Sixteen calls to clean a dryer vent produced three numbers.
Two of the three were the same $79. The third was an $89 inspection fee, waived only if the cleaning was booked. One company was dialled three times.
A homeowner in Plano, Texas asked for a dryer vent to be cleaned. Boocki found thirteen businesses and dialled them sixteen times over three days, because three of them ended up on the list more than once. Three calls produced a number. Two of those numbers were the same, and the third was not the price of the work.
- 13
- businesses found
- 16
- calls placedone dialled 3 times
- 3
- could comeof the 13
- 3
- named a numbertwo were the same $79
How to read this
Three phrases carry the piece, so they are defined before the numbers.
- Connected: the carrier reported the call as connecting at all, whatever was on the other end.
- Reached a person: somebody other than a recording or a voicemail greeting spoke.
- Named a number: the call put a figure in the price field. An offer to quote on site does not count.
The method is one job, one ZIP code and one service: ZIP 75093 (Plano), dryer vent cleaning. ⚠️ Unlike the other case studies in this series, the job’s frozen search phrase was not recorded, because it was created before the column existed. This post therefore says what was dialled and not how it was found, and makes no claim about the query.
The sixteen calls, one by one
Each business gets a code, P1 to P13, because three of them ended up on the list more than once and that duplication is part of the story. The “Lists as” column is our own short label taken from each business’s listing name, which is withheld everywhere in this series.
| # | Provider | Lists as | What happened | Length | Confirmed | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | P1 | Air duct | A voicemail greeting | 1:01 | No | None |
| 2 | P2 | Air duct | An automated menu, then a voicemail prompt | 1:14 | No | None |
| 3 | P3 | Air duct | $79 for routine cleaning, with slots on Monday | 2:29 | Yes | $79 |
| 4 | P4 | Mixed | Never picked up (the first of three attempts) | 0:04 | No | None |
| 5 | P5 | Air duct | A voicemail greeting | 0:28 | No | None |
| 6 | P6 | Air duct | Redirected to another branch; the extension was unavailable | 4:53 | No | None |
| 7 | P7 | Dryer vent | A free on-site quote, and noon on Tuesday | 1:50 | Yes | free on-site quote |
| 8 | P8 | Air duct | $79, but no availability without an address | 2:15 | No | $79 |
| 9 | P9 | Air duct | A voicemail greeting | 0:08 | No | None |
| 10 | P10 | Dryer vent | An $89 inspection fee, waived if the cleaning is booked | 2:13 | Yes | $89 inspection fee |
| 11 | P11 | Air duct | A voicemail greeting | 0:09 | No | None |
| 12 | P12 | General | Never picked up | 0:00 | No | None |
| 13 | P13 | Air duct | An automated menu, then a voicemail; the line was busy | 0:25 | No | None |
| 14 | P4 | Mixed | Never picked up (the second attempt) | 0:05 | No | None |
| 15 | P4 | Mixed | Never picked up (the third attempt) | 0:02 | No | None |
| 16 | P12 | General | A recording: the number is no longer in service | 0:07 | No | None |
Two things stand out before any of the arithmetic. Nine of the thirteen businesses label themselves air-duct cleaners, and only two name dryer vents at all. And the longest call in the job, at four minutes fifty three, produced nothing: it was passed to another branch whose extension nobody answered.
The funnel
Every row is the sum of rows in the table above, and the “Calls” column says which, so nothing here is an orphan number.
| Step | Calls | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Businesses found | n/a | 13 | n/a |
| Called | 1 to 16 | 16 | 100% |
| Connected by the carrier | all but 4, 12, 14, 15 | 12 | 75% |
| Reached a person | 3, 6, 7, 8, 10 | 5 | 31% |
| Confirmed they could come | 3, 7, 10 | 3 | 19% |
| Quoted something | 3, 7, 8, 10 | 4 | 25% |
| Named a number | 3, 8, 10 | 3 | 19% |
The expensive step is the third. Twelve dials connected and only five reached a person, so seven of them got as far as a machine: four voicemail greetings, two automated menus and one recording saying the number was dead.
The three numbers
Three calls put a figure in the price field, and two of them are the same figure.
| Call | What they said | What kind of number it is |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | $79 | The price of the routine cleaning, with slots on the coming Monday. |
| 8 | $79 | The same figure, with no availability offered at all. |
| 10 | $89 | An inspection fee, waived only if the cleaning is booked. |
Two businesses naming the identical $79 is the closest thing to a market signal in this job, and it is worth only as much as two coincidences are. The third number is not the price of the work: it is the cost of finding out, and it only comes back if you buy the cleaning.
There is also a fourth price-like answer that is not a number. Call 7 offered a free quote on site, which is a refusal wearing the clothes of an answer.
Three dials to one business
Sixteen dials reached thirteen businesses, because two of them were dialled again in later batches. The provider list held each of them once, so this was not the directory handing back duplicates.
| Provider | Calls | What the extra attempts produced |
|---|---|---|
| P4 | 4, 14, 15 | Nothing. Three attempts of four, five and two seconds, none of which connected. |
| P12 | 12, 16 | Nothing, then a recording saying the number is no longer in service. |
The product allows a re-dial by design. Its only guard stops two simultaneous calls to the same business, which says nothing about a second attempt hours later. What the job does not record is which businesses were picked for each batch, so this post reports the re-dials and does not guess why they were chosen.
The arithmetic
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Businesses found | 13 |
| Calls placed | 16 |
| Connected | 12 |
| Talk time, all sixteen rows | 17:23 |
| Talk time that was billed | 17:12 |
| Charged | $5.16 |
| Average per call placed | $0.32 |
The Length column in the first table adds up to 17 minutes 23 seconds. Eleven of those seconds belong to the four calls that never connected, and a call nobody answered is not billed. That leaves 17 minutes 12 seconds, which at thirty cents a minute is $5.16 exactly, and the average divides it across the sixteen dials.
What we would change next time
- Ask whether they clean dryer vents before asking the price. Nine of the thirteen do not name it, and the vagueness that followed may not be a coincidence.
- Stop after two silent attempts. One business was dialled three times and never connected on any of them.
- Treat “we will quote on site” as a refusal. It should never sit in a result next to a real number as though the two were comparable.
- Record the search phrase on every job. This one predates the column, so the post can say what was dialled but not how it was found.
Why publish the label, not just the number
A number without a label is worse than no number. $89 for an inspection fee reads like $89 to clean a vent. Two identical quotes from two businesses look like a market. In this job both of those readings are wrong, and the label is the part that decides what a homeowner does next.