My experience with this company was very negative. We hired them for a very common issue - to clear a dryer vent. Our LG ThinQ dryer indicated a blockage in the vent pipe that needed to be cleared out. Long story short, this company literally made the problem worse (details below) and refused to give even a partial refund unless I promised to not post a negative review, which is against Yelp's Terms of Service. Really makes you wonder if their high rating is legit at all.... Stay away unless you want to spend double hiring another company to actually clear out your dryer vent properly.
Pros:
- Quick and easy to schedule over Yelp.
- Arrived on time.
Cons:
- Upcharged $100 from the quoted cost upon arrival for a bogus reason (though I didn't know it at the time). They claimed my dryer vent was very long (over 45 feet?! due to 'multiple bends' in the vent pipe). Funnily enough, another dryer vent technician we hired afterwards said our vent was no longer than 20 feet and only had two bends at most.
- Did NOT provide before and after pictures as promised. For us, they claimed they couldn't due to the multiple bends in the vent pipe. This would've been forgivable if their "service" didn't worsen the initial problem.
- Dishonest. Lied about the length of our dryer vent and why they didn't use a vacuum. They claimed it was "a long run vent" and that was the reason they didn't use a vacuum. When I asked why another company was able to use a vacuum, they completely ignored that bit and tried to buy me out with a partial refund (see screenshot).
- Dishonest x2. Offered only a partial refund contingent on not posting a negative review, which is against Yelp's Terms of Service. To add insult to injury, they only offered to refund me $100 off of $229. FYI they initially quoted me $129, then added a surcharge of $100 on-site claiming the length of my dryer vent was longer than 25 feet, which turned out to be a lie, so they really weren't providing much of a refund at all.
Detailed review:
We have an LG ThinQ dryer that we purchased in the last two months. It was giving us a Flow Sense d80 error (means the dryer duct is 80% blocked). We called Pro Chimney due to the good reviews, though now I wonder how many negative reviews were not posted (more on that later). Booking an appointment went smoothly, but it was all downhill from there. The technician said he had to charge an extra $100 on top of the original quote of $129 upon arrival. He also used a rather rickety looking brush to "clean" out the dryer pipe. Strangely, the air flow from the outside was worse than before, nearly non-existent. The tech said it's because LG dryers don't generate a lot of air flow, which didn't make sense since the airflow hadn't been THIS bad before he arrived, but we trusted him when he said the dryer should be safe to use whether we felt any air flow from the external vent or not.
After he left, we ran a small load and our dryer gave us a d95 error (vent was now 95% blocked), which confirmed that whatever Pro Chimney did literally blocked the duct MORE. When I reached out about this, the company had a whole laundry list of excuses why they wouldn't provide a refund (see screenshot), all of which turned out to be lies according to the second company we hired that actually fixed the problem. Basically, all we got from that first visit was more worries and a barely functioning dryer.
As a last resort before returning the brand new dryer and/or calling a general contractor to tear up the floor to inspect the ductwork, we called another local dryer vent cleaning company (won't name them, but they are also on Yelp and service NoVA) because they offered a money-back guarantee and said they would use a vacuum, as well as brush, to clean the duct. When the second technician arrived, he disconnected the dryer and used a vacuum as a first step. A ton of lint came out of the dryer duct from that alone (see pic of how much ADDITIONAL lint they pushed out of our vent). Then he did a brush cleaning as a second step from both ends. Finally, when he did a dryer test run, we could actually see and feel air blasting out of the outside vent. There have been no more Flow Sense errors and haven't seen any since! This technician also confirmed all the excuses Pro Chimney shared as to why they weren't able to clear out all the lint were false.
TDLR: Don't use this company or trust the high rating you see here. read more