It was late and my attorney was drunk. I probably should have taken his advice with a grain-of-salt, as the cliche goes...because, by the time the midnight hour hits, my legal council has become so twisted by rum runners and shots of vermouth that he eventually starts talking backwards, or what he claims to be backwards, in reality it is nothing more than a mash of letters, numbers, verbs, and pronouns connected by a string of periods and commas that not only make no grammatical sense, landing more in the category of verbal nonsense - untranslatable - but nevertheless, a clear indicator that I should indeed pen my first customer review. This would be the first one...Suncoast Cleaning, a company that I have never hired before, but certainly will never hire again.
The company dispatched a headache...the blood vessels in my brain began to dilate about 10 minutes after I left the apartment, with the cleaning employee safely positioned to do the job, I received a call from the owner, who stated that I had not left any money for the job. However, upon my departure, I had left on the counter $150. The owner arrived to inspect the crime scene.
The employee stated that there was no cash left behind. It should have been an omen when Suncoast insisted on cash that such a situation could arise, but we nevertheless agreed to the cash demands, convinced by the professionalism of the website and the referrals that an honest and satisfactory job would be done.
This would be our final attempt to recover our full deposit on the apartment, and we needed the apartment cleaned well.
But at sunset, I returned to find a mess. The cleaner had deserted the job. I sent the owner some pictures, and about an hour later he and his thieving employee returned to finish cleaning.
Upon my arrival the following day, I found that most of the contents inside of the fully furnished apartment had been thrown into the dumpster or stolen.
The employee believed that everything needed to be thrown away, including all of the kitchenware - plates, cups, glassware, utensils, cutting boards, towels, oven mitts - and everything else that came with the kitchen. She discarded closets full of linens and towels, which also belonged to the apartment. She broke the upright lamp. But there were many things that she did not throw away, including the chairs, a few tables, a stationary bike, the beds, and a mini-fridge all remained in position.
"Why hadn't she taken those?" I asked the owner of Suncoast Cleaning, Joseph, . He pondered the question for a second, perhaps at a loss for words himself, but nonetheless willing to engage the matter.
"We do this all the time...these kinds of junk removal jobs," especially when people are moving out, he said.
However, this was not a junk removal job. This was a deep clean. We only provided payment - albeit stolen by the employee - for a deep clean, not for a junk removal.
Upon further investigation, I realized that the dehumidifier and the vacuum were missing.
We searched in the dumpster, and although we found many of the kitchen items and linens stuffed into black trash bags, we could only find a tattered box that once held the dehumidifier.
Missing... a $192 machine and an aged Bissell upright vacuum cleaner, on the loose and at large, and by now Joseph and I were greeted by the landlord, who had come to reclaim his property.
Joseph's phone calls to his employee were not returned, but he agreed to replace the items.
Later that day, the employee confessed to taking the dehumidifier and the vacuum, and returned both items to the apartment, but she still maintains innocence concerning the missing payment. read more
