American Professional Chimney & Masonry

I thought the service was fantastic. The team arrived on time and they did a very professional job. It was everything that I was expecting. They were really nice. When I had called to schedule the person answering the phone was not discourteous but I had to ask her a few more questions, like did she have the address. I had not purchased anything through Angie's List before, so I wasn't aware of how the whole system worked. I asked what sort of time should I expect them and she said that they'll call the day before to let me know, so I said okay. From my perspective it would've been nicer for her to say upfront that they didn't set times that far in advance and they'll let me know if it works the day ahead of time. I was planning on taking the day off of work anyway, so it didn't have an impact on me. When the people were here it was fantastic. Once I asked the questions and got the answers it was fine, but I normally expect the person to tell us what we need to know. It was not that it was a bad experience on the phone, but the person could have been more helpful.

Scheduling folks called to say their sweeps would be early which was nice, although I was here all day. Despite what my coupon says, my gas furnace chimney does not need cleaning. Since I have no fireplace, the assistant went back to their truck and the Head Sweep inspected my chimney from both the roof end and the furnace end. The inspection revealed that the stainless steel liner was fine but some pin tucking was needed in the chimney masonry. He was not equipped to do that work today, but wrote a proposal which we signed to have the work scheduled. He says the inspection fee is deducted from work that is done, so he deducted the cost of my coupon from the to-be-scheduled work. He was a very nice, capable, communicative young man, a pleasure to deal with. Another excellent crew came and tuck pointed my chimney.

They found that one or more of the 33 year old stove pipes required replacement. The horizontal pipe was half full of ashes and soot. Once the stove pipes were replaced, the stove fired up more quickly and provided better heat.

We had encountered some flooding in our basement and Neil Brown, the foreman who provided the estimate, suggested we spend almost $60,000 on a full french drain, trench, repointing etc. to fix the issue. We declined most of this work and proceeded only with repointing and painting of the brick around our house and under our front porch at a cost of $5-6K. PROS: I think the actual repointing work that was done under our porch was done well. However... CONS: There were multiple, serious issues with this job. First, while I found Neil Brown to be a conscientious and honest contractor, his crew lacked professionalism on many levels when Neil had to be off-site due to some personal family issues. One of the crew fell asleep and took a nap on our back porch during the job. They asked me to rush home from the office to pay them when they finished and when I arrived, I paid them their check and noted they had left debris and dust all over the front porch from the repointing. When I asked that they clean it up, they said "You can clean that up yourself, can't you?" It took multiple days, calls to managers up the chain, and rescheduled appointments for them to finally come back and finish the job by painting the brick. At this point, we inspected their work around the house more closely and found many areas untouched and sloppily re-pointed. I could go on -- this was really a nightmare job. FINAL VERDICT: Neil came back after almost a month and a half to personally re-do the job himself. We appreciated that he did this but obviously all in all, we regretted hiring this company and felt we wasted our money on a crew that was messy, disrespectful, and sub-par. We feel very lucky we did not accept their initial $60K estimate of work and only went with the pointing in light of our experience. Sorry guys -- while Neil did his best to work with us and rectify the situation, ultimately I cannot recommend this company.

He came over and gave me an estimate and told me what was wrong and what should be done. The estimate went well. He was very professional, polished and knowledgeable. I was very pleased with him.

Very professional and thorough.

I asked for an estimate, and two estimators came right out and promptly provided the estimate. When I was ready to have the work done, I asked for an update to the estimate, basically I had originally planned to put in an insert but now wanted the firebox rebuilt. I called on a Tuesday, the receptionist promised the estimator would call me back by Thursday. I heard nothing all week and called the next Monday, the receptionist apologized and told me the estimator would definitely call me by the end of the next day, and if not I should call again. I waited all week again, and never heard back. I was absolutely ready to go with this company, I just wanted the change to the estimate in writing. However if a company is this bad at responding in the sales phase, I hate to think how responsive they'd be once they had my deposit in hand. One missed return call isn't a big deal, two in a row indicates underlying problems to me and I'm not going to take the risk. The really baffling thing is why they spent an hour of their time to come out to the house for the estimate, then couldn't find the time for a 5 minute phone call to finalize the sale! That 5 minutes cost them $5,000.

They were quick, knowledgeable and cleaned up completely. Would definitely return to them for another chimney sweep. They also inspected the chimney. Gave a full report of the state of the chimney.

Being accustomed to waiting for service providers, I was pleasantly surprised when the APC team arrived 15 minutes EARLY for the two-hour service window. Brian and Rudy were professional, friendly, and extremely tidy. During the inspection, Brian found an issue with part of the chimney, and he explained clearly the amount of work required and cost to fix it. Most importantly, I was very impressed with his honesty that we only needed to hire them to do the repair if we planned to use the second fireplace. We bought the Angie's List special deal for $119, which only covers one fireplace, and paid an additional $49 to have the second fireplace cleaned. The service we received from Brian and Rudy was so great that I highly recommend APC. That said, potential customers should be aware that APC headquarters only calls the day before the appointment to tell you which two-hour window you have been assigned. So, essentially you need to block out the entire day until then. I was told that they make those calls around 3:30pm, but I hadn't been contacted by 5:30pm and eventually called them so that I could clear the rest of my calendar. It would be preferable if they would commit to a service window at the time you make the appointment.

It went great, very thorough and quick and were courteous enough to keep the floor area clean. There were no issues but mentioned that the chimney inspection went great before they left.

Bought the daily deal for a sweep. This was a home I'd just purchased that was 60+ years old. They came out and checked the chimney. It had never been used, so it did not need a cleaning. However, it had developed issues over time. They performed the work listed above. I had a lock box on the home, so scheduling was not important to me, but they were originally supposed to start on a Friday morning but due to work at another site they did not start until Friday afternoon. I have not used the chimeny yet, but it looks good. I was not there at the time of job completion to go over things with them. They applied the value of the daily deal to the cost of the repair work.

