Mailbox-filling handbills proliferate in the spring, promising low-ball prices to clean your carpets, air ducts and chimney. But will the people who send them deliver a bona fide spruce-up, or is their real intention to clean you out? What you should know:
Carpet cleaning
The advertisements may tout carpet cleaning for $10 a room or less, or an entire house for about $60. But that price is often just the “bait” to get inside your door. The “switch” comes in the form of an explanation that soap, preconditioners or stain removal cost more—raising the total price 10 times or more. Expect a legitimate contractor to charge in the neighborhood of $25 per room, cleaning products included.
Another warning sign of a scam is a technician’s offer to “brighten” carpets at an additional cost—sometimes performing a “demo” on a small portion of your carpet that makes the treated area stand out starkly. Also watch out for added charges to travel to your home, and price quotes for additional rooms without taking their measurements. Whenever you call a carpet cleaner, provide room dimensions and ask for the price for everything, which should be less than 30 cents a square foot.
Duct cleaning
Those $99 deals may be tempting, but are they necessary? There’s no proof that air duct cleaning prevents health problems, says the Environmental Protection Agency. But such cleaning may be a good idea if mold is visible in your ducts (just unscrew the vent covers to see), or if someone in your household suddenly begins suffering from unexplained allergies or respiratory problems.
Expect a reputable company to charge up to $1,000 for a typical single-family home, and a quality job should take two technicians with specialized tools at least eight hours to complete, says Consumer Reports.
Workers who arrive with nothing more than a household wet-dry vacuum cleaner are out to fleece you. Instead, get referrals from the company that services your furnace or the National Air Duct Cleaners Association
. Then check reputations with the Better Business Bureau.
Chimney sweeping and repair
These scams often start with mailer offers of $25 to $50 to clean a chimney. But when workers arrive, they find structural damage, the need for a new liner, or an alleged leak of carbon monoxide—all requiring immediate action.
Beware of such scare tactics. Carbon monoxide leakage in chimneys is rare, and should be confirmed with a detector available at any hardware store before work is authorized. New liners are expensive and need to be well-fitted, so get multiple bids. And if your chimney is crumbling, expect to see evidence in your firebox or outside in the form of brick, stone or mortar fragments.
A legitimate chimney sweeping—recommended every two to three years for those using a fireplace at least weekly, or if soot rains down when the damper is opened—should cost between $150 and $200. Ask your local fire department or the Chimney Safety Institute of America for referrals.Read more...
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