Beware Air Duct Cleaning scams!
To all my friends & loyal air duct cleaning customers, just a word or warning: If it sounds too good to be true, it is!
We actually invited a former manager of a competitor air duct cleaning company to speak at one of our company meetings. We expected him to share trade advice & techniques, instead it was a 20 minute speech on how to milk extra money out of every job. Needless to say, none of us were impressed!
We all see the ads “$75 whole house air duct cleaning Portland Oregon & Vancouver Washington”. If anyone knows how L&I rates work, you would know $75 doesn’t even cover the labor for a 2 person crew for 2 hours, much less the fuel and other expenses.
If you carefully read the fine print, 90% of these “amazing deals” only cover 5 vents and 1 return air. They never include the fogger, a duct inspection or a crawl & attic inspection. Unless you live in a one room studio apartment, your home will have more than 5 vents. The fine print will most likely include a crazy per vent charge after the initial 5 vents included.
These companies are actually training their tech’s to find upcharges. Almost all of the tech’s for these scam outfits are paid on a comission on their upsells. Little tip; There is NOTHING to upsell in Air Duct Cleaning!
In addition to shady upselling techniques, they are trained to do two passes thru each air duct. One preliminary pass to knock debris loose, one more pass to get whatever is left. If you do hire one of these outfits, watch them work and count the number of passes they make with the brush. If they do every single duct vent in your home with no more than 3-4 passes for each duct, it just isn’t physically possible that they are removing all of the debris. In my experience, this training can actually be harmful! If they only make two passes, often the spinning brush will knock mcuh of the debris, pollen, bacteria & mold off the ducting, but the vacuum won’t have time to collect all of it. Now it’s loose in your ductwork, being pushed into the air you breathe and clogging furnace filters, sometimes even damaging equipment.
We train our employee’s to run the machine thru each duct until it is done. Done means spotless, and zero debris left loose inside the ductwork. We do NOT pay comission, all of our Tech’s are hourly. We do however pay susbtantial bonuses, but never on sleazy upsells, our bonuses are paid for great customer reviews.
One more tip: I personally would not hire a carpet cleaner who has outfitted his vac for air duct cleaning. Although their machine may or may not do the job well, they will not have to background training & knowledge in heating systems and ductwork to properly troubleshoot issues in your system.
Good luck getting the best value for your hard earned money, we realize the “deals” are hard to resist, so please do your homework before hiring anyone for any trade!
Please contact us anytime by phone at 503-680-0195 or 360-263-5600
or check out our Websites at Jandmservices.us
