get hot tub baptistry repaired

After a Buckner church was left high and dry after a hot tub repairman absconded with a broken part and money, a Kansas City TV station has stepped in to help.

“It’s a big part of what we do,” said Pastor Bob Kaps of Heart of God Fellowship in Buckner as he talked about baptisms.

Except he hasn’t been able to do one since September. That’s when the church’s specially designed hot tub that serves as the baptistery stopped working.

“Well, it quit circulating and quit heating and cold baptisms aren’t good,” said Kaps who founded the church in 1993.

Rick Harvey, the repairman with a record.

The pastor hired KC Hot Tub Repair to fix the problem. He paid repair man Rick Harvey $75 for the service call. Harvey removed what he said was a broken part from the hot tub and said he would call the pastor with an estimate once he’d ordered a new part.

That was more than three months ago.

Every time the pastor calls KC Hot Tub Repair for an update: “There’s a voicemail, but I don’t get an answer back,” he said.

The pastor even tried visiting the address listed for the business, but it turned out to be a private home that appeared vacant.

“I don’t treat people like that, and I don’t expect people to treat me like that,” the increasingly frustrated pastor said.

He wanted to hire a new company to fix his hot tub baptistery but had no idea which part KC Hot Tub removed. With no idea how to get this problem solved, he called the FOX4 Problem Solvers.

FOX4 did a little digging, and reported the news about KC Hot Tub Repair isn’t good.

For starters, both Harvey and his business partner Jena Nowak have felony records. In fact, you can find multiple mugshots of both online.

KC Hot Tub Repair landed an F rating with the Better Business Bureau after failing to respond to six complaints – many of which are even worse than Kaps’ problem. Some people complained that they lost hundreds of dollars to the company.

FOX4 ended up calling KC Hot Tub Repair to get its side of the story and left a message. A few minutes letter Kaps received a text message from the company saying (after three months of waiting) a new part for his hot tub had finally arrived and they could deliver it Saturday.

But Kaps had lost faith in KC Hot Tub Repair. So we found another company with a better reputation to solve his problem: The Water Hole in Lee’s Summit.

That very day, The Water Hole sent a crew out to examine the 15-year-old baptistery. They determined that there’s no part available to fix it. But no worries: The Lee’s Summit company plans to re-plumb the hot tub for free.

“We’ll take care of it,” said repair expert Vance Lee, whose son owns The Water Hole.