Air Duct Cleaning Scam Exposed! 

I had a call one day and he used my name and said he was from a duct cleaning company. He said that he had spoken with my husband and just wanted to confirm that someone would be home the next day between 12 - 4 so they could clean the ducts. I said "my husband arranged this?" He said yes and that he agreed to have the $350 payment for the technician. I said "well then I guess he will be here waiting for you." He said great. I then said can you please tell my husband when you see him tomorrow that I would like to meet him because I'm not married that I know of and am very interested in meeting him. 😂 I would have thought he would have given up here but he actually continued the call and said that he could do the cleaning for me if I was interested. I said no. He asked why. I said because we started this relationship based on a lie and I don't think that is a very healthy relationship when I can't trust you. Have a great day! 😂😂😂

I run a local FB group and for a year+, I've had a policy: No Air Duct adverts. I honestly didn't know they were a scam until now, but now I feel better about rejecting them!

I'm from Pakistan, and I've noticed a significant increase in scam call centers here. I'm even aware of the locations where many of these call centers operate. I briefly worked in one of these offices at night, but after learning about their practices, I realized it's considered haram (prohibited in Islam). Unfortunately, there are also similar scams related to braces and internet services that are becoming more prevalent in Pakistan

As someone who used to actually clean air ducts..I've straight up told folks you don't need your ducts cleaned, even when I'd lose money when I did. Can't stand scammers

I own a duct cleaning company in Indiana and am constantly battling these con artists ripping people off and hijacking our name. We actually had one arrested in 2020 as the customer called us to complain about the fact we only "take cash". Once she realized it wasn't actually our company she panicked, I called the local sheriff and he blocked him in her drive until we could get there. These guys are awful. This particular man had 5 warrants out for his arrest for fraud. Stay smart people, do your homework. Thanks for this video.

I worked in HVAC for 25+ years. If you live in a newer house, don’t have dogs or cats, and haven’t done any major remodeling (something that would kick up a lot of dust and dirt), chances are that you don’t need your ducts cleaned. If you’re in an older house and have pets, you may want to have them cleaned about every 5 years. It’s very easy to find local reputable HVAC companies that offer this service. Some carpet cleaning companies, like Stanley Steamer, also do duct cleaning. A reputable company will usually send someone to give you a quote before scheduling an actual cleaning. HVAC companies that don’t do duct cleaning can often recommend someone. Keep local and vet any company you don’t know, like checking with the Better Business Bureau.

This is crazy. I work for a company that does furnace cleaning. I had no idea there was this whole other side to the market.

I’ll never understand the gall scammers have to be so rude, it baffles me that someone clearly in the wrong can be so disrespectful

Ive told the callers, " you were just here yesterday and did a great job". They pause and say thanks and hang up.

I had a legitimate air duct cleaning business. I never had to use social media or advertising of any kind. My work came from word of mouth. You do good work, you get referrals. I was constantly having to explain to people how the scammers worked and how they did sub par work. There's money to be made our there. Just do it honestly and you'll never have any problems.🙂

These scams are so out of control, I literally had to to deal with this type of scam the other day, keep up the good work! ❤

Being a retired A/C mechanic, I agree. I had a commercial high-rise building that had 3' diameter supply ducts that were wide open when they sprayed a coating that covered the steel and concrete girders and the inside of that 3' duct. Since flex-duct became a real popular item, the brush the duct cleaners use will probably DESTROY the inside liner of any flex-duct.

My daughter's experience with this kind of company in Wisconsin was as follows: They gave a quote of around $250 after asking about the house size. They have the people come over and they do the "service" which is only vacuuming out each vent in the house without cleaning the ducts at all, and they say that there was more work than they thought, and up-charged her to $500. The techs only vacuumed the very end of the ducts with no additional air or heavy suction going through the ducts and wanted $500 for doing a small 1500 square foot house.

