Victorian Chimney Service

I found this company through a Money Mailer ad with a coupon for $40 off a chimney sweep. I came to Angie's List to check out their reviews. There are three different listings for the same company, and the reviews vary. Unfortunately my review isn't going to help their rating any. I booked the chimney sweep via phone on Jan. 23, scheduling it for Jan. 28. I was told that someone would be out between 9:00am - 12:00pm, with a call or text 1/2 hour before arrival. By 11:30am, I hadn't received a call or text, so I called them. A man said he would call me right back, but he never did. No show, no call back = poor business.

Great! I am so impressed with the quick response and the quick efficient work that was performed!

timely, clean, polite. Appears well done.

A+ + + + + +!!!!! The owner of this business (Joe) and the Victorian Chimney technicians (Inmer, Scirilo, & Co.), who recently completed work at my house, are top notch. Victorian Chimney (Joe) has proved to me that the company stands behind its work and I can’t think of anything more important to me as a customer. The owner did have some bad apples working for his company in the past, but he is doing his best to “clean house” and do right by his customers. A few years ago, a crew of his Joe's "former" technicians installed a chimney liner in the portion of my chimney that vents our oil burner for $1,660. I recently contracted to have our old oil burner replaced and a condition of that contract required me to have the chimney to the oil burner cleaned and inspected. The chimney sweep that I called out to do the cleaning and inspection refused to clean the chimney because the liner was not in one continuous piece. I called Joe and explained the situation, arranged an appointment for his technicians to inspect the liner, and emailed him a copy of my receipt. His technicians came out and confirmed that the liner was not in a continuous piece, but rather, was about 6 ft. short. The "former" installers had simply set a 6 ft. galvanized piece of pipe on top of the stainless steel liner in an attempt to fill the 6 ft. gap. The technicians reported their findings to Joe by phone in my presence and Joe told me on the spot that he would replace the old liner with the proper continuous stainless steel liner at no additional cost. True to his word, Joe's techs came out on Saturday 10/15/16 and replaced the liner. Joe kept in touch almost daily until he got his crew out to my house to do the job, showing me that he wanted me to be a satisfied customer. I am! I highly recommend this company. If you have any issues, Joe will do his best to resolve them! (While the techs were here, I had them do some additional work to the chimney, thus the additional $330 noted).

My realtor contacted Joe for a quote on some repair work that was needed to address some water damage to the bricks and water getting into the fireplace. These were issues caught through the inspection and we wanted to see how much it would cost to repair. In the end we closed on the house and had the get the work done ourselves. We stayed with Victorian Chimney Service rather than having someone else inspect it. From start to finish, Joe was easy to communicate with. He gave me his cell number and was very responsive to calls or texts. He oversaw much of the work and his guys did a great job with the masonry work. They replaced a number of tops to bricks down the side of the chimney and even painted them so they would blend in. The top had some broken bricks and needed a new chimney cap. They decided to rebuild the entire top of the chimney without charging extra, put on a beautiful new rain cap, waterproofed the entire chimney and tarred around the roof flashing. They also performed a chimney cleaning and checked the flue which had no issues. I had to have them come another day for the cleaning as the floors were being done and they were very accommodating. I was very pleased with the work, responsiveness and warranty. Rain cap has lifetime, waterproofing 10 years and masonry is 5 years. Cost seemed reasonable given the work performed but I didn't comparison shop.

We contacted Victorian Chimney to fix the furnace cover. They did not show during the appointed time and did not notify us. Subsequently, we rescheduled twice--VC missed both appointments, again without notifying us. We cannot recommend this provider. While we were happy with the work done in 2011, their current customer service and follow-through has declined to unacceptable levels.

He briefly looked at it and said he does not feel cleaning is sufficient and he will not clean it as there is too much build up in chimney and I need steel pipe with concrete. He said if he tried to clean it, it will break the bricks inside. He gave me a $2500 quote for repairs. I believe this company gives deals on cleanings and inspections just to come in and try to create a repair job for them. My friend had them scheduled the next day and he told me they did exactly the same thing on his chimney and gave him a $2400 quote for repairs and refused to clean. DONT USE THEM.

First the chimney cap that blew off had been originally installed by Victorian Chimney. That did not bother me, but when I called to set up the appointment they picked the date and time to come, and I said okay. Then the morning of the appointment they called my wife, and said they were coming, and then never showed up. My wife called them back and they told her they were to busy to come, but could they come another day. We understand being busy, but they need to take responsibility to call the customer, and explain the situation. It took my wife calling to find out they were not coming, and could not come for another two days. They called me to try and talk me into giving them another chance, but we have no reason to believe they will show up the next time they commit to coming.

Hiring a competent chimney sweep company is a chore. We got so much different information from different companies after buying a house in 2009 and having the chminey inspected after the fact that we were ready to throw up our hands and give up. Some said we need a lot of work and others said we needed just a little. It was very hard to determine who was telling the truth and who was just trying to sell us extra stuff that we did not really need. We hired Victorian in 2010 to do masonry work on 55 year old chimney which had seen better days. We agreed with them that a liner was not necessary and that the masonry repair work was the bext option to prevent larger losses in the event of water damage. They removed the top 1/3 of the chimney and replaced all the bricks, centered everything and put a cap on top. The chimney looks very good (far better than my neighbor's) and seems to be in good working oder. We were pleased with the results. The price was reasonable and the quality seems good. Only complaint is that they left some bricks at the site when they were done.

The problem is they called last year repeatedly and set up appointments and then stood me up 6 times. This year they have called about 25 times, I have called them and begged to be taken off their call list many times including on Monday and today 8/30/13 again they called and I said if they do not take me off their list I will report them to the Better Business Bureau, they called again today. When I have told them I want to be taken off their call list they hang up on me. I would never do business with this company. They actually called again this afternoon and that was it, I flipped. That's why I'm doing the posting.

They never showed up when they said they would. They don't back their promises. They are very unreliable. I would not recommend them to anybody. Their workers didn't seem like they had experience in the industry.

They did not fix the leaking water. They charged us a lot of money, and they didn't even fix the problem. They also rushed us into getting the work done.