Toronto resident Soruvh, who did not want to give his last name, says he can’t often get through a day without a call from a so-called air duct cleaning company.
“They’re endless,” he said.
Those calls are not only annoying but leaving him with a bad impression of the industry.
I don’t even think about anything other than spam calls when it comes to air duct cleaning.”
For Shane Dasilva, that’s tough to hear but not surprising.
“I’ve been doing duct cleaning in the GTA for 14 years.”
He now owns his own company, Got Dust Inc.
“One of the first things people ask when they hear I am with air duct cleaning is, ‘are you one of those people that are calling me all times of day?’ ”
He’s not.
“We don’t do any cold calling, all of our customers come to us.”
But he says those spam calls are giving the industry a bad name.
“It makes people think duct cleaning is just a scam and not really needed and that’s not the truth.”
Hiya, a Seattle-based company that develops programs to block spam calls says air duct cleaning calls have been ongoing in Canada for years and show no signs of slowing down.
“And the real damage of campaigns like this, is they end up tarnishing an entire industry,” said Jonathan Nelson, who works for Hiya. “There are plenty of very good and reputable companies out there offering a really valuable service. But because of these callers people don’t always see that.”
Nelson says those calls often come from overseas.
“Their purpose is to create a list of sales leads that can then be sold to a company who actually offers the product or service.”
But in some cases, Nelson says, once you accept the offer you could open yourself up to other issues.
“Once they’re actually on your property they’ll start really pushing additional services that often times you may not need.”
All of it frustrates legitimate businesses, like Dasilva’s. So, he’s speaking out to clear the air.
“If you get a call, there are steps you can take to see if the ducts actually need to be cleaned,” he said. “You may want to take off an air intact grill and look inside to see if there’s a lot of dust. You can also take out the filter and see if that’s collected dust.”
Dasilva says he’s been called before to do a job only to discover the home’s ducts were fine.
“If we see there is not an accumulation or a benefit to do the cleaning, we’ll let the customer know.”
On average, a home’s ducts should be cleaned every three-and-a-half to five years.
As for cost?
“You’re looking at $300-$400 for an averaged sized house,” Dasilva said.
But that could vary depending on the size of the home and the amount of dust collected and whether mold is detected.
As for battling the stigma, Dasilva says he does it one job at a time.
“They see that I take the time to do it properly,” he said. “When customers tell me that that they can live in their home and be more comfortable, it makes me happy.
“It just gets the word out there that there are still legitimate companies that do care to do the job properly.”
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