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Want to find out A Step In Time Chimney Sweeps in Rosemont, Virginia Beach, VA? NearbyRoofers offers the info of the commercial roofing companies of top ratings like opening hours, addresses, phone numbers.

A Step In Time Chimney Sweeps in Rosemont, Virginia Beach, VA | Nearby Roofers

I personally spoke with David, very professional and extremely knowledgable on chimneys, fire saftey, what to look for, how the technicians clean and perform there work. He reassured me how safe and reliable my chimney will be now after the quality service I received and pleasant experience I had with the technicians, pricing was very fare for the fantastic work they did. For any of my chimney needs I will hire this company.

I hired A Step in Time Chimney & Roofing for my level 2 chimney and fireplace inspection. The inspector, James, arrived on time, was very professional, efficient, respectful and nice. I would highly recommend him and A Step in Time company and will hire them again for future inspections.

On time, called ahead to say he was on his way.  Took pics on the roof and showed me what's up there.  Did the work they recommended.    Very friendly staff.  I'll definitely use them again.

They told us we needed to shell out $9,000 to fix our chimney or else it would ruin our roof, walls, and burn down out new house. We got a second opinion who told us everything was fine and cleaned it for $120. Such a rip off.

Dear Mrs. Loghides,

Your comments greatly concerned me, so I went back in our records to review the pictures from your inspection. Please call our office at (757) 244-6639 if you did not receive an email with your inspection pictures after your inspection, and we would be happy to send those to you and go over our concerns again. From what I see in the pictures, I am quite shocked that any chimney professional could see nothing wrong with your chimney, and I would highly advise that you get a third company to inspect your home. It appears that your chase cover and flashing are both highly rusted, which could allow water entry into your home, weakening framing members and your roof. I also noticed rust in your fireplace unit. When we see that, we always recommend replacing the unit to ensure that no holes form that could allow heat to transfer to combustible materials. Finally, it appears that you have a wood stove insert in a prefabricated fireplace. Wood stove inserts generate far more heat than prefabricated fireplace inserts and should only be used in masonry fireplaces. Having one in a prefab fireplace is a definite fire hazard. Again, we would be more than happy to review your pictures with you and explain why all the problems we listed need to be repaired.

Thank you,
A Step in Time

DO NOT USE THESE CROOKS!!!  $224 FOR A GUY TO PRETEND LIKE HE'S VACUUMING YOUR FIREPLACE!!!

After calling a number of sweeps in the Richmond area who were unable to schedule me for a sweep until next year, I called number on the television ad for chimneysweeps.com and schedule an appointment for the following week.  The scheduler was kind, and gave me valpac coupon discount even though I didn't have a coupon so the service would cost me $224 dollars - at least $100 over the prices of everyone else I called.  She said it was for a sweep and an inspection, even though I only wanted the sweep, but I bit the bullet scheduled it anyway.

The day of service was Friday, November 13th, and the sweep called ahead to see if he could arrive early. I said ok.  He started of with a sales pitch that he was going to first do an inspection to see if I needed any repairs because he didn't want to waste my money and charge me for a sweep if I couldn't use my fireplace regardless.  I told him fine and let him take pictures and returned to my office and resumed working (I work from home).  A few mins later, he came back inside with pictures from the roof as well as inside the chimney and reviewed everything.  He then told me I needed to get $2500 of work done before he would sweep it and asked me when I wanted to schedule it.  I laughed out loud and told him I hired them to come sweep my chimney and clean it out, but agreed to pay for an inspection just because it was part of the promotion.  He rebutted with a weak sales turnaround, before agreeing to sweep the chimney.

I told him I needed to get back to work and let me know if he needed anything.  He setup in side, and I heard the shop vac turn on, and run for a few mins, then heard a ladder outside.  I peeked around the corner to see what he was doing and noticed his brushes on the front porch.  I assumed he was back on the roof sweeping from up top.  Another minute or two later, he came back inside, packed everything up, where upon we then met on my front porch to review and pay up.  The guy then went over everything again, offered me a discount of 10% to book by the end of the weekend, and presented me with a quote and a bill for $224.

