Air duct cleaning... scams? And what should proper air duct cleaning cost?
Husband and I used a coupon for $35 air duct cleaning. Seemed too good to be true, but didn’t see the harm in it. We recently purchased the home, and the previous owners used a lot of scentsy and glade plugin crap, so we’ve painted and had the carpets cleaned, and I’ve scrubbed a lot. This just seemed like one more thing I could do to help mitigate the old perfume smells.
The workers came yesterday, 20 minutes past the scheduled window of arrival, cleaned for about 20 minutes, and then the lead guy came to tell me the “bad news.” That I have construction debris in the furnace motor and ducts. He took a video (furnace is in the attic) and showed it to me of him opening the furnace and swiping a finger on a white powder substance, then he cut to the room the attic access is in so I could see it was really my house/furnace (I haven’t been up there, attics and crawl spaces are husband’s territory).
He then proceeds to tell me the cost for a “deep clean” is $900, but he can do it today for $700. Or I could sign up for a 10-year plan of maintenance and yearly duct cleaning for a special of $1200.
My alarm bells were going off, this guy was really dramatic and pushy. We declined the deep clean.
Now I’m worried about our ducts and furnace. We had the furnace serviced and inspected as part of our purchase negotiations and it was deemed fine and functioning. When I mentioned this to the duct cleaner, he said they’d not know about the construction debris because they don’t check for cleanliness.
I’m going to buy a scope to check out the other ducts and see if the debris is widespread. Part of me wonders if he planted the white dust in the furnace and nearby ducting. It could have been white flour for all I know. My husband is going to call the company that did the servicing to see what they actually did, to get a sense of if they’d have known there was construction dust up there.
Am I being overly paranoid? Is this a common scam? How do I go about finding a reputable company to clean my air ducts properly? From what I’ve researched after the fact, a good duct cleaning should take 3-5 hours. The house is 1700 sq ft. Is that accurate? Anyone have an idea on what this should actually cost?
Any insights or advice is much appreciated!
Posted Jul 9, 2019, 6:29 PM UTC
It's a total, 100% scam. How would he know some random dust is "construction dust"? Also, think about it. The dust is sitting there, it's not being circulated through your home. Why is that a problem? If you turn on the HVAC and you have clouds of dust then yeah, get them cleaned but a little dust inside your ducts? NOT A PROBLEM.
Also, that's your filters job.