We had Fresh Start Cleaning clean our house this week. It was a bit of a fiasco. My wife contacted Tammy, to schedule a cleaning of our 2150 sq ft 3 bedroom, 2 bath, home. We wanted a spring cleaning, with cleaning of mini blinds in 2 of our bedrooms, and larger blinds on our bedroom sliding glass door. Plus wipe down the fronts of the kitchen cabinets, clean the baseboards in the dining room and entry way. We were given a bid of $535. We have 2 small dogs, no kids, just my wife and I live in the home. I don't believe anyone visiting our home, would consider it filthy, though it was dusty. We recently had the furnace and vents cleaned and we wanted a thorough cleaning of the house. Our cleaning team, Tabitha, Lavana, and one other girl, who's name we don't know, arrived on time at 0930. They were scheduled for a total of 12 hrs, between them, so we anticipated that they would have the house cleaned in about 4 hrs. My math shows that the $535 bid for 12 hrs, comes out to $44.58/hr. One person started on the bathrooms, one person started in the kitchen, and another started on the blinds. At 1300, 3.5 hrs of their planned time had gone by, and they had just finished the bathrooms, kitchen, and blinds. They explained to my wife that their hours were used up. But the floors had not yet been vacuumed, or mopped. So they asked if she wanted them to keep working? I assume they were in contact with Tammy, the manager/owner. We were advised that it would cost another $183, for an additional 6 hrs at $30.50/hr, for them to finish the job. This seemed to be a bait and switch, because our initial bid, and plan included cleaning the floors. One of the cleaners had sent photos of our home to Tammy, showing dust on glass lamp shades in our bedroom. Needless to say, we were not especially happy, to have the price increase. I want to add here, that I'm not sure how the initial $535 estimate was made, but I would think that is more than adequate to clean a home. I found $718 excessive. Tammy called my wife and told her, that "our house was filthy", so she had to charge us more to finish the work. My wife's response, was anger. Tammy then called me, and threatened to have her staff leave at that time, and also threatened taking me to small claims court, if I refused to pay her. Needless to say, that didn't go over real well, so asked Tammy to meet me at our home. When she arrived I went in and inspected the home, rooms that I was told were completely cleaned, had cob webs around the ceilings, corners of the carpets were not vacuumed. Each room I went into, still had areas that I pointed out, that were not cleaned, some of them very obvious. Tammy seemed as though, these were unreasonable requests. Her and her cleaners continued to clean for an additional 2 hrs. Now with that all said, the house was cleaned, quite well, but it shouldn't take me pointing out areas that they missed. Again I think $718 is an extreme amount to have a home cleaned. Would I use them again? Not likely. The bait and switch, and telling my wife, that the home is filthy seems unprofessional. The entire encounter was not a pleasant experience. read more
