I'm going to write this mostly chronologically, but I want to make it clear that in doing so, I'm burying the lead, which is that in addition to offering terrible service in almost every facet, they blatantly stole my personal property and have since become unreachable. If you make the mistake of hiring these people, please be prepared to donate anything in your house to them which doesn't require a power tool to remove.
From the outset, they were very poor at getting in touch- I had to wait 3 days for a call back when attempting to schedule the service, which was pursuant to a gift certificate I got for Christmas. Tim (the owner, I think) finally texted me and apologized, and said the delay was due to a family emergency out of town. I believed this at the time, but subsequent experience leads me to doubt everything I've been told.
Once we did get in touch, it took 2 or more days to actually schedule the appointment because of infrequent texts I was receiving, despite my having told him that I was on an urgent time frame. I asked if they offered carpet cleaning, or if there was anyone he would recommend. He answered "Yes."
When I let the crew into my house, they said they don't do carpet cleaning. I asked Tim the reason for the discrepancy, and he said that his "yes" was intended to mean that there's a company he would recommend, and that he'd attempted to send me a screen shot of the google listing, which hadn't gone through. Luckily, the company he recommended was much much more responsive, and I was able to get it scheduled for the following day.
I asked for a move-out clean, and specified to the crew that I'd like them to clean to the fullest extent possible, and that I would pay more than the gift card value if necessary to accomplish that.
The work was mediocre, at best, considering the requested scope. They didn't touch the baseboards at all. There were spots of barbecue sauce, dried soda, etc. on the walls that I assumed would be cleaned, but all such spots remained untouched. They had clearly vacuumed, but there were several items still on the carpet that they'd missed. There were a few cobwebs on the walls. The shower fixtures had loose dust on top of them. The shower door tracks had been cleaned, but not thoroughly, as there was still gunk in any place that would have required significant effort to get to. The ledges where soap and shampoo were kept in the shower were also still somewhat grimy, though it did appear they'd probably been quickly wiped. There was noticeably less dust on the fan blades, but they had clearly not been thoroughly wiped.
In summary, they did a good job on much of the work, but totally skipped or rushed through several aspects that I think would be presumptively included in a move-out clean. My girlfriend and I had to spend about 90 additional minutes touching up things that should have already been done.
But here's where it goes from mediocre work and bad customer service to outright criminality.
I was shocked, upon returning to the house, to find that both my large living room curtain and my small over-sink kitchen curtain had been removed. I assumed at first that they had perhaps been taken down for cleaning and that I was just having trouble finding them. I texted Tim to ask where they were (after 5pm that day), and he said he would inquire. The next afternoon, I followed up, and he said he had tried to text me, but that it hadn't gone through (again), and that the curtains had been disposed of because they were assumed to be trash left behind. Mind you, the curtains may have been dusty, but were in fine condition, and were hung in the windows exactly like anyone would hang curtains in their house. They weren't on the floor. They weren't tattered. None of that. I pointed out to Tim that while the kitchen curtain was on a cheap rod flush-mounted into the wall, the living room one was on a nice, ornate rod which was missing, removed from its cradles (which are still screwed into the wall), with that removal requiring unscrewing in order to loosen the grip on the rod itself. He expressed surprise that the crew would take down curtains that were hanging up rather than just laying around. I told him that if his people were telling him that they thought the curtains had been left behind as trash, he should be very worried about his people stealing from customers, since that was very obviously not the case, and that the curtain rod was a fixture even if the curtains themselves didn't impress the cleaners in terms of quality. He said Lucia (the senior member of the two-woman crew) had been with him for five years, and that he's not worried about her stealing, and assured me he would inquire further, since this seemed strange to him.
I've followed up multiple times and asked him to call me if his texts aren't getting through, and haven't heard from him in 4 days. I'll be calling the cops tomorrow, and suing in small claims if need be. read more
