Illinois Air Duct Cleaning

I tried to use a Groupon and all I got was a very aggressive sales pitch for vent cleaning. Worthless

I would not recommend IL air duct cleaning. They had trouble keeping appointments, showed up late and did a job that I would not be proud of. For full disclosure, I purchased a coupon for a cleaning of the furnace system and vents. I am an owner /occupier of a multi-unit building and have other houses, so wanted to test them out before having additional services completed. I will not be using them in the future. I originally scheduled the appointment for Tuesday October 8, within a window of 8am-11am. They called me the night before and confirmed the appointment for that time the next day. When the crew had not called or shown up by 10:30am, I called the main office and left a message. About 12:30pm, the company called me back saying that they had my appointment scheduled for 1pm-4pm (despite confirming 14 hours before my scheduled time), and wanted to know if I?d be there. I said no and rescheduled for the next week, Tuesday 10/15 from 8am-11am. I received a message on 10/14 confirming my appointment from 1pm-4pm on the 15th, which was clearly not the time I scheduled. I called the company back within 30 minutes and left them a message asking about the scheduled time. I received a call from the company at 10:30am the next morning, again rescheduling for Friday 10/18 from 8am-11am. I did not receive a confirmation call for the third appointment, so figured they wouldn?t even bother showing up. However, at 10:50am on Friday I got a call from the crew saying they were 40 minutes out. If this had happened the first time I may have let it pass, but after all the rescheduling problems, it seems as though they just didn?t value me as a customer. The crew showed up at 11:30am, and seemed nice enough. They attached their machine (glorified vacuum) to the furnace and proceeded to pull off the vent covers on all the output vents and vacuum the inside with a wet/dry vac. As noted in other reviews, apparently return vents are not covered in the ?total vents? portion of the deal. I?m not sure that they really cleaned anything anyway, but they also left a ton of dust everywhere (floors, beds, counters, etc.) from pulling off the vent covers. In addition, I heard them drop something in my furnace, which wasn?t a good sound, and they never said a word about it. They also weren?t prepared for vents in odd locations, so left the vent in my bathroom uncleaned. I was fine with it, because I was ready for them to leave anyway. Cleaning your ducts may be a valuable service, however given the lack of keeping appointments, lack of punctuality, and that they appeared to create more of a mess than they cleaned led this to a very poor experience. I would not recommend Illinois air duct cleaning.

Once the cleaning started, I found out that the 'returns' were not included. Interesting....the Groupon states 'Complete Vent Cleaning'. To me, 'Complete' includes return vents. Then, this guy launches into a sales pitch about how important it is to clean the returns, as this is where mold accumulates, allergens, etc. He removes the vent cover in my dining room, takes a picture and shows me how dirty it is and the picture shows a LOT of dirt. He says he can clean all of the returns for an additional $400 or something ridiculous like that. No. We will not be doing that. Then he tells me I can make an offer on what I would pay for this and he will call his boss to get approval. No again. I didn't do this because my family doesn't have allergies and I certainly wasn't spending $400 to do it. That evening I tell the story to my husband, we remove the dining room vent again, take a picture of the vent ourselves and what do we see? A CLEAN RETURN VENT!!!!!! Conclusion: this guy pretends to take a picture and shows customers another picture of some filthy vent. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!

Aside from spending the extra money (which was my own decision), I thought all was well - until the next day... I noticed in the living room that they had scratched my wood floors pretty badly. Evidently there was a small nail in the foot of the couch. Well, rule #1 is not to slide furniture on a wood floor! The worst part is that they didn't say anything about it. They had to have noticed. Then, to make matters worse, my husband and I called probably a total of 8 times leaving messages over the next week and no one answered or called back!! When I looked them up on BBB, there was a different number listed for a different "Remodeling" company, but had the same address. Weird. So I called that number and they finally called me back. They sent me insurance information so I can submit a claim. Overall, this was a very stressful experience. They did a careless job and then ignored the problem.

