Lethbridge Duct Cleaning warns of service scam

“They don’t work for us; they’ve never worked for us. Just when she started questioning [the alleged scammer], he eventually just went away. When she confronted to say, ‘we checked you out and you’re not affiliated with these people’…the Facebook page was all of a sudden closed,” Hellwig told LNN.

LDC looked into the situation and as they did, Hellwig said they started to receive more emails and phone calls about this particular individual that had contacted the Hanna homeowner.

LDC then reported the incident to police, who are investigating the situation as fraud.

Unfortunately, Hellwig said they’ve been made aware of instances involving someone under a different name to the one who contacted the Hanna resident.

“[They have] similar wording, similar pictures so we’re kind of tending to lead that this is a group and not specifically an individual. They just seem to be changing their name that they’re advertising as.”

CONCERNS FOR CONSUMERS

Hellwig said the people offering these services may in fact be qualified to organize duct cleaning, but she still has concerns for homeowners, especially when the individuals are using LDC’s name as a reference.

“As a consumer I would be aware of ‘what if something happened in your home?’ When we do duct cleaning, we’re going into your ductwork, which is underneath drywall ceiling, things like that – what if something broke? What if they injured themselves on your property, what if you got injured on the property? How do you pay? I would definitely not pre-pay,” she said.

“There’s no recourse – there’s not a business number to call and that’s my big concern is there’s no recourse. If they’re trying to promote someone else’s business as a front for their business, that should be an alarm right there I think.”

The notice sent out by Lethbridge Duct Cleaning (Photo: Lethbridge Duct Cleaning)

She’s advising anyone who may have been impacted by this to call the company referred to by the alleged scammer or scammers.

She added that smaller community Facebook pages, regularly used for local event postings have seen advertisements for services like duct cleaning.

Hellwig maintained that LDC will only ever advertise under their official name, all of their employees’ uniforms are branded and all company vehicles are branded.

The company will go out to smaller communities further away from Lethbridge, but their work is mainly focused in Lethbridge, Magrath and Raymond.

“With things going on and you hear stories about people in communities that live a little farther out, you don’t know who’s coming into your home. They could be coming to do the duct cleaning and I would hate to say or hope not that something else would happen, but there have been stories where say, two days later then your house was robbed,” she said, indicating that her main concern is consumer safety.

“There’s no recourse when you don’t have anything to fall back on. There’s not a business name, there’s not a business phone number and it’s proven that they’ve already deleted some of those posts, then you would have no way of contacting that individual again.”

Anyone who has concerns can call LDC directly, or directly get in touch with company’s mentioned by potential scam artists.

by Justin Goulet

Lethbridge Duct Cleaning warns of service scam

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