They were very professional. While there was a bit of a language barrier they knew their job very well, had a couple guys to make the job go faster, and brought a tarp to make sure the area surrounding the fireplace stayed clean.

The gentleman who did the review was very nice, punctual and professional. He did a fine job. My complaint is that we were told this was a $200 value we were getting as a $60 ANGIE's list "big deal", and it the outcome did not seem to be worth $60 much less $200. It was basically a quote for them to do follow up services. Perhaps the deal wasn't explained well enough -- our basement is finished and he seemed like he expected to be reviewing an unfinished baseement. (We purchased the deal to get a review of our garage and the deck on top of the garage). Overall his review was useful, we just don't think it was worth the cost because it was an essentially a quote. Also, it took them 2 weeks to send us the report.

Neil called me within a day of purchasing the $59 big deal for a basement / foundation inspection. He was punctual for the appointment and was very pleasant during the appointment. Since I purchased the big deal, I had anticipated a bit more than a 'walk around' the inside and outside of the house. I should have done my homework as I have since found out that most companies give free estimates. The services recommendation were extensive, and Neil said that would be the case when he did the estimate. He recommended external excavation, which i am not even sure would have been feasible with OSHA regulations about trench width and depth. Also, excavating around a 1920s house made me nervous. I don't really feel like I got a good assessment of the issues in our basement. Also, my sense is that this company might be starting a new line of business with waterproofing, but I am not certain.

It didn't really "go" -- which is not a bad thing. The inspector knew I was going to get a mold inspection for my basement, and thought it made much more sense for him to do his inspection after the mold inspection, for a variety of reasons. This seemed reasonable to me. I have not yet been able to get a mold inspector to come out, so the basement inspector couldn't finish his inspection, but he said I should call back once that's done and he'd gladly go through it. I was glad to have the option, as I suspect his reasons for waiting until after the mold inspection are sound. I'm not really sure how to grade something that wasn't completed, but I decided on B. The experience was fine, but there was some initial problem with communication.

Neil was very detail oriented in his assessment and quote of all the phases of the job. It was a little difficult to try and follow up with him, but when we finally connected, he answered all of our questions. We will probably go forward with the work in stages as recommended.

I should have provided this review a long time ago. They cleaned my chimney sometime last year and I can't remember the date or the price. (I included the date and price above but I don't know if that is accurate). I remember that the price was reasonable, which is why I took the deal. I also remember that they were prompt, very professional, and did a great job. They were very meticulous about covering the carpeting in the family room (which is beige) and there was not one drop of soot anyplace when they were finished. I would definitely hire these guys again.

They showed up early protected the work area and even repaired the vent cover that fell off with no charge. The price was very competative. Only concern is, no matter how much they try to contain the dust its still gets durty around the work area.

Want to get more estimates for my problem

They were very professional and did a very good job. They cleaned up after the job and explained all the work that needed to be done. I am very happy with the company and the workers.

I opted for an Angie's List $59. special deal to have an evaluation done by American Professional Chimney and Masonry for waterproofing my basement. I tried for over a week to get someone to call back and set up an appointment. I complained to Angie's List and they interceded with an attempt at contact as well. After another week I finally gave up and asked for a refund. Only after that did I hear from American Professional Chimney and Masonry. A very nice guy, Neil Brown, called and set up an appointment to evaluate my basement. He was on time, seemingly knowledgable and thorough and spent about a half hour studying my basement. About a week and a half later I received the results of his study. Not knowing much about basement waterproofing I called Neil for clarification of the evaluation. He said he'd be back out the following day, but never showed up and nobody bothered to call. I emailed a few times, but he never responded. My feeling is that If I'm having this much trouble just getting this company to respond, I'm only asking for trouble hiring them ..... and I'm disappointed in Angie's List for aligning itself with a company like this.

I was unable to use the big deal due to the company not showing up for an appointment and having other scheduling issues.

Prompt scheduling, reminder phone call the day before service, and another phone call to let me know they were on there way. They were right on time, explained everything they were doing to me and let me know that my chimney was in great condition and didn't need any work other than the cleaning which I'd already paid for. Very professional team and I would hire them again and recommend to others.

For the first project in installing the chimney cap, they were excellent and would highly recommend them to any. They were professional, prompt and the crew knew exactly what they were doing. The second project was to add crown coating. Previously when they were working on my house they showed an explained that the cement on the top part of my chimney was cracked and damaged. I had them come back and do the job. The showed before and after pictures of the chimney and it looks great. I was there the whole time watching and they did a great job. I am contacting my home owner association to tell them about this company. They were very honest and reasonably priced, I would highly recommend them for any chimney work. The professionals that came out where Manuel and Juan and they did a fabulous job.

They were FANTASTIC--it couldn't have been any better! The crew chief, Neil Brown, is simply outstanding--he's extremely knowledgeable, does all he can to help the customer understand the process (and keep the cost down), and he stays right on top of the whole operation to make sure everything is done right, down to the very last detail. Also, the workers show up on time, they are smiling when they show up and smiling when they leave, they work harder than anyone I've ever seen, and they are the most polite people I've met in about 30 years--in the week they were at my house, every sentence that any of them said to me included the word "Ma'am," as in, "Ma'am, may we borrow your trowel?" It was a real pleasure to have them there! While having your basement dug up isn't exactly one of life's great joys, they made it all go so smoothly--and when they departed, they left my property spotlessly clean, with not so much as a stray piece of gravel left behind. I would absolutely recommend this company to ANYBODY who needs this type of work done, and I would DEFINITELY use them again, anytime! They are simply THE BEST!