Company came late to my house. I never received a call and neither did my wife. Not a big deal, yet needs to be mentioned. My wife said they brought in a lot of equipment and seemed to do a good job. She said they mentioned before they started cleaning that the cold air return vent was full of mold/mildew/etc and it would cost $300 to clean it, noting the deal we purchased never said anything about cold air return vents... She said it felt shady and she called me and we said no to the up-sell. They then spent 30 minutes cleaning our 900 sq ft condo's ducts. My wife never saw a camera inspection for furnace, yet that's ok as I use ComfortMate Heating & Air Inc, (whom I trust) to seasonally maintain our HVAC hardware. I called some other companies today to see if they would come and verify the work that was done, as well as quote us on cleaning the cold air return. The one company (Mr Duct) I found on Angie's List and talked to on the phone said they wouldn't come out to only clean the cold air return as it's already contaminating the previously cleaned ducts and they wanted to charge me $350. That's probably pretty reasonable, yet we live in such a small space, I'm looking for a better deal... Anyway from what I've read and been told, by Illinois Air Duct Cleaning not cleaning the cold air return, we basically threw away $49 which we could have spent on a nice dinner or something fun. At least I now know what to ask before getting my ducts cleaned and what to expect from duct cleaning companies. //Update: I found what looks like the dryer lint all over our back porch when I got home. So the good news is they seem to have cleaned out the dryer vent. Not so good news is they dumped it on our porch....

Very badly! I would never in a million years hire these people again or trust them in any way. The most unethical professionals I have ever encountered. They are highway robbers in disguise!

Quick and efficient workers. Great results and I have clean vents and less allergy problems!

IL air duct called the day before to confirm the appointment and called about 45 minutes prior to arrival. Eli and Mike were the service men. Eli was the lead technician. He explained the procedure then asked me to show him around the house to see all of the vents. He was very respectful of removing shoes when inside the house and polite in general. The work went pretty quickly. Maybe an hour? We have about 14 supply vents and 8 returns. Eli took pictures inside the vents and showed where there were particularly bad places and explained the potential for mold. He was prepared with a la carte options as well as a package option. I declined that day. (I have made it a habit to decline same-day up-services unless it is a real danger or threat so that I can properly evaluate the cost and value of the service.) They cleaned up anything that was moved. It did take a month or two to get the appointment as I did so using a Groupon. Having seen other reviews, it is disappointing to find out that they "discriminated" against Groupon users. However, it is understandable that they would want to space out those discount appointments so as not to overwhelm themselves and, ultimately, provide the best possible service. Can't win, right? :)

unknown

When I scheduled the appointment the guy on the phone told me I would get a call about half hour before they arrived and no one ever called me, they just showed up at my door. Not that I wasn't home, but I would have appreciated the phone call as I was working on something at home before they arrived. They arrived in an "element, with a shop vac and a tool box. I have never been through this before, so I thought it was normal. However, as the day went on....they just seemed very careless as they went through the house with their tiny brush (that is supposed to clean the vents) with a metal head and they seemed to drop it on my hardwood floors with no care. They did show me pictures of what they cleaned and for most of them they were cleaned, but the return duct did not get as clean as I thought. And with only the shop vac to clean it, it was very non conventional...they drilled holes on my ducts and banged on them to move the dust down to the duct. When their shop vac got full, they asked me for a garbage bag because they couldn't' possible bring their own. Second, they went outside and emptied it into the bag and they kicked the filter around outside to clean it. I was shocked that this is the way they clean their filters...just putting all that dust/dirt back into the outside air!!! As my neighbors watch this man do this and come back into my home. I asked them if this is normal practice and then one of the men fed me some BS about normally going to the office to dump it but because it was so much, he had to do it then. Are you kidding me, this is what they do all day every day...and given that they use a shop vac...I am sure after 1 or 2 homes it gets full and they are not going to drive back to the office to empty it or clean the filter..I was not born yesterday! It was just not professional. Lastly, they told me that after the dust settled the first day, I would not have any more dust, but to my surprise, I cleaned thoroughly after they left, and I had dust come out of my vents for the next 3 days...and i am still dusting the house. My husband had to work that day, but after I told him and after he saw all the dust and some of the mess they left in the basement....he was shocked and appalled. I will never use them again.

I called to set the appointment but was told that there were no appointments for another 2 months. I thought that was simply unbelievable and was told that if I wasn't a Groupon customer then my appointment would be almost immediate. It's incredibly bad business practice to treat customers on a tiered level based on whether they have a coupon or not. Now I'm quite concerned that the services they provide me will be second-rate since they've already demonstrated their belief that I'm a second-rate customer. This was an especially poor decision on their part since I own 3 apartment buildings (this was for my personal home) and was considering utilizing them for all of the annual ductwork/vent cleanings at those buildings, but that's very unlikely to happen now. If you're reading this and have purchased a Groupon, don't tell them about the Groupon until after you've set the appointment, something I wish I had done...