Blog post title brought to you by a crude joke my brother makes.
A Brief History of My House:
- Built in 1976
- Not sure who the first owner was.
- First occupant I know of was my boyfriend’s Grandmother. Apparently a sweet woman with a smoking habit. And 2 cats.
- After she passed, a friend of my boyfriend’s family moved in. Hoarder with a cat. I can not make this up. I’m not sure how long he lived there, maybe about 5 years, but it was long enough to completely ruin the house.
Fun Facts:
- When I first saw the inside of the house, the tenant said he had “cleaned out half of his stuff” but I could barely walk through it.
- There is a corner of our living room we don’t go near. It’s called Cat Pee Corner.
- You can see where the steam from my shower has steamed off nicotine stains from my bedroom ceiling.
- The light covers in the basement shown a dim yellow color from all the mouse waste.
These are all fun facts about what you can see and smell my lovely home. What about what you are breathing? Kind of a big deal. I vacuum and air it out as best I can, but I can’t climb into the ducts like a ninja and clean them. So we called some professionals. I found a deal on Groupon for a company called Green Heat. There were two options and, feeling ritzy/terrified of our air, we chose the expensive $69 option. My boyfriend bought the Groupon, called the company and scheduled a visit.
Apparently, our filthy ducts were too much for their normal tools so they had to bring out the big guns, so to speak.
They also inspected and cleaned our furnace and oiled it or something. I wasn’t there so I’m going by my boyfriend’s account of things. Then they offered to kill the bacteria in our ducts with some organic spray or something. My boyfriend also purchased a new reuseable filter from them.
They also broke one of our light fixtures for which they discounted the price by $50. I told my boyfriend to see if they could do better, and another $50 was taken off. They also almost left without cleaning our dryer vent, which is the only difference in the Groupon options. Total cost of our $69 ($518 value) Groupon?
$650
Evidentally, they had to do a “deep clean” as opposed to the normal cleaning they do. Also, whatever work they did on the furnace costs extra as does the new filter. The real killer is that they took off $100 from the original bill because we bought the Groupon. I’m sorry, but these numbers just aren’t lining up. I paid $69 for them to clean my vents, deodorize the air, clean my dryer vent and inspect my furnace. Plus $75 for a new filter. I should be paying $144. Was my boyfriend duped? Did they upsell the original upseller?
I might call them to have the charges explained to me because I’m insane like that. I don’t think $650 is too much to pay to breath a little easier, especially after the horrendous air history this house has had. It’s the principle of the thing. Saving $200 (partly because of their mistake) is not the same as saving $499.
I’m a little torn. From what my boyfriend describes, they pulled a wildebeast out of our vents. They also changed the charges A LOT.
What would you do?
Suburban Fervor 