0:07 my father is the man in the blue shirt holding the bag. He has a legitimate air duct cleaning business and his photos are constantly stolen for these scams. He mostly gets customers through referrals and some Facebook advertising so luckily it hasn’t affected his business. He has a lot of social proof on his business Facebook page which helps. His customers let him know when they see a scammer using his pictures. Unfortunately they are so prevalent that it’s impossible to get them all taken down. It just makes me sad to see my fathers face being used by these scammers in order to trick people.

Unfortunately one of these air duct scammers made it into our HOA Facebook group so I thought they were legit. They gave me quote of $199, 2 guys showed up in an old mini-van, barely spoke English, and began work (1 just smoked outside). I was working from home and within 5 minutes they showed me a photo of tons of lint and said we have mold and need $3200 worth of cleaning. I said no. They said they would do the regular cleaning and then demanded to be paid $400 (apparently we have two duct systems-so they needed to charge double. I said you quoted $199, they said we are not leaving without full payment because we will get fired. I tried to call the “owner” and no answer. I said we will wait for the owner to call me back and they got angry. After no call back the 2 guys getting angrier by the minute. I was home alone with a special needs child, and I just needed them out of my house, so I paid them what they demanded. When hubby got home and I showed him the photos, he said that isn’t even our house. Then of course they disappeared off Facebook. The whole thing felt so scummy-or should I say scammy. NEVER AGAIN!

My Mother (dementia impaired) let a stranger in who said he could clean her air ducts for $135. Luckily, I happened to be there. He walked around the condo counting ducts, got all sad and said since we had so many he would have to make the price$1875. I asked if he really was going to clean the built-in stereo speakers. Fortunately, he got mad and left.

I used to work for a carpet cleaning company that also offered air duct cleaning services. One time I was cleaning this lady's house and asked if she wanted her air ducts done while I was there. She said someone had recently come and done it, so I looked in one and it was totally dirty. I asked how long it took and she said about 45 minutes, and that's when I realized she got scammed. I felt bad so I ended up doing it for her for free lol. I just wanna say, air duct cleaning is a real thing that should be done every 5 years or so. Just make sure you get someone local, and don't use the worst place in the world to conduct any kind of business: Facebook.

“What the f$&@ bro? I’m not from Pakistan!” “Uh, yeah you are” I died from laughter

I love that you bring up the “kindly“! That is one of the many clear signs

I remember running into an air duct cleaning scam 10 years ago. I can’t believe this is still going on.

"WTF, Bro!" Very professional. 10/10 would call again. Thanks for the heads up!

10:53 "hello ben, this is Grant-- uh, Mark, from Duct Cleaning Services" lmfao doesn't even know his own name...

Ya , easy 2b honest.🎉

I used to get calls from people claiming to offer Duct cleaning services. I would tell them I don't have DUCKS but do have a CAT and a DOG, the silence was hilarious.

I grew up in Ontario, Canada and as a kid, the ONLY spam calls we ever got were these stupid duct cleaning calls. Im amazed they are still going on today and have expanded to the internet. I got a call from one last month and they still insisted I need the service even when i said i rent and have no central heat or air ducts.

Bro how he says “What da fack bro?” just killed me 😂😂😂😂 plus I love your videos they’re funny keep up with the same energy

Another amazingly detailed and explained video! Thankyou! Side note* Not enough people thank creators like you for doing this, yes RU-vid pay your and you have membership option, but for the most of us your providing all this for free, both helpful and entertaining content! Thanks Ben!

Thank you for everything you do to help the elderly and vulnerable people like me 🤗🤗

There's a new one propping up in my neighborhood page - mobile car detailing

My family has been getting phone calls for air duct cleaning from these guys for years. They always had the telltale signs of a scam, but I never knew what their angle was. Thank you for doing this research! I was so curious.

whenever i see "kindly" on these scams, it makes me think of "Would you kindly" from bioshock. Anyone who knows the story knows what that means

I stumbled upon this video as I am looking for air duct cleaning services.Your investigative work is very impressive😃👍🏼 Great job exposing these scammers. Thank you 🙏🏼

Tangled webs? Sounds like Toby Magooair needs to get on the case!

