A single technician arrived on time and worked his $@!#% off all day. That said, it was obvious that he could have used an assistant. This was best illustrated by the considerable debris left behind. It is true that the debris existed in our home prior to the technician's arrival, but his work disturbed it and rained it down all over my desk, the carpet in my bedroom, and essentially everywhere in the basement with duct work overhead. The fundamental task he was to perform was to remove debris, not move it around. He wasn't averse to work, but there seemed to be a matter of triage--there simply wasn't time for one person to complete the job. An assistant would have gone a long way toward taking care of the collateral damage.

Were it not for what follows, I wouldn't have bothered to write the previous paragraph. The straw was this: the duct-cleaning industry has a shaky reputation--there's no dispute. We've never used such a service, and so we were wary based on general reputation alone, but we were also fully aware that our ducts did contain a significant amount of construction debris that needed to be removed. We recently installed a new furnace, and our furnace contractor recommended Ductworks as well as offering a discount as a perk for buying a furnace. We took the plunge. We thought that Ductworks' offering of before and after-photos was a reasonable hedge against the shaky industry reputation--$@!#%, that's exactly why they offer them.

The work was completed, the technician left, a week passed, no photos. I sent an e-mail to the man I initially contacted about scheduling the work, asking about the photos. Another week passed--no word. I sent a reminder e-mail. That same day I received a reply saying that my initial e-mail had been replied to by Ductworks' Residential Manager, but the reply had gotten stuck in his outbox. If true, that's bush-league work for a customer service operation, but the topper was that they had no photos to send me. There was no explanation as to why there were no photos--there just weren't any. They offered to come back to our house and take new after-photos, but there were, and would be no before-photos. There's just no way around it: that smells bad.

I did not take them up on their offer to have me miss most of another workday so that they could come by our house to knock more debris loose and take after-photos that would not show what the photos were intended to show. That is, what was removed from where, and how much.

Am I 100% unhappy? No. But, neither am I convinced that this is a reputable industry.