Air Duct Cleaning Pros - Scam or just out to make a little extra moo-la?

I bought my house about 3 years ago. The house was about 8 years old when I bought it, making it about 11 years old now. Month after month, I get value pac mailer and one of the offers in the mailer is for Air Duct Cleaning. After putting it off for a few years I finally saw an offer to clean all vents in the home, the return, drier vents (which the other advertising company did not include) and a free furnace inspection for $49.00. I went ahead and scheduled an appointment.

The guys came out pretty much on time, turned off the furnace, wheeled a rather large vacuum machine into the dining area, hooked it up to one of the vents and started it up. Meanwhile one of the other guys went around with a hand-held vacuum to each of the vents. While this was going on, the other guy went to inspect the furnace.

A few minutes later he comes up to me and asks, "Do you have allergies?" I responded, "No" and he said he was surprised and wanted to show me a problem I had in my furnace. I walk into the utility room with him and he reaches into my furnace blower fan and pulls out a dirty finger and says, "You have fungal spores growing in your furnace." He then begins in his sales pitch to tell me about how I have mold and if I don't take care of it right away I'm just going to be breathing it and it is a health risk. He draws me a lovely diagram of my furnace and the circulation and explains that cleaning the return is only about 20% and the air ducts make up about 10% and the furnace is responsible for 70% of the pollutants in the air. He then says truly cleaning the system is a 3-step process. Step one is the air ducts/vents Step two is to have a chemical (which he spelled chimicil) solution that is safe for people, even pregnant people and animals but will kill the mold and bacteria. He said one kit is $75 and covers about 300 sq ft so I would need about 4 kits in my house, but that they could start with the base of 3 and see if a 4th is needed. Then step three is to have the blower cleaned and sanitized which is $195.

Of course, I wasn't expecting to be told I needed $500 worth of additional cleaning so I told him it was a bit too expensive for me right now. Then he says, "Well, I understand you were not expecting to pay this much because you didn't know there was a problem. Let me call my office since you are not a customer of ours yet, and see if we can get you a better price."

At this moment I'm beginning to feel like I've just entered into a car negotiation with a car dealer (which since I haven't blogged about this yet, you will later learn I am VEEEERY skeptical of car dealers and think they are about the slimiest people on earth.) While he's making this call I went outside to talk to my brother who happened to be visiting to see what his thoughts were on it.

The guy comes back to me and says his boss authorized him to clean the blower for free since he's already out here and it's just labor, but the "chimicil" treatment would be necessary. According to what he quoted me, he just wiped out $195 from his quote but he also lost a ton of credibility. Then he says, he can perform a free mold test so that I can see what is growing in the furnace. We go back to the utility closet and he pulls out what looks almost like a strep throat test. It's basically a cotton swab, and a tube with some kind of liquid at the end of it. He swipes some of the substance from the blower fan and puts it in the tube and says we can check it in 10 minutes.

Well my brother and I go to peek at the tube after about 10 minutes and the liquid is still clear, but at the time I didn't realize you needed to pop the end of the stick in all the way into the liquid. Well, when the guy goes to show me the result of my test, he had already popped the stick in. (He did this before he got me, instead of in front of me, so for all I know he just swapped it out with a test in his bag... the whole thing was feeling very shady to me at this point.)

The liquid was purple which meant mold, but I told the guy that I just didn't have the money for the services he wanted to perform... to give myself time to do a little research. First of all, I'm not terribly convinced that this guy wasn't just delivering a well-practiced sales pitch. Second, if there is mold, I'm sure there are home tests that I can perform to verify there is a problem. Third, if a chemical solution is needed to kill the mold, I'm also fairly certain that there are do-it-yourself kits for such things at a much lower price. Forth, if I'm wrong and it needs professional cleaning, I can always call them or another company back out to perform the work and that gives me a chance to compare rates from other vendors in the area.

Upon further research I found a government EPA site with the following information:

You should consider having the air ducts in your home cleaned if:

• There is substantial visible mold growth inside hard surface ducts or on other components of your heating and cooling system
• Ducts are infested with vermin (rodents or insects)
• Ducts are clogged with excessive amounts of dust and debris and/or particles are actually released into the home from your supply registers.

Other Important Considerations...

• Duct cleaning has never been shown to actually prevent health problems
• EPA does not recommend that air ducts be cleaned except on an as-needed basis because of the continuing uncertainty about the benefits of duct cleaning under most circumstances
• If you think duct cleaning might be a good idea for your home, but you are not sure, talk to a professional

 Suggestions for choosing a Duct Cleaning Service Provider

• Do not hire duct cleaners who make sweeping claims about the health benefits of duct cleaning -- such claims are unsubstantiated
• Do not allow the use of chemical biocides or chemical treatments unless you fully understand the pros and cons
• Check references to be sure other customers were satisfied and did not experience any problems with their heating and cooling system after cleaning
• Contact your county or city office of consumer affairs or BBB to determine if complaints have been lodged against any of the companies you are considering
• Interview potential service providers
• Ask the service provider whether they hold any relevant state licenses
• If the service provider charges by the hour, request an estimate of the number of hours or days the job will take, and find out whether there will be interruptions in the work.

What to Expect From an Air Duct Cleaning Service Provider

• Open access ports or doors to allow the entire system to be cleaned and inspected
• Inspect the system before cleaning to be sure that there are no asbestos-containing materials in the heating and cooling system
• Use vacuum equipment that exhausts particles outside of the home or use only high-efficiency particle air (HEPA) vacuuming equipment if the vacuum exhausts inside the home.
• Protect carpet and household furnishings during cleaning
• Use well-controlled brushing of duct surfaces in conjunction with contact vacuum cleaning to kislodge dust and other particles.
• Use only soft-bristled brushes for fiberglass duct board and sheet metal ducts internally lined with fiberglass
• Take care to protect the duct work, including sealing and re-insulating any access holes the service provider may have made or used so they are airtight.
• Follow NADCA's standards for air duct cleaning

Okay, that was a lot of information, but to be to the point, this company didn't do half of that. They did not exhaust the vacuum outside of the house, they used no brushes of any kind, and they basically just put on a show to try to get this chemical up-sale. Needless to say, I'm going to buy a mold kit and test the build-up on the furnace myself to see if his claim is even legitimate. If yes, I'll look into self-cleaning suggestions, or call a different professional to come help me with the problem. If no, I'm going to file a complaint with the BBB because it's terrible to appeal to a person's health and health of their family to make additional money putting chemicals into your home that your home does not need.