CRAZY CUSTOMER STORIES

once again, I'm in the right place it seems, no ice, no snow, no sleet, occasional rain and a few weeks of really hot weather as the only drawback.... aaahhhhh this is the life!!

Last Saturday it was partly cloudy..  Went to a job and within 1hr some dark clouds  came over the trees and hill.. My van was parked in the driveway with 2 big trees on each side (north/south)..

Let's see.. what else?

They seem to come in clusters. I'll go 6 months without a complaint (other than "oooh your guys were so professional I really thought twice about calling but a spot came back in the livingroom" but then I'll get three in a row.

The coupon one with the head banging housewife (hahaha) happened a LONG time ago along with the "I want my carpets re-cleaned for free" lady. The other two happened within the last two weeks along with this one.

We walk into a home, the sister is there. 3 rooms for our minimum $129 (we are some of the higher priced cleaners in the area but our hook is we don't nickel and dime the extras. We sell basically odor removal, carpet repair, other services like upholstery or tile and scotchguard and that's it!)

Anyway, we sold her $50 worth of odor removal because of her dog. The floors were COVERED in urine and it would have easily been a $500 odor removal job had it been in a nicer neighborhood. But I only shoot for what I can get and a topical treatment of UPT and Milgo was better than nothing!

So we clean, it takes us about an hour. There are ink spots that the customer has so wisely treated with resolve and scrubbed the hell out of so there was no way it was coming out. When I recommened the milgo/upt treatment I explained that we probably won't get the ink out but if it's still there NOONE will be able to get it out etc. etc. etc.

So we clean. Made the carpets SPARKLE (considering how bad the damage was.. BLACK BLACK BLACK traffic lanes turned back to normal and all).

Two day later I get a call from the husband!

"I want to know how the hell your guys cleaned three whole rooms of carpet in one hour!"- customer

"Sir, let's find out, can I get your first and last name and I can pull the account?"-me (or should I say the "supervisor")

"Let's see, we had three bedrooms on the ticket. One hour sounds about right, it should take about 10-15 minutes per room and about 10-15 minutes to load and unload the equipment, what's going on with the carpet?"- me

"Well, it looks fine, I just want it done right though. There is no way it takes one hour to do three rooms!"-customer

"Well, sir, I am sorry you are unhappy. We will be more than happy to send someone out to re-do the job".- me (our guarantee is "no questions" so we do that no matter what).

"Well, I don't know when I can be home so I'll have to call you back"-customer

"Sir, I am a bit concerned. Usually in the rare instances where a customer calls us back they want us to come out and re-do the work. I don't want you to have a bad image of our company so you just tell me when and I'll get someone out. We can be out after 5 if that gives you enough time to get home from work or we can be out on Saturday for you"- me

"No no, I'll call you back"- CLICK


Three days go by. I don't hear anything. I'm concerned. A happy customer might tell two people but a pissed customer will tell twenty!

I call and talk to the wife and we set up a time to go back out. I re-clean in front of her and explain why the ink spot didn't come out and I said "you know, on a scale of 1 to 10 these carpets were probably close to a three or four and we managed to get them back to a seven or eight. I would say that is a great improvement".

she said "Oh I know, you guys did a great job but I just didn't understand how it could be done in an hour but now I see with two people working how you guys get stuff done".

UGH! Sometimes you have to go the extra mile to make a happy customer I guess. I wish gas wasn't so damn expensive though! I mean, we spend a good $2000/month on GAS! More than we even pay for our mortgage! And plus the time to go out on a re-do takes away from the time to do a paying customer! Oh well, she'll be calling us back though and after all, it's all about repeats and referrals right?

I cleaned for some folks about two years ago and i knew the moment I walked in the door that this one was going to give me some issues.  The first indication that this was going to be a strange job was that the carpet was perfectly immaculate.  I was unsure of why she was having them cleaned in the first place and she insisted on how absolutely filthy they are.  After about an hour into the job she starts telling me how much she has hated every carpet cleaner she had had in her house, but she loves what I am doing and thinks it looks great.  This takes a load off my mind and I am confident I have subdued the beast.  We have some great chit chat to finish it off and I leave the house feeling good and the carpets look fantastic.  That evening I get a message from her screaming about how I ruined her carpet.  I of course call her right back and she is in hysterics about how old and dirty her carpet looks now.  I go right out to inspect the issue and of course the carpets look wonderful still.  I ask the costumer what the problems are and she just keeps repeating how they look terrible and that my insurance should pay for the carpet to be replaced.  At this point I am getting concerned that this ranting crazy person is going to sue me.  So i of course offer a total refund, she repeatedly refuses. Then after about 30 minutes of showing her that the carpet does not look any different under the furniture that I did not clean under compared to the area I did clean, and her yelling at me that I'm not "Christian" because I wont replace her carpet that I made look 30 years old, her husband shows up.  She runs to him like I am some kind of villain that has had her captive.  This fellow looks more reasonable and I say to him sir does this carpet look like its aged 30 years to you?  He said come out side with me for a sec. So I go out the front door clipboard in hand and he said here is 20 bucks sorry my wife has not been feeling well. 

