Excel Fireplace & Chimney Inc.

Their profile says they provide free estimates. This is not the case. I called them first because they were nearby, but they still wanted to charge me to drive to my home and view the job so they could give an estimate. Who in their right mind is going to do this, or even choose to select a company that would expect this? For the cost of maybe $60 in gasoline, they lost what would have likely been a $15,000 job.

The repair was never done; my $1000.00 paid deposit was returned to me after more than a month of waiting for the repair. These are the details: A brick on my chimney was loose and then was dislodged during a wind storm, and other of the chimney bricks were becoming loose. A written estimate for repair of the chimney was provided by Excel. I paid $1000.00 up front, which was half of the estimate, and agreed to pay the other $1000.00 after the work was completed. The Excel company employee set up the scaffold and was preparing to climb and do the repair when an employee of the City of Peoria's electric company, Ameren, pulled up and told the Excel employee to immediately disassemble the platform because it was unsafe: it was too close to the electric lines - that no-one had notified the company that this work was planned so that the wires could be turned off by Ameren during the work. The Ameren employee then called the Excel company owner himself to tell him this, and then the Ameren employee did not leave until the scaffold was completely removed and the Excel employee had left with it. The Excel employee told me before he left that the company would be back in a few days to do the repairs. But more than a month went by and I heard nothing more from them. After more than a month with no repairs done or attempted again, I contacted Excel again and asked them to either do the repairs or return the $1000.00 that I had already paid them. At that point, the Excel company said they would return the money, and they did so.

Excellent!!

Nick was very professional, courteous, punctual, and responsive. I was having water issues in the basement and he stated that he previous repair work done seemed fine. He believes it was from not having chimney caps, we added those plus he did chimney sweep which was long overdue since the house was purchased. I would use again. Price seemed fair. He offered a limited guarantee so if there are problems, he would come out and fix it.