If these scammers invested all the time they spend trying to scam people into a legitimate business they'd be millionaires 😂 Thanks for another informative video!!

10:24 why it sounds like Ghast from minecraft

I thought it was a burglary scam, since they had an address and was waiting for someone to show up.

It's great that you're covering this, I kept getting cold calls here in Ottawa and the guys sounded like he was from Pakistan and it was literally probably the guy being referenced by the two guys who were arrested. This was happening awhile ago but it's crazy how small the world is sometimes.

"Kindly" So he's a scammer from India.

I am a HVAC Technician going on 8 years now. Duct cleanings are pretty much always a scam. at least in the state I live in "Texas" most ducts are whats called flex duct and they are made up of primarily plastic inner liner with insulation around it and a outside liner and if you clean flex duct it can rip holes and destroy the flex duct with the brushes used to stir up the dust inside them. Now if you do what you are supposed to do as a home owner and change your filters every 30 days (for 1") 60 days for (2") 6 months for (4-5") you should not have dust bunnies like they show in the pictures as your return air is being filtered and your supply air has positive pressure mean it will blow anything in the duct out into your house. Now mobile homes and floor vents are a different story as they can accumulate dust and debris that fall down them which is probably what we're seeing in these pictures they are showing, now in that case they are usually metal so cleaning them is worth doing if they are extremely dirty like that. Also like 70% of contractors you see advertising on FB market place are scams. The best advice I can give you from a Technicians standpoint that has worked for many companies including fortune 500 companies the best way to find a good reputable company is to find a small family owned company that has been in that area for a longtime. DONOT go for companies like A #1 Air or one hour air yes they can get to you next day or even same day but you will pay 30-50% higher prices for even the most common parts then you would've paid if you simple went with a small family owned business. Remember if they have big advertisement expect a big bill because they will charge you more to pay for those advertisements. Also big companies like that pay their tech as commission base pay so the only way they make money is to sell you something you don't actually need. We call them sales techs because they can't fix anything they just sell you a new one.

Here in Canada we all get constant calls from "air duct" cleaning. It drive us nuts!

😂😂I'm from Pakistan I know this 😂

Great video. On a side note, I'm actually a duct cleaner. You don't need duct cleaning if air quality is your main concern. Just replace your furnace filter and you're golden. If that doesn't help then get an air purifier. There's even an EPA study done on duct cleaning's effect on air quality and it had no effect. Technically, residential ducts are hardly designed to be cleaned. Some builders may think about making it easier to clean the ducts or make them harder to get blocked unintentionally. There's still a purpose for duct cleaning which is to clear any build up in the duct and which is mainly for efficiency. And if your ducts aren't blocked or congested, it will even take 3-5 years to get a good build up inside, maybe even decade/s if you keep your house clean. If mold inside the duct is the concern, there are sprays we apply in the ducts.

Thank you for the hard work and all the time you put into making this video! We need more creators like you who will expose these freaks and protect the unsuspecting public. Thank You!

The usual suspects

I used to work for a similar company here in San Antonio, Texas. Company name was Pure Air, LLC. Money was good, but after a while it got extremely sketchy, I know everything about the owners and I also know that they were scamming home owners so I stepped away.

Wow! Totally different than what I was expecting. Back in 2011, I used Groupon to purchase a $99 duct cleaning prior to the arrival of our daughter. For $99 we got not one, not two, but EIGHT different techs in three vehicles at our house. All eight were dressed in suits, and began by using a high tech device to measure the “mold spore content” of the air pushing through our ducts. Unsurprisingly, our air was so toxic that we were given two options- pay $1900.00 for a full service cleaning, including disassembly and sterilization of our furnace, or having the company contact the EPA, which would “likely result in the foreclosure of our home.” Continued refusal of the $1900 charge got it lowered to $199.00. We were told the full service would take 5 hours, meaning each of those well dressed mold experts were cleaning our ducts for a whopping $5 per hour. As I escorted them out of our home, they contacted the EPA, advising they had a “code red situation.”. Oddly enough, the EPA never showed up at our home, or even attempted to contact me to advise that I was living in a mold infested toxic waste pit. Groupon was kind enough to refund my $99 though, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

I really appreciate your clear and informative video! You're awesome! By the way* I think you deserve more gratitude from the viewers like me. You're not only making money from RU-vid and memberships, but also giving us valuable and enjoyable content for free! Ben, you rock!