I then told him I'd pay him for the inspection but not the sweep because he didn't do anything but pretend to vacuum my firebox.  He then got confrontational and stormed back inside to try and show me what he did claiming he had proof on his phone, etc.  Being that I did not want to have to call the police or physically throw the man out myself, I gave him a check and asked him to leave.  After I left I called the company and told them what happened.  I then called my bank and put a stop payment on the check.  I also took videos of my inspections afterwards inspecting the  fireplace and chimney myself and sent them to another Chimney Sweep who pretty much told me I got scammed.

The next day I bought my own brush and shop vac, and did the job myself in just under 2 hours for about $150 in supplies, documenting everything on video.

The following week the check ended up clearing anyway (stop payments apparently don't actually work) and so I called the company and after a series of calls they said I wouldn't be getting my money back.  I gave them until today to make things right, even after agreeing to pay for the FAKE SCAM OF AN INSPECTION and they rebutted.  So online I must now go to warn everyone else to NOT USE chimneysweep.com, A Step in Time Chimney & Roofing.

Dear Mr. Shank,

I can assure you that the service you received is not the level of service we expect for our technicians to provide. When you called our office to report your complaints regarding our service, we offered to immediately have another technician come out and ensure that your chimney was properly cleaned; however, we were told that you did not want us to return to your property. If we had been able to come reinspect your chimney and found that it truly had not been cleaned, it likely would have been grounds for us to terminate the employment of the technician who came to your home, as we do not tolerate this behavior from our technicians. I will explain a bit more about the rest of your service as well. I can assure you that us requiring an inspection with a sweep is not just a way to make more money. According to the section 15.3.1 of the NFPA 211, which is a nationwide chimney codebook, a level 1 chimney inspection is required to be performed during routine cleaning of the flue. Not requiring an inspection with a sweep is a code violation, and we actually end up telling quite a few customers who call us for a sweep that their chimney does not need cleaning after performing these inspections. After reviewing your inspection photos, I can explain all the repairs that were recommended as well. First, your smoke chamber is unparged, meaning that stairstep like corbelled brick is exposed. This slows down how quickly smoke leaves your chimney and can lead to drafting issues and excessive creosote buildup. Further, since an unparged smoke chamber is a violation of section 11.2.1.13 of the NFPA 211, which states that “the inner surfaces of the smoke chamber shall be parge coated smooth, with an insulating refractory mortar”, we were required to state that your fireplace should not be used until repaired, making performing the cleaning prior to performing the repair rather pointless. Your lintel and firebox joints needed to be parged in accordance with section 11.2.1.5 of the NFPA 211 to prevent heat transfer to nearby combustible materials, potentially causing a fire. Finally, the brick joint repairs and crown repairs are important for preventing water intrusion. Water will get in the large gaps seen in some areas of your brick work and your crown, and as it freezes and thaws repetitively, it will slowly make these gaps larger and larger. Eventually this will allow moss growth and lead to water leaking into your home. I hope that you can see we were by no means scamming you with unnecessary repairs, and while we regret that we were not given the opportunity to make this right for you ourselves, we still want to do the right thing. Please provide our office with a receipt for the materials you purchased to clean the chimney yourself, and we will be happy to refund you that amount.

Thank you,
A Step in Time

Back in 2014 I hired this company to clean our chimney in Virginia Beach . They gave us the bad news that we would need to change the liner in our chimney and a new cap because it was rusted through and could cause a fire. They offered to do the work for around $6k. We didn’t use the fireplace often and asked them to just cap it top and bottom. We paid and they capped it. We recently decided to convert to a gas fireplace and today I ripped out the fireplace and liner. I found no holes, no broken sections. I was impressed with how good the condition of the liner was. I wish I had hired them to replace the liner back then so I could sue! I hired them once and they scammed me right away. Avoid this company. Please don’t let them take advantage of you. I am reporting this to the BBB and will be sharing my story on every site I can find.

