"The King Is In The House"!

No, I'm not saying Elvis has entered the building.

As my life as a homeowner overlaps with my role on the team building HomeStars, it's no surprise that I've come to look at home renovations and upkeep services in a whole new light.

My main thoughts today are:

(1) In any individual job you can see in microcosm a broader picture of a whole trade, industry, or sector changing. Opportunistic practices and downright ripoffs are competing against the so-so but honest people and the contractors who are real pioneers, quietly going the extra mile and leaving happy customers in their wake.

(2) By being listed on HomeStars, many of these great operators are going from relatively invisible online, to highly visible. Sometimes the uptick in their workload is significant. Yes, reputation is everything in business. And online reputation is something every business now needs to take into account.

Now for my anecdote. For many of you with newer or cleaner homes, dust and dirt, and furnace maintenance, are not high on priority list. When I mentioned duct cleaning to some friends, they assumed the whole idea was frivolous or a scam. Experienced homeowners and experts know better. Air quality and allergens (for starters) play a signficant role in many people's lives.

Carolyn and I live in a 110-year-old Victorian semi-detached home. The furnace seems relatively new (maybe 11 years old), but with the volume of dust combined with the fact that no proper cleaning has been done in the past, it is disgusting. Basically, all winter the furnace struggles to push the heat up to the upper floor, and chunks of gross dust fly out occasionally, with allergens, dust mites, and such living happily inside the ducts.

When Sears Clean Air telemarketed me recently, I actually picked up the phone and said yes to an estimate.

At this point I am now aware that Sears Clean Air is the leading provider of duct cleaning in Canada, and as such they have to be reasonably ethical and good quality. By and large, even by competitors, Sears is regarded as a solid citizen in duct cleaning.

We didn't hire them, though. The salesman overstayed his welcome, given that we were already sold on the merits of the service. He just kept talking on and on and warning us that we'd be getting diseases, and basically overselling. The quote was a bit high, too.

So that's why the Clean Air King, Brent Davies, was such a breath of fresh air. (The company is now owned by his son, Jon. I got to meet them both when they did our cleaning.) I called Brent on a recommendation from my father-in-law. Turns out Brent was formerly with the Sears organization so he knows all there is to know about this particular line of business.

The first thing I learned about Brent was that he was no slouch as a salesman. "Andrew, we're professional cleaners, not professional upsellers!" His position was that he'd quote me a price on an all-in job, not try to fool me with a $129 job (that would turn out to be an ineffective "blow and go") that turns into a $400-1,000+ job anyway once the guys arrive (but most of what they upsell you on might be overpriced sanitizer, or even new equipment or a furnace). Professional cleaners, not professional upsellers... and then he sold me the whole package instead of even having to upsell me later!? I told Brent I was making a mental note to use that line in my own business endeavors so I could get clients to buy more at the beginning, ha.

He also established trust by talking about the business practices in the industry and saying "frankly I wish the government would just step in and regulate it."

But the Clean Air King's quote was also lower than Sears'. Our home was so dirty the job took quite a long time, so we did wind up paying a big more than expected, as I promised we would do to save time (there would be no separate estimate visit).

The next thing I learned about Brent was that he's a character. After we had taken to answering our phone saying "hey, I think it's the Clean Air King calling, honey," we thought maybe we should make a mental note to begin calling him Brent, not the Clean Air King. After finally shooing a car out of a spot in front of the house where the Clean Air King needed to park his truck, though, Davies exclaimed: "It was meant to be! The King is in the house!"

From there, I learned about how passionate he is about the industry he's in. He took pleasure in explaining the whole process to us, making us guess what the long snake-like whip device is called. (I guessed "duct snake". The answer is "mini predator".) Showing me the engine he uses, an exotic high-end brand that puts out so many BTU's and has so many horsepower and whatnot, he exclaimed: "This is the engine Sears wishes they had. They use Chrysler engines."

Moving from the gearhead talk to business data, he gave me an insider rundown of various markups on Sears' products, the nature of their organization, and their ongoing decline in revenues from duct cleaning nationwide.

Sears is still no doubt more reliable and trustworthy than many unknown contractors in the industry. As a homeowner, I'd use them. But if all of the independents were more like the Clean Air King, Sears would be in deep trouble.

Speaking of government bodies, in the U.S. the EPA has an excellent overview of duct cleaning and indoor air quality issues. A very useful guide that seems to indicate that "sweeping health claims" are ill-advised in this field and that furnace efficiency might be the main reason for the service -- if your ducts are very dirty. My house was very dirty, but yours might not be.

Labels: clean air king, duct cleaning, homeowner, sears clean air

Posted by Andrew Goodman
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