Dude turned a $ 99 job to $ 1500 duct uv, light ect

I work at a payment processor, fraudsters and bad actors LOVEEEE using the word "kindly" and first names as full names lmao

I remember messing with one of these guys a while back. They were located in Karachi, Pakistan.

Giving the scammers someone else's address is kind of a jerk move. Even if the house is listed on a real estate website, the owners may still be living there.

As always, if I want something done, I will reach out to someone local. I will never buy anything from someone that cold calls me. Bottom line: they are breaking the law. Why in the world would I do business with a criminal? As for Facebook, I don't even have a Facebook page and don't want one, considering all the sneaky things they keep pulling.

Bro clicked on this to tell you this story: I live in canada and everybody and their mothers in my province gets scam calls from ‘sue duct cleaners’. One day I’m doing my makeup and I had about 30 mins to kill so I wasted his time; except I was pretending to flirt with him. He was not biting my bait and realized I was fucking with him so he hung up. He then stole my info and began texting me from his personal phone sending me pics of himself etc. he definitely wanted to give my ducks a good cleaning if u know what I mean.

Wouldn’t it be funny if they used a fake name BEN DOVER.. I would die laughing.

Top quality content as always. I've seen these posts for years and never gave them a second thought until now. This is honestly a good business model to match contractors with work if they were just honest about it. One of the hardest parts of being a contractor is marketing/leads and bidding jobs.

6:53 “Says your in Pakistan” “Waht tha fuk bro” “I’m not from pakitan

lol my heart dropped for a second going into this video. We just bought a home that was 40 years old and heard about duct cleaning. We were glad we did it because the guys said the ducts were very dirty and had already managed to fill up our brand new filter on our brand new HVAC, which makes since because the ducts were probably never been cleaned before. But this was a small family owned business based in Atl.

That is the wildest phone center scam I’ve seen yet. But I gotta be honest the moment I saw the “and we’ll show you the camera feed from your ducts to prove they’re clean” preempted in the ad something didn’t feel right. It’s like when a scammer tries way too hard to assure you they’re not a scammer and totally 100% legit. Could not predict they actually had someone in the area that will go to your house tho

That's wild. I always felt like it seemed weird and random, but I guess it's easy to scam someone with ducts because it's hard to check them yourself. Unlike with aeration, rain gutters, power washing, other things, it's harder to verify the job is done well.

Omg I get these in my local group I run all the time! We ban them and all their accounts, but they show up all the time despite us having a “secret word” to get into the group. We get air ducts cleaning, car detailing, graphic design, etc.

Pleasant green, I appreciate what you do for people. You’re the one creator I love watching both for the person and for what they do. Thank you

Scammers panic when Pleasant Green uploads a video 😂😂

YES! I say that all the time. If someone tells you to "kindly" do something and they aren't a sheriff in a western, then it is most likely a scam. I swear, we could block 99% of all spam and scams if we filter out messages with "kindly" in them.

We got caught by one of these yesterday. (and of course just seeing this video now). The company is a local company and is legit but they were being very aggressive with the upsell (which we didn't bite on). Our house is 30 years old and has never had any kind of cleaning like this but they did a good enough job. The three thing we absolutely needed cleaned were (1) the dryer vent (2) the upstairs register (3) the air box where the air filter goes (it was disgusting). So I think we got our money's worth but I'm not going to bother with a cleaning like this again.

I had this happen to me and it sucked… It blew me a way how people can be like this. If I’d seen this video ahead of this I would have duct out of the way. I’m such an air head.

