Sparkles Are Maid "Cleaning" Services
Beware, beware,…read morebeware.
In June 2021, we contracted them for deep cleaning for: two small bathrooms, the smallish kitchen, and for an extra charge, we added three ceiling fans and five sets of mini-blinds.
The services were to be done on 7/9/21, the day before a multi-state move.
In spite of receiving numerous email notices as our cleaning date approached, the cleaning team (who were subcontracted, though we were never told this ahead of time) arrived half an hour late. The woman cleaner began with a series of excuses for why she and her male assistant were late, and immediately told us we were free to leave and that they'd handle everything while we were gone.
We had other packing and cleaning to do, so we stayed.
Two hours and fifteen minutes after they'd arrived, the cleaners said they were finished and ready to settle out.
I was shocked to see little evidence that the place had been cleaned. The guest bathroom mirror was still smudged, the area behind the master toilet was absolutely filthy, as was the shower stall, shower rim -- everywhere there was filth.
When they cleaned the ceiling fan in the master bedroom, they wiped all the dust off the fan blades and onto the carpet below and left it there. None of the blinds had been cleaned - the dust and dirt and stains were easily wiped off with a plain wet towel.
The fridge was filthy along the bottom, both inside and outside, and the gaskets were caked with dirt and debris. The stove and oven looked as though they'd barely been touched - the knobs for the range hadn't been removed or even wiped off. The dishwasher door down and inside was still filthy.
So . . . I asked the female cleaning assistant why the things we'd hired them to clean were still dirty, and she made excuses, became argumentative, belligerent, and openly hostile. We were told:
* They couldn't clean any better than they had because we were bad housekeepers.
* The bathroom couldn't be cleaned any better because they didn't have the right tools for it.
* The reason they didn't touch the dishwasher was because (this is her direct quote) "dishwashers are really hard to clean."
I took a damp paper towel, using no special tools or even soap, and wiped down the dishwasher right in front of her, and it came clean immediately.
Ironically, this team left our place dirtier than it was when they got there - for example, when the man mopped the front bathroom, something on his boots created a muddy substance which he then tracked through the rest of the house. But since we hadn't contracted them to do the living area, he didn't feel the need to wipe the boot prints up, and they dried so hard onto the floor, we had to literally get on our hands and knees and scrub it off.
Sparkles Are Maid "claims" their work is guaranteed, so we asked the woman to finish the job we were paying for. Instead, she stood there and told us that she'd owned her own cleaning business for X number of years, and that we had unrealistic expectations for how much cleaning could reasonably be accomplished in the time allotted and for the amount we were paying (nearly $500 dollars).
She retreated to her car and called the Sparkles Are Maid office and told them she "wasn't comfortable going back inside."
Truthfully, we didn't feel comfortable letting that team back into our home, but a guaranteed job means another team should have been sent out.
That didn't happen. The company decided to handle it by not charging us. Which is fair, but it's also not what we needed - we needed the deep-cleaning service we'd contracted for because we had an inspection with our landlord that afternoon.
As a result of their lack of service, we spent our last twelve hours before a cross-country drive, and with so many other things still needing to be done, doing the deep clean they didn't. Two of our neighbors offered to help, and they managed to get the master bathroom, plus the stove, sink, oven, and fridge sparkling clean, all in about an hour and a half - so all that noise about how hard it was, or how bad a condition it was in before the Sparkles Are Maid team arrived was just another excuse. I would give them a Zero Star rating if that were an option.
PLEASE NOTE: The photos attached to this review were all taken AFTER the team declared themselves finished with what was supposed to be a move-out ready job.
