This unbelievable story revealed how one air duct cleaning company simply used a sale coupon and the internet advertising information as a bait to allure consumer to pay the ordinary cleaning service from rather attractive price of $138 to unbelievable excessive cost of $1,838. During course of this ordeal, the entire process was a scam using deceiving dirty tricks and unethical code of conduct as sponsored by company’s management and carried out by its employees. This scam was organized and committed by an air duct cleaning company located in Scottsdale, Arizona. We were totally dismayed what they did this dirty job in two hours (9am to 11am). At the end, they took away $1,838 from consumer wallet and left with dusts all over the house (furniture and floors). My wife spent 4 hours to clean up after they left. The work was done improperly and unhealthy. Consequently, the victims suffered asthma symptom, head ache and skin rush. Their AC blower cleaning job was done improperly. After our inspection the next day both AC units were still remained dirty condition. Immediately after the work was done, the two AC units functioned erratically with whacky noise. We had spent additional money ($89) to hire the contractor to fix the problem.
We discovered that this company has not been registered as a member of ROC. These business fraud activities were occurred on July 13, 2007 in the consumer’s residential home. The fraud activities were designed as a pattern particularly targeted to the victim of senior citizens. The alleged company and its employees intentionally ignored the bottom line of doing business with honesty. Obviously, this scam consisted of deception, false pretense and misrepresentation and was carried out by this company’s management and its employees. They systemically plotted and preyed on the elder victims. We have suffered not only a significant monetary loss but also a severe mental stress.
In sum, this fraud involved the following unlawful activities:
1. Misleading advertisement for improper selling practice
2. Misrepresentation of various service products
3. Repeated violations of excessive price overcharge (repeated rip-offs)
4. Deception in the execution of the sale order
The estimated loss for the individual consumer was about at least $ 1,400 (the grand total charge for the service was $1,838). The survey showed this type of service should be in the range of $300 to $400.
The core issue here was the unlawful conducts and illegal activities involved. It was not a simple issue of price dispute. It is truly a matter of principal to fight for our consumer protection right and bring the company and crooks to the justice of proper punishment.
We urge the TV station to broadcast this information to the public in order to stop this type of fraud activities in the marketplace and to deter any continuing harm to the Arizona consumers.
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