I sometimes see 'kindly' used in work emails or signage with rules of engagement for places like parks or tourist sites ('kindly refrain from using flash photography', or whatever.) Though I'm in the UK so it may be different.

6:28 you forgot to censor the number 💀

I manage a local buy/sell group for Western Wisconsin with roughly 30k~ members and realized this was becoming a HUGE issues in the fall of 2019. It was pretty obvious that the accounts posting the listings were fake but the most obvious tells were... 1. The TOTAL lack of branding across any of the posts. I see they now co-opt real businesses to help address these concerns from suspicious customers. 2. Frequent use of bolded/italicized characters. Not a trivial thing to do and in combination with zero branding, why go the extra mile for be eye catching? 3. Many of the pictures featured the duct cleaning vehicle with exteriors of the homes were visible. Sometimes, tree's and shrubs seen in these images wouldn't survive a winter in the Northern Midwest, let alone the spring/fall. (Palm trees are a dead giveaway) After doing exactly what you did here by scheduling a tech, I realized this was a simple business referral racket. Illegal? No. Dishonest and anti-consumer? Yes. It's also bad for the local companies who would likely charge much less. The practice is predatory as a *LOT* of older folks seemed super interested in insanely priced "special" offers. I ended up setting up a bunch of keywords that auto-flagged and held posts related to duct cleaning for approval. I keep a verified list of local companies to share with anyone asking for such services. It's annoying that we all need to be looking over our shoulders in all aspects of life these days but I like to think I'm helping squash one small problem for the community I'm a part of.

Seem like the guys who goes is not honest with his job as he is the one to blame about the awful cleaning the Pakistani guy is just to blame about his fake identity as he only gets a fixed amount whether the cleaning guy charges 250$ or 500$ I have worked in another call center but it was a B2B campaign a totally different domain, these guys use fake profiles only because they are told to do so by the managers

Love how these scammers are using pictures of OUR work 😂😂😂 @ 7 seconds on the bottom with the yellow dewalt electric screwdriver. It's unfortunate that there are people out there doing this... It makes us honest and reputable duct cleaning companies look bad..😐

An HVAC company owner told me that changing furnace and air filters makes cleaning air ducts necessary only every 4 or 5 years. I lived in my last house 15 years and ran a camera into several ducts, and they had minimal dust. I had the ducts cleaned 2x while I lived there! And it was only about $130 the last time I had it done in 2019!

Bro this makes so much sense now. Theirs so much legal bs around hvac finding new leads. And I bet Pakistan doesn’t have the same sort of laws so they call evvvvvvvvveryone non stop and sell those leads to private contractors, most hvac companies that offer duct cleaning use sub contractors anyways. Huh.

It's weird that THAT scammer had proper grammar and spelling. Scammers usually never do.

Thank you for this video! I just moved into a brand new community and I was wondering why the hell we were getting so many ads for that, so many scams lately! I like your smirk as you were outing the scammers too, job well done!

My dryer duct is only 12ish inches. Instead of cleaning it, I just replaced it myself....for only $8. I didn't know it was a scam till now however I just saved a lot of money.

It’s interesting that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found no conclusive proof that duct cleaning is really necessary. It’s a long read on their website, but quite informative. I think we have all fallen into this trap.

If humanity spent half the time doing ACTUAL work instead of scamming and trying to get one over on each other I shudder at the frightening headway our species would make.

I use Mighty Ducts and I know they're good. I could see clouds of dust being blown into my patio and they had multiple guys for a long time doing the work with a proper van, uniforms, etc. I would just try to find a reputable local company.

Thanks for the great and consistent content, Ben!

There is a similar scam going around in the UK about damp detection, I got a call a while ago but was trying to figure out how it worked but got nowhere...

I understand what is going on here. The scammer is trying to get “jobs” for business owners(no LEGIT business owner would do this so a scammer) or whoever (probably a dude with a leaf blower) they get paid for providing the job.

