Buyer Beware!
I initially made an appointment with Elite Pressure Cleaning to clean and stain my deck. The lady on the phone offered me Wednesday, Thursday or Friday of the following week. One of the conditions of the work is that you have to clear your deck off. (They will move a barbecue grill, a table, and four chairs, but we have a lot more than that on our deck.) I knew I wouldn't be home Tues night and unable to clear the deck off, so I planned to clear the deck off Weds night and I made the appointment for Thurs. I also gave them a credit card number over the phone to charge a deposit on the job.
Fast forward to Tues, for two other factors beyond my control, I was unable to support having the deck work done that week. I called Elite Pressure Cleaning to cancel my appointment. The lady searched their records and she could find no record under my name or address.
Uhhhh... okay. I thought that was odd and maybe I got companies mixed up and maybe I made the appointment with a different company by mistake. So I went on our online bank to see what company charged us for the deposit. Nothing. Nobody ever charged us for the deposit. I figured this whole telephone reservation thing didn't work out with them and I don't have anything to worry about then, right? Wrong.
Weds afternoon, my phone rang at work, and my very confused wife reported she just got home to find all the stuff had been moved off our deck and it looked like someone had cleaned our deck, and there was an invoice from Elite Pressure Cleaning hanging on the front door.
I immediately called Elite Pressure Cleaning and left a message there, and I sent the owner an email expressing my concern that his company (a) wasn't supposed to do any work until Thursday, and (b) wasn't supposed to do any work PERIOD because I called to cancel the day before. The owner very quickly responded to my email via BlackBerry and said he would look into it.
That was the last I heard from the company for a couple of weeks. I had figured they started the job, so I might as well have them finish the job, but I couldn't get in contact with the owner.
...Then I received a bill in the mail from Elite Pressure Cleaning for the deck cleaning work they did.
I tried calling again and left a message again. I emailed again and said I didn't think I should be charged for unauthorized work.
The owner responded via email that they maintain a log of all phone calls and have no record of me calling on Tuesday. He said he asked each of his 3 staff members if any of them remember me calling, and they all said no. Since he has no record of me calling to cancel, he said the charge for the deck cleaning stands.
I think the company made five errors:
Error #1) They scheduled the appointment for the wrong day. I asked for Thursday, and they put it on their schedule for Wednesday.
Error #2) They didn't follow up with any sort of email or written form of contract to confirm the scheduled date the work was to be performed.
Error #3) They didn't charge my credit card for the deposit like they said they would. If I had seen that, I would have called back after looking at the bank records and said, "Hey, you charged my credit card for the deposit, so I've gotta be somewhere on your schedule."
Error #4) When I called to cancel the appointment, the lady didn't see my name on the Thursday schedule, so she couldn't cancel it. This is error-carried-forward from Error #1 and 2 above. If I had something in writing with a job order number on it, then I could have referenced that when I called to cancel. (Or better yet, I would have realized they scheduled it for the wrong day.)
Error #5) When the deck cleaners arrived at our house and found a LOT more than just a barbecue grill, table, and four chairs on the deck, they didn't stop to ask if this was okay. I had: barbecue grill, patio table, 6 patio chairs, kid's picnic table, an end table, two large potted plants, two hanging baskets with plants in them, two metal hanging hooks for the plants, four tiki torches, and a tupperware bin with a bunch of kids toys in it. This would have been a great opportunity for the company to call and say, "Hey, we're here to do the work on your deck, but you didn't clear the deck off in accordance with your part of the (verbal, not written anywhere) agreement. Would you like for us to remove the additional items for an additional fee? Then we could have said, "No! Stop! You are NOT authorized to do work on our house!"
The owner continues to insist that he has meticulous records of incoming phone calls and claims that I never called, so therefore I owe him for the deck cleaning that was done.
I paid to prevent him from charging me late fees or submitting it to a collection agency or placing a lien on my house.
I went to the BBB website to file a complaint, and discovered this company already has a "C-" grade due to the number of complaints filed and time they take to resolve complaints. read more