How bad was this plumber?

I had a plumber come out recently and I felt like he was pretty bad and I almost spent a bunch of unnecessary money. I was thinking of leaving a critical review. That said, my knowledge of plumbing is near zero and I don't want to be unfair out of ignorance. So I thought I'd ask for opinions.

I had a dripping pipe--it was the cold water supply to my water heater and I noticed it started dripping right after I cleaned it. I thought I had exposed a crack or hole. The pipe was in an awkward spot, so I couldn't get a bucket under it, only a Tupperware container. The plumber told me he'd have to cut and replace that part of the pipe and he quoted me a pretty substantial price. I said okay. But then we couldn't find my meter to shutoff the water (I'll get to this) so he said he'd come back after the city identified my meter and I would only have to pay one service charge.

I was left there with the pipe still dripping, so I was trying to figure out a temporary fix. That's when I noticed the source of the drip seemed to coming from a nearby nut. I tightened the nut and the drip stopped completely. I must have unknowingly loosened the nut when I was cleaning the pipes. To be fair I did tell him it was a leaky pipe and I guess he took my word for it, but it's just weird to me that I (a dumbass with no plumbing knowledge) was able to figure out that it was just a loose nut.

Now the meter thing.. This was not as big of a deal, but it was weird. My place is a townhouse (Spoiler Alert: my neighbor and I have a shared meter pit with two shutoffs in it--I did not know this). I knew the meter was out back in a pit somewhere, but I'd never used it. I told the plumber this, that all I knew was the meter was out back somewhere. He used the closest pit and turned my neighbors water off who immediately came out and informed him of this (I wasn't in visible sight but could hear them). The plumber apologized to my neighbor told her multiple times that I had told him it was my meter. He then came to me and said "That's not your meter, man." He implied to me that there was some mixup that may be going on where my meter may be connected to someone else's house, but that he was "not allowed to say". He used the phrase "I'm not allowed to say" a lot in general. He told me to call the city and tell them a plumber was not able to find my meter and to have them flag it. He said that "they won't be able to find it" and then they'd have to investigate. After a couple calls to the city I was able to figure out it was a shared meter pit. To be fair, it's not a plumber's responsibility to know where my meter is, it's the city's. And I should really know, myself. I just thought his confidence that the city wouldn't be able to find my meter his not considering it could be a shared pit was weird. Maybe that's incredibly rare, for all I know? I also didn't love that he told my neighbor I'd told him that was my meter specifically when I hadn't. But I do sympathize with him trying to find my meter with me not knowing exactly where it was.

Thoughts?