Anyone else find cleaning heating and air conditioning ducts yourself harder than it looks?

honestly, what you can do yourself is: change the filter, pull the registers off, vacuum as far down as the hose reaches, wash the grilles. the trunk lines need a truck-mounted vacuum with the whole system under negative pressure - the videos of someone feeding a shop vac hose in are just moving dust around. if you shine a torch in and it's genuinely filthy, hire it out. if it isn't, change the filter and stop.