Air Duct Maintenance Inc

We scheduled a whole-house duct cleaning & sanitizing with Air Duct Maintenance for 8 AM. The job was supposed to take 4 hours and cost $636.65. The truck arrived on our street at 7:40 AM and they waited in the truck until 8:00 (we have no problem with this as they were exactly on time).

Their tech - Richard - came in and took off the first vent cover. In doing so, paint build up caused chunks to be ripped from the wall and baseboard molding. When we saw that we asked if that would happen on every vent and their foreman Carlos said "probably". I assumed he would be able to run a utility knife around the vent edges to break the paint seal and avoid damage but he said they just pull the vents off. Seeing this and knowing that we didn't have paint to touch up all the walls in every room (all different colors), we asked them not to go any further. Carlos said I needed to decide what to do quickly as they had other jobs to get to.

By this time it was 8:20 and I told Carlos that since I didn't want to incur the time & expense of trying to match paint to repair damage in each room, they should just stop and I'd pay them for their time, assuming it would be for 30 minutes or so. Carlos called his office and was told to charge us $155.15. When I expressed disbelief at the price for 20 minutes, he was embarrassed but told me his boss made him charge that much. He then offered to apply a coupon, bringing the total "down" to $133. I wrote the check and Carlos encouraged me to write some comments on the invoice, so I did. The comments described my frustration at being charged so much for so little time. By 8:30, the crew was gone.

The next day I got a call from someone at Air Duct Maintenance (Frank, I think) who was concerned about my comments. Thinking he was going to be understanding and apologize for charging so much, I explained my side. Instead of apologizing, Frank told me how I needed to understand that the crew left at 7:00 AM to get to my job and then they had to rush around to find another job. Even when I explained how the truck sat on my street for 20 minutes and their foreman told me he had other jobs to do, Frank basically said "too bad". At the end I told him that he had my check and to do whatever he felt was right. He cashed the check. So basically I paid 1/4 of the job cost to have a wall and trim damaged with no cleaning done whatsoever.

Understand that if you call Air Duct Maintenance, your choice will potentially be to have all your walls damaged during cleaning or to pay whatever exorbitant fee they deem necessary. They will not take any care not to damage your property and if you complain, they will call to harass you into accepting their fee.

Do not use this company!