Well, thanks you too.
It's very interesting.
And it means I can definitely be fair when I call them liars. It's sort of silly because the bigger lies are their telling me the pipes are too dirty to clean, that they are the worst they have ever seen (with 1/4 to 1/2 inch of soot), that it will ruin their brush. The claim of creosote is just something she threw in when I asked why they can't clean the pipe with a brush. (and she'll claim she got confused and was talking about the fireplace chimney. and come up with a different excuse why they pipes can't be cleaned. Or she'll say they can do it, but I wouldn't hire them now, but if I complain elsewhere, they'll say they were ready to clean for the regular price.)
But again, I'm not going to do this until I have the chimney cleaned, in case the new, hopefully honest guy has something bad to say. If I'm wrong on one thing with the first people, they'll concentrate on that and just ignore all the lies they've told me. Of course they'll do that even if I'm not wrong on anything.