AFC Cleaning & Restoration
3131 Wheeling Avenue…read moreKansas City, MO
(Their website says Edwardsville, but a card I was given by Joe says KCMO.)
As soon as we had the furniture moved after the heavy rains of July 16-17 got into our basement, I called AFC Cleaning & Restoration (Thursday) and told them I needed to have the water removed from my carpet. They had good online reviews. Robert arrived at 6:00 PM and started talking about tearing out the walls and carpet. I told him I wanted to try to save the carpet, as it wasn't that old and that the water came in through the window, not the foundation. He agreed to do that and then brought in fans and a dehumidifier. "Aren't you going to remove the water?" I asked. He said he was just going to set up fans and would be back. He assured me that if there was air movement, no mold would grow for three days. I texted him on Friday at 1:37 asking when he was going to work in our basement. I did not hear back from him until 10:36 that night when he said he could arrive between 10:30 and 11:30 on Saturday morning, would I be available. I did not see the text until 9:30 the next morning. "Yes, please" was my answer.
A young couple showed up in a rusty pickup truck and said they were here to take out the pad. They had nothing to extract the water. They turned the fans to the inside of the room rather than to the edge where the carpet was the wettest. I texted Robert at 11:48 and told him the pad was out, but they put the wet carpet up against the baseboards and it was beginning to smell. I didn't hear a thing from him that day. I set the edge of the carpet up on plastic bins to get it off the baseboards and help get more air to it. On Sunday at 3:00 PM he texted me and asked me if he could swing by and take readings. Not expecting to hear from him on Sunday, I didn't see the message until 5:00 and responded "readings of what"? His response at 6:48 was "It's okay. Are you available tomorrow?" My response was "Yes, I need a time, though. I need someone to clean and sanitize the carpet and get it dried. It now smells. Readings of what?" I could have told him it was still very wet. His response "I'm not done drying it yet. It will start to smell better as it dries. I will also spray an anti Microbial spray." "So, you are never planning to vacuum the water out of the carpet - the one thing I asked for on Thursday?" His response "It gets cleaned after it's dry and the pad is replaced."
Robert came by on Monday, but the carpet was still wet. He returned on Tuesday. The carpet was dry, five full days after the flood, and he sprayed microbial spray. When he was done, I mentioned that it still smelled and that I was unhappy he never extracted the water. "Oh, now that I'm done, you complain" was his reply. I was explaining that I had asked for the water to be extracted on Thursday and continuously through the process, but he just talked louder over me when I spoke. I told him that if he knew he couldn't extract the water, he should have told me at the beginning. He said it would have taken his crew longer to extract the water than using fans (no doubt). I reiterated that if they didn't have the crew available, they should have advised me in the first instance. He was frustrating me, so I told him to leave.
I called the office the next morning and without identifying myself asked what they would do if someone had water in their finished basement that came up around their shoes. She proudly stated that they would first extract the water from the carpet. I said "Good, and how do you do that?" She explained that they have big machines that extract the water and remove it. I told her my name and that they did not do that in my basement. She agreed to send the manager to determine if the work done at my house was representative of their work product. A nice enough man named Joe came by and told me he didn't smell anything but carpet glue that had been made wet by the flood. On all other matters he agreed with me, but had no authority to do anything about it. He said he'd have the owner come by.
The owner showed up and said all he smelled was acetate from the carpet. It was clear that his goal was to blame me.
He said they didn't follow IICRC standards, because I asked them to try to save the carpet. I said, "So, you didn't follow your own standards, but you blame me?". He said "Yes". Yet, he didn't do what I asked him to do. I told him the young couple put the very wet carpet up against the baseboards and he said that wouldn't matter. I told him I asked for the water to be extracted several times, and he told me that using the fans was extracting the water. I disagreed. Not a single google search defines extracting water as using fans. Fans are the next step after extracting the water. I told him if he couldn't extract the water, they should have told me from the beginning, so I could have called someone else. He got up and left. What do they want for fans? $3000.
