The Cowboy Carpet Cleaner

After cleaning carpets for more than 24 years, I have seen some innocent people really ripped off, recently visited a new customer in Polegate, just outside Eastbourne in Sussex.

I turned into a tree lined cul-de-sac with bungalows set back from the road, I was looking for number five, the bungalow was obviously very well maintained, with flower beds and a neat hedge leading to the front door.

A lady in her seventies answered the door and invited me in, she seemed to be a little ‘frosty’ showing me the hallway and the lounge/dining room that needed cleaning. I started to measure the area, filling in information on my NCCA survey sheet, I explained about the NCCA and why we had become members, the lady asked a few questions and seemed to relax a little. ‘I had these carpets cleaned four weeks ago’ she said, ‘they took twenty five minutes to do them’, the carpets looked in poor condition, my first guess was that they has been cleaned three or four years previous to my visit.

The lady had been ‘sucked in’ by a leaflet that had been pushed through her door, special offer two rooms for the price of one, as soon as the operator had arrived, the price started to increase for; moving chairs, stain treatment, access charges and more. This had left this lady with a deep rooted opinion on carpet cleaners, which is understandable.

Furthermore, the previous company had not even vacuumed the carpet before cleaning, in our industry this type of operation is known as ‘bait and switch’ luring the customer in with an attractive price and then creating reasons to inflate the charges when they are on site. As with most cases, the original leaflet had no address, no website address and a mobile telephone number (which was now dead)

We cleaned the carpet for this customer three weeks after my survey, the job took an hour and a half, leaving the carpet looking as new, with our new customers faith restored.

When employing a carpet cleaning company, ask for the following:

References from local customers, a quality company will be pleased to give you references from previous customers.

Proof of insurance basic third party liability insurance does not cover carpet, rug or upholstery cleaning, only ‘treatments risk’ insurance is acceptable.

Contact details, a card with just a mobile number with no address should ring some alarm bells, mobile phones are cheap to purchase, cowboy cleaners will simply throw away their old sim card, replacing it with a new one, and a new number.

Trade qualifications, we feel trade qualifications are extremely important, saying that you have cleaned carpets for ten years or have been on a basic one day course from a manufacturer does not render someone as qualified.

Cleaning equipment carpets should and upholstery should dry within two hours after they have been cleaned, dated or inefficient equipment can leave carpets wet for up to two days!

Hopefully these questions would ‘weed out’ the not so professional cleaning operative.

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