I've had a yelp account for a while, but have never had an experience so special that I felt I had to write a review. The end service we got from Cleaning Aid Services was terrible enough that I feel I have to write something.
The beginning part of the service was fantastic. My roommate contacted JR at Cleaning Aid Services on a Saturday, and he responded within 20 minutes to schedule a same-day appointment. He was extremely professional, and we were able to schedule an appointment right away.
From there, however, we started having issues. The cleaners (2 people) arrived a half hour early, which prompted us to have to rush to get everything out of the house. The price of the service was $90 an hour for two cleaners, which was higher than we'd been quoted by other services. However, we decided on Cleaning Aid Services because a previous Yelp user had mentioned that Cleaning Aid Services cleaned his house AND steam cleaned their carpets, and when my roommate scheduled the cleaning, he asked if they cleaned carpets and the manager said they did. We thought it would be easier to schedule both the house cleaning and carpet steam cleaning in one service. When they arrived, we asked the cleaners about the steam cleaning... and they said they didn't do it. Which, to be fair, was a bit of a misunderstanding. However, many other cleaning services we looked at clearly stated that they don't do steam cleanings, and when my roommate asked if they cleaned the carpets, a professional should have known what he was asking and been clear about it. The cleaners told us that they "shampoo" the carpets - we didn't really know what that meant, but it was too late to schedule a steam cleaning (we needed to be out by that night), so we just hoped for the best and let them do their work.
During the cleaning, the cleaners were wonderful. They were super friendly and got to work right away, and were finished after about 3 hours (we had been told it would take 3-4 hours for a 2200 sq ft house). When they finished, I was in a huge rush to check on the movers who had also finished up downstairs, so I did a quick run through of all the rooms to see if everything looked alright, then paid and tipped the cleaners (15% ended up being $40, which seemed steep but I was just relieved that the house was clean and I was hurrying) and sent them on their way. The man handling the transaction tried to charge me for the first half hour, but I reminded him that they had showed up early and were unable to start because we hadn't had time to move everything out of the house and he we came to an agreement. I touched the carpet to see if the "shampoo" they mentioned was used - the carpet wasn't wet at all. I hadn't really expected much, so I just shrugged it off.
After a few hours, I went back in for a last check to see if everything was out of the house and started to notice things. The windows weren't cleaned. There were still a lot of cobwebs in the rooms. One of the sinks was dirty. There was still dust on some of the blinds. There were still dirty areas of the floor. When I walked into my room, I noticed that my closet doors were closed (I never close them). When I opened them, I looked in to see that the shelves had not been cleaned AT ALL. There was still a big orange spill and dust everywhere. I walked into another bathroom to see the same thing. It looked like they had just closed the doors to avoid cleaning inside! I went downstairs, and noticed that the drawers had not been cleaned. Then came the worst offenses - I opened the fridge, freezer, and oven - NONE had been cleaned. I called my roommate to make sure that he had specified that this was a move-out clean - he had. How could they have missed these spots in a move-out clean?
At that point, we were out of time - I only had a few hours before everything had to be out of the house, so I spent the rest of the night re-cleaning everything they had missed. I didn't even finish - I kept opening drawers or finding floor spaces that needed to be cleaned again.
In the end, it we paid over $300 for the cleaners to clean the countertops, mop some floors, and vacuum - something I or anyone could have easily done at no cost. Now I know we had a messy house (lots of dust and cobwebs and spices on the kitchen counters), but I would much rather the cleaners have spent extra time to actually clean everything they needed to than leave early without warning us that a lot of work still needed to be done. I had moved most of my cleaning supplies into storage, so I had to make do with two rolls of paper towels. I did all I could, but I'm worried that the owner of the house will now charge us a huge fee for not cleaning the house. The cleaners were nice, but the service we received was appalling. The pictures I took were taken at night so they're a bit dark and don't do the work justice. I was thoroughly disappointed by Cleaning Aid Services. read more