I'm from Toronto and my family used to get SO many "air duct cleaning" phone calls (like multiple per day) when we had our landline. All of them were people with thick Indian or Pakistani accents and it was easy to tell it was a scam (for example, if I asked them what their company name was, they would respond with "Air Duct Cleaning Service". Now that we've gotten rid of the landline, things are so much more peaceful in the house 😂

I still prefer the old fashion way by cleaning the air ducts myself 😁

Even the REAL duct cleaning companies are scammers most of the times. They advertise some price then when they come to your house they make up some excuse why the ad price does not apply. Then they try to sell you something you don't need such as UV lighting for thousands of dollars.

Finally a video about this scam! They’re all over our local groups.

I worked in carpet cleaning/water damage/mold remediation last year and we did air duct cleanings. 300$ / AC unit is the rate with package deals for multiple units. There is no need to show anyone a camera view of the work being done because all of the dust in the vents will collect in a giant bag we keep outside. Basically, we seal off all the air ducts except for one when we attach our hose that's connected to the bag to. There is a thin air hose with rubber strands on the end of it and it's designed to flap around all over when air is shooting through it, like an inflatable wiggly man and it's to scrape all of the dust off the sides of the vents, we run the hose throughout all of the vents and it takes 1-2 hours to finish. this should come with free things like a free dryer vent cleaning and free mold inspection of your ducts. you should only need this service once every 5-7 years

It’s not just this still company they call about. It’s so many more. Sad but true.

These 'scams' are very common in Canada. The CBC program marketplace did a report on these about a year ago. They show up with a truck and a shop vac, do a terrible job, and send money to the call centers. If they don't ask you for your filter size(s), Furnace Model, etc, then they probably aren't a legit company.

This is happening heaps in Australian groups, and like you, I've been wondering what the deal is. Thanks for the video!

Thanks for making this video! I actually had an appointment set up after an ad was placed on my local FB group. They set us up for a Sunday which I thought was weird but if they wanted to work weekends that’s up to them. Sunday came but they didn’t so we messaged them to find out why they didn’t come but didn’t hear back until Monday morning. They said their tech was injured, sent a picture of his injured hand and wanted to reschedule but now I’m afraid to. Thinking I might just clean my own vents.

I'm in Minnesota and yes these posts for duct cleaning are everywhere on the community pages.

The creativity in these scams is astounding 😂 great video as always. Looking forward to the next!

While I'm sure this scam rings true, all air duct cleaning isnt a scam. I bought a house last year and the first thing I did was have the hvac maintenanced and then had the air ducts and dryer vents cleaned. The house was nearly 15 years old and Im sure the ducts were rarely cleaned the hvac hardly serviced. Hell the hvac is the original and on its last leg. The home owners also added filters to the intact vents in the house that were not needed and filthy when I had the removed. I assume they did this during covid as a way to prevent the virus from spreading room to room. Complete nonsense. Anyway, I noticed a huge difference in the temperature and quality of the air once the ducts were cleaned. Just saying that sometimes duct cleaning can work, especially in older homes. I did use a reputable hvac company in my area. No rando service providers. That makes the difference.

Please do more of the catching scams in progress and save victims. I watch those over and over again because they are uplifting .

“I have an experience of 9 years” Game Over right there.

You know it’s a good day when Pleasant Green uploads a new scam expose video.

So glad you covered this! I am so irritated by the unrelenting calls. Once, I ended up telling the guy I don't live in a house. He started laughing and asked for more information. I told him I had a box, and he could clean that before hanging up. It seems to have slowed down in recent months, but it's so obnoxious.

Never used these services. I know these are a big waste of time and money. Just change your furnace filter regularly. The only one I do myself is the dryer duct clearly. The lint builds up over time and can cause the dryer to work harder and waste more energy as well as potentially causing a dryer fire.

Thank you for sharing this and investigating! I have an air ducts cleaning business and we have had people use our photos on those scam sites. Literally 5-7 seconds into your video, I saw my picture!!!! I am holding a clear bag and have a Navy hat on. It’s crazy and hopefully people don’t confuse me with the photo! I’m in Murfreesboro TN area

I'm getting gutter cleaning scam calls. 😂