Response to the owner:

I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to both look through your records and respond. I appreciate your answer and my feelings would have been different if that was the conversation I had at the time. The chase cover had some material painted on it that confused the inspector and myself. There was certainly some visible surface rust and at the time it was ~25 years old. Your explanation may have changed my mind about capping it, but would have made me feel like I was dealing with an honest company. Unfortunately at the time this information wasn’t presented this way and left a bitter taste. I understand when someone says “the unit is really old and I see surface rust. That could mean much bigger problems and it’s risky for you to go forward.” That allows me to make a reasonable call. I was instead left with the impression that I was lucky my house hadn’t already caught fire. After seeing that the piping was in excellent shape I feel like I was being cornered unnecessarily. Every business has to make money but I prefer to be treated as you did in your response and not how I was treated at the time. I hope you understand my position.

John,
I am sorry you are having a bad experience with A Step in Time. It sounds like you have a prefabricated chimney and your chase cover was rusted. We only make recommendation on what chimney manufactures inform us to do. Our recommendation policy is that if the unit is under 20 years old and still appears in good condition from the inside then we call the system safe. If the system is 20 - 30 years old, which is out of manufacture warranty but appears in good condition then we state there are no visible defects and state to burn at own risk. If unit has exterior defects like rusted chase covers which can cause leaking then we recommend replacement for 20-30 year old units. For units over 30 years old, we always recommend replacement because the unit is over 10 years past manufacturing use's limited warranty.  The reason why this is recommended is because the condition of the outer pipe is not visible because it is covered with the chase and looking down is blocked by fire stops. Checking the age of your home, your unit is over 30 years old (over 10 years out of manufacture limited warranty) and had a very rusted chase cover. We can only offer recommendations based on what the industry is telling us. I can only equate this to a person who goes to a doctor and has a tumor. (rusted chase cover and very old unit.) Doctor recommends removal because may be cancer. Doctor removes and finds out the it was not cancer. Patient is mad that he had "unneeded" surgery. You had a very old unit and by not recommending replacement, we are placing the safety of your family at risk. I am sorry you had a bad experience but we would have still made the same recommendation.

Amazing service!!! From receptionist to the technician, the service was great. I call them on Tuesday after another chimney company canceled on me last minute. The receptionist was so kind and understanding, she squeezed me in for an appointment the next day. Mike the technician came out, took care of everything. So professional, friendly, and top notch quality. Will be using this company only in the future. Thanks guys

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave us a review! We are so pleased to hear that!

The chimney was as is when we bought the home, it turned out the chimney was "capped" with a very thin piece of sheet metal that was letting water in and all sorts of other things. Everything was explained and photographed/emailed to me (genius!), the gentlemen that arrived were all friendly and certainly tolerated my questions. Everyone was ready to work. Dillon handled the inspection, with Jeff and Noland doing the actual repairs - very pleased with the quality of work and grateful for the suggestions given to improve our experience. Everyone was exactly on time and I even had a few concerns addressed over the phone a week before my appointment. Work was done in the Richmond/Henrico area, just using the VA Beach address that was on the service report. Thanks again, everyone!

Awesome thanks so much Mike for this amazing 5 star review. We're so happy you chose us and truly appreciate your business. We look forward to serving you in what we hope are the years to come!

The first visit Jeffery and Mario did everything in their power to remove the animals from the fireplace but after numerous attempts to get a live squirrel out so they could remove the dead ones they had to refer me to a specialist for the animal removal.  They sent two more guys the next day to put my fireplace damper back on and the rain cap back on. And, did an inspection.  They explained the repairs in detail that need to be done.  I wish I could remember the names.  Sorry.  These guys are nothing but professionals and they care about their customers! Thanks for all you did.  We will call when we are ready to make our repairs happened!  A WONDERFUL COMPANY TO DEAL WITH!

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave us a review!

Only the best!! Frank has done a great job for us many times. He is polite, efficient and always respectful.  I wouldn't have anyone else. We have our fireplace cleaned and inspected every year. The only things we've had done is to replace screen and back panel.  The outside top was replaced with aluminum and looks wonderful! Always a pleasure to work with. Thanks

Awesome thanks so much Joan for this amazing 5 star review. We're so happy you chose us and truly appreciate your business. We look forward to serving you in what we hope are the years to come!

A Step In Time Chimney Sweeps
Rosemont, Virginia Beach, VA

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