This review isn't about this particular chimney sweep as an individual - it's about the company he or she works for, "The Fireplace Doctor," which seems to be a national company with local affiliates.
The company offered a deal on Groupon for 50% services, and I purchased that deal. I tried to set up an appointment before that Groupon expired, but was told that it would have to be after the Groupon expired, but that they'd honor it anyway, which sounded great to me.
However, on the day of the appointment, no one showed. I called the only number I had (the local affiliate's cell phone, I suspect), and no one answered. On the next call, someone answered the phone and immediately hung up. Eventually, by continuing to call, I eventually got to the corporate call center, where they apologized, and set up another appointment.
Before that appointment came, though, I got a call saying that the appointment had been scheduled wrong: I was not on "their route" that day, so I'd have to reschedule. So yet again, I set an appointment for several weeks out.
That last appointment was for this past weekend, and since it was scheduled for a time when I had another event, I decided to confirm that someone was coming - I was not going to break this appointment, no matter what, but if they weren't coming, I wanted to know early enough to be able to go forward with my other plans.
Sure enough, I was told that the appointment HAD BEEN CANCELLED completely by the company, and would not be rescheduled. The reason they gave was that they were having issues with Groupon, and had decided to cancel ALL remaining Groupon appointments. And in doing do, apparently had NOT decided to let those people know. If I hadn't called, they would have never let me know, and I'd have missed (another) event, waiting around for them. When I asked the person on the phone about that, he had nothing to say.
So, while the point of Groupon for a company like this is to generate new business, hopefully repeat customers, they screwed up so badly in their handling of things that I am now driven to write a negative review of them. Had they thought this through, they could have come up with a good way to handle the problem - could have worked with customers like me to come up with a solution that we could agree on, which might not have been as good as the Groupon deal, but would have led to long-term goodwill. Instead, they have burned a lot of bridges.
Do not use The Fireplace Doctor - find a local chimney sweep and support them, instead! read more
