Scam Type
Home Improvement Scam
Date Reported
2022-11-18 00:00:00
Victim Postal Code
L2G 7W4
Total Dollars Lost
1900
Scam Description
I called the company to come in and clean my air ducts. 2 people came. While the one person took a hose and blew into my vents, without removing the vent covers, the other person went downstairs to inspect the ducts. He then came upstairs and showed us 2 pictures of our air duct. Claimed there was black mold and suggested we have a procedure done to rid the mold. Gave us the information and offered to call his supervisor to give us a quote on the procedure to fix the mold problem, and the cost. They offered to do it right away for $1700 plus the cost of the air duct cleaning, and we would save the tax. Then he said we were losing heat out of our attic and he went and checked, and our attic was full of black mold and he knew someone who might be able to come and do removal of insulation and replacing it, but because the government grant of $1500 expires in January, he might be too busy to do it. He called a company called Northern Ontario Insulation, who claims to work for Home Depot, and the gentleman said he just had a cancelation for Sunday. The duct cleaning gentleman also claimed if we didn’t have this done, our attic joints would rot and we’d have to replace our whole attic. We were given a quote of $5600, so we booked the appointment and sent a deposit of $560. Because we are older it’s hard to go up on a ladder to check, so the next day we had someone come and look in our attic. There was absolutely nothing wrong with our attic, and we managed to get our deposit back. But when they checked the vents, they put a tissue in and pulled out a significant amount of dirt. When I confronted the company about this, they said I wanted something for nothing. I even offered to let them keep the initial cost of the duct cleaning, but I wanted the cost of the mold treatment returned, because the job was not done. He told me to take him to court.
