Mr. B's Air Duct Cleaning

We just had our ducts cleaned today and we are extremely impressed. Everyone was friendly and professional-from scheduling until the gentlemen left, it was top notch service. Our home was a foreclosure, had been closed up for over a year and someone had been running a kerosene heater as well. Needless to say, after seeing all the dust, dirt and grime they caught in their huge HEPA filter, I wish we had done this sooner! The sanitizer they sprayed in afterwards smells nice also. The cost was a flate rate, given to us at scheduling and there were no hidden charges. It was worth every penny. When the need arises, we will definitely use Mr. B's again.

I saw their commercial on TV and decided to give them a call. A sales guy came out and went into the attic with me and told me they would clean out the main A/C duct line plus all the small duct lines that went to each room. Even spray in a disinfectant to help it smell good, all for $600. I agreed, and a few days later two guys showed up, supposedly the two best guys Mr. B’s had. We went up into the attic and one of them cut a good sized hole in the duct pipe and looked inside and said, “It doesn’t even need cleaning.”
I looked and saw quite a bit of dust clinging to the inside of the duct, but mostly in the bottom. It looked like someone had taken a dirt clod and threw it down the length of the pipe. The men said that it wasn’t bad at all and they’d seen a lot worse. I said I really wanted it cleaned thoroughly and to go ahead.
They started making comments about how me paying $600 dollars for a couple of hours of work was ridiculous and that I was getting the shaft on this deal. They said it wouldn’t even be a two hour job for what little they would have to do for my me. So I asked how much he thought I should pay, like $250 or something maybe. He said, “NO, but not $600.” Both of them were laughing and poking fun about it.
So as they are working, I ask about the company they work for, the owner, and so on. I ask if they made pretty good money doing this kind of work and the guy that had been with them for 10 years said that they get paid by the job, so the more jobs they do, the more money they make. Now keep in mind that it is Friday about 1:00pm. They said they had one more job in Lebanon to do, which is about 45 minute drive from my house, and would be off for the weekend. I wonder why they said my ducts didn’t need cleaning?
At one point, I saw one of the guys with a cordless drill and a long cable attached with a bunch of blue bristles on the end. Looked like somebody grabbed a bunch of bristles off that thing at the car wash that spins around to wash your car and wired the mangled up bunch of bristles to the end of the thing. I asked him what it was for and he said to run up thru the duct work and spin it with the cordless drill and loosen up the dust and dirt while the suction vacuum machine sucks all of it out. I asked how long it was because it looked a little short. He said twenty feet. I thought about it for a few seconds and asked him if it would reach all the way to the end of my duct. He reassured me that it would. Funny thing is that my main duct pipes are just over 30 foot long in each direction from the furnace.
So later on they were finishing up cleaning out the main large duct and were packing up their equipment. I asked if they were going to clean out all the small duct lines going to each room of the house. They said no, that they didn’t even need cleaning. I wrote them a check and they left. I thought about it for a few minutes and then called the sales guy that came out and asked him what these guys were supposed to do. He says “clean your ducts I thought.” So I told him what was actually done and he said he would call the two guys and talk to them.
One of the guys called me back about an hour later after they left me house, while he was picking up his kid from school, and said they would be back out and clean the smaller ducts but it would be a few days. I’m wondering what happened to the other job in Lebanon they still were supposed to do.
They did come back and do the rest of the job, but before they started, they showed me that they had put a brand new filter in top of their vacuum unit, as if to show me this to prove that when they were through, the filter wouldn’t even be dirty and that the ducts really didn’t need cleaning, like they had said. When they were finished, they were hurrying to pack up their equipment and I asked to see the filter again. Their response was that they had to hurry to their next job and didn’t have time, so I said I’d just look for a second and I unlatched the top of the vacuum unit myself to find a brand new filter that was just filthy with dust and trash form the small ducts they had cleaned. Kind of an awkward moment I guess.
From the beginning the salesman told me that after the ducts were cleaned, that there were going to spray in a disinfectant in there of some sort, to help it smell better. That was never done. When they left, for the next few weeks the air coming from my ducts just wreaked about ten times worse than it did before they were cleaned. I talked to a couple of HVAC company guys and they told me what happened is that when the blue brush thing swirled around in my ducts, it rubbed and smeared the dust and dirt into cooking grease and/or smoke residue from the previous owners who smoked, and it stuck there, pretty much stirring it up and made the smell stronger. And they said that if the company who cleaned the ducts had sprayed the ducts afterward with what they said they were going to, probably called an encapsulant solution, that it would have sealed that dirt and dust and the smell within it which would have taken care of the worsening smell. But instead of having these is out again to do a crappy job again, I just replaced all of the duct work and the problem was solved. But the $600 I paid for duct cleaning was a waste.
So I guess that if I hadn’t been there when they did their work, or went up in the attic with them, who knows what they really would have actually cleaned or done at all. I think they might be getting paid by the job all right, one crappy job after another.
I’m thinking about the housewife who might not know anything about A/C ducts letting these guys clean them while she cooks or does house work. Or the man and wife who let these guys clean their ducts while they are at work at their jobs during the day. These guys left all alone to clean someone’s ducts unsupervised is hard to think about. Especially since they get paid by the job. The more jobs they do in a day, the more money they make. And the quickest way to do a job is to rush through it and do it badly. Like my ducts were done. And then there is the health risk as well from breathing the air after a bad cleaning job was done.