I routinely see them in groups I’m a member of. I assume it is some kind of scam. Assuming so, how does the scam work? (I tried Googling the answer, but didn’t find much.)
On one page it said someone will visit your house, inspect the air ducts, and provide an estimate. But they’re really thieves, and they’re looking to see if you have an alarm system and what valuables you have.
I am a member of four or five Facebook groups, including an informal one for my town, and I have never seen one of these ads. Maybe the Metaverse sensors have figured out that your ducts are dirty!
ETA: then again, I live in New England, where there may be less value in anyone running those ads, legitimate or scam.
Most air duct cleaning is bogus. Unless there is a truck outside with those vacuum bags on the back that look like large hot dogs, you’re getting squat for your money. Also, if they’re offering the service for a ridiculously low price, it’s because they’re going to try to upsell you with scare tactics. “Did you know that the bearings on your fan motor are going out?”
Thinking of the forced air furnace in my parents’ house, there is a filter (I think 30x30x1) that is periodically replaced. It filters the air coming into the furnace, which then blows through it and out the registers throughout the house. So where is all of the dust in the air ducts supposed to be coming from?
For some poorly maintained systems over a long period of time, dust in the ductwork can cause problems. Esp. if people have allergies.
But very few homes actually need it.
And the field is full of scammers. I saw one TV investigative report where they had the ducts pre-cleaned by a legit company. They then put things like good size rocks and what not in the ducts. They called a bunch of companies in. Each one claimed the ducts were dirty and needed cleaning. Most of them didn’t notice the objects in the ducts and take them out.
As to why someone gets ads for something on FB (or other sites) and another person doesn’t is quite simple. Targeted advertising. No two people are generally going to see the same array of ads. And the ad providers use an astonishing wealth of information spread from a lot of sites to figure out that “Oh, this user fits the profile of someone who might be a sucker for duct cleaning.”
In Facebook group I belong to, someone was offering that service, but when asked, could not/would not give the name of the company. So the admin kicked him out.
A workman showing up and offering to clean your dirty ducts sounds like the plot of a certain type of movie.
It seems that a service like this is just about perfect for scammers. Most people have no idea about how often ducts need to be cleaned, what such cleaning should involve, or how much such services should cost. So, find someone who falls for the initial pitch, then charge them a lot of money, and then just put on a show of sticking an industrial vacuum in some ducts. No real skill needed, and your only equipment is a truck and a vacuum. Upsell a few items like furnace filters that you jack up the price on, and you can make some decent money, I suspect.
They also have ads on TV. I think it’s mostly useless unless someone doesn’t put in a furnace filter at all. I upgraded my ducts and there was hardly any dust in them even though they had been used for 15+ years. One danger I’d be worry about is the internal lining in the duct tearing from contact with their equipment and having air escape through any gaps. Depending on where the tear is, it could be very difficult to fix.
If I had to guess, I would guess that the dustiest dust would be between the air intake and the furnace/AC. If you can see in that duct when you change the filter, you could get an indication of how bad the dust would be in the rest of the ducts. If that air intake duct is clean, then the rest of your ducts are probably clean as well. One exception would be if there was a gap in the air intake duct and your furnace was pulling in hot, dusty, unfiltered attic air through the gap and pushing it through your ducts. Then I could see all that dust caking the ducts and causing other problems.
If you do get the ducts cleaned, it only needs to be done about every 5-6 years, even in very dusty environments, or after a major interior renovation involving lots of sheetrock work.
The link in the previous post as well as a lot of other people would strongly disagree with this. Unless something funny has been going on affecting your ducts you can go 30+ years easily and if the system is otherwise well maintained basically indefinitely.
Same (sorta). I’m in three FB groups, my old high school, my neighborhood, and the group who keep boats near mine. Never seen an ad for duct cleaning.
I’ve actually been entertaining myself by Googling random shit, and watching how Facebook reacts. My most recent ads have been for crotchless panties and business jets. I’m in my sixties, retired and on a “fixed income”. And I’ve googled neither of those things.
I wonder if this could be a lan-party game. A leader chooses something random like fire hydrants or strawberry poptarts, then a race to see who can google their way to those FB ads first (without directly mentioning the item).
Maybe I have too much time on my hands…