A Shade Dirtier

Our living room, dining room and upstairs landing windows all have Hunter Douglas Duette honeycomb shades on them. Apparently, these are high-end window coverings. They were here when we got here. Unfortunately, they are beyond dirty and they've been that way since we moved in thanks to the previous owners. (They did not aspire to Godliness - it took me 2.5 hours to clean all their gunk out of the fridge after we bought the place.)

Gross, I know; it'd be bad enough if it was just our own dirt and dust on there. But I digress.

Since finally hanging some drapes in our living room (we've lived here four years come August 17), I became motivated to clean the shades and found some instructions on the Hunter Douglas website. While my guinea pig shade is cleaner, I wouldn't say I got the results I was hoping for.

Hunter Douglas recommends having an On-Site™ certified technician come in and clean them. I called the local outfit and based on a ballpark estimate, this will cost us between $400-$500. Talk about getting taken to the cleaners.

But they are extremely gross and they are quality shades, so I'm entertaining the idea. Rick, however, is not. He wanted me to find a lower priced alternative or suggested completely replacing the shades, which is not an option, imho.

A-one Cleaners sounds like they can clean them, though I wasn't completely instilled with confidence that they knew what I was talking about. However, if they did, for all 10 of the Duette shades we have, it'll cost us about $60, a substantial savings.

My question is: does anyone have these shades and/or had them cleaned before? Any
suggestions would be appreciated. Because, damn.