I thought it would be nice to start a thread to share some experiences with crazy customers. I have a few examples.

1. I went to a home back when I use to do coupons to do 4 rooms for $89. She had urine throughout her carpet and I explained the proper way to treat it (broke out the high powered UV light, etc. etc.). Well, she didn't want the extras. OK, no problem, I'm non-pushy so I explained I will do everything I can but without the extras I cannot guarantee the odor to be gone. Furthermore applying moisture to urine "may" cause the odor to come up even more.

She told me she would call someone else so I politely exited her townhouse ($600,000 townhouse with a Mercedies parked in front) and she started banging her head against the wall and yelling at the top of her lungs! I could not believe it! I stopped doing coupons after that one!

2.  I did a job on a Friday that turned out BEAUTIFUL! I mean the carpets were so bad and they came out BEAUTIFUL! The customer was having a party the next evening and she was so happy she tipped my assistant and I each $20.

As soon as it started raining the next day I get a call in the afternoon saying that her carpets are still wet and that she is having a party. Well, immediately I went into action because this is a serious matter (mold, mildew etc.). She was bad mouthing my crew saying we were unprofessional and rushed through the job etc. etc. and told my "supervisor" on the phone (me) that she wants us to come back out on Monday. I told her we have to come out today if the carpets are still wet. She refused so I told her that after 36 hours mold can grow and we won't be responsible for any mold because she would not let us come out.

I called her husband who called her and made her let us in to inspect. As soon as I walk in she says "look at my pants, they are wet from me kneeling down". I took my hydrometer and began reading. BONE DRY. Then she says "what about that spot". It looked as though she had taken a glass of water and dumped it on the carpet. It was SAD!

Bottom line is she wanted us to come re-clean on Monday in case her guests dragged mud into the house during the party. This is probably the craziest I've dealt with.

3. The other day I get a re-do saying the traffic areas came back. Really cool guy, tipped us $20 on the initial and $20 on the re-do. But for the life of me I just couldn't see what he was talking about! I just blindly cleaned where he told me to clean and apparently it made a world of difference because he was thrilled! Hahaha. Cool guy, not crazy but made me feel blind!

4. Last one that comes to mind. Had a lady who's had everyone from Kiwi (bonnet cleaning) to Stanley Steemer come out. She's had the carpet cleaned 4 times this year and NOONE has been able to make her happy. I asked "so what was the problem with Stanley so I can be sure to address those issues". She said "well, noone can get these spots out and the guys at Stanley wouldn't try again".

So we went to work. I pulled her in the room and said "ma'am, are these the spots they couldn't get out? They are coming up just fine, I think they just weren't trying hard enough". She says "No, I think it's because they've been cleaned about 5 times now and I've used lots of club soda on them". I corrected her on the club soda usage (sugars) but she wasn't listening. I was just kinda of SHOCKED! No, it's not our diligence, it's not our $20,000 truck mount or our PROCHEM treatments. No, it's her club soda that got it out. Hahaha.

Anyway, I just shrugged it off and made the carpet BEAUTIFUL! We would not move her TV and armoire  so she was mad about that but other than that beautiful job! Well, I get a call about an hour later and she is PISSED!

She was telling my "supervisor" (ME) that the guys were terrible, they wouldn't move all of the furniture and that our cleaning method is not "effective". She said "you know last time the guys came out they had a machine that came in the house and they were showing me the dirty water that would come out. All your guys had was some metal thing connected to hoses. The other machine does a much better job" etc. etc. I explained to her that our machine is a $20,000 version of the one the guys brought into the house and it's the difference between one of those old fashion push lawn mowers and a farmers tractor.

She still insisted that we did an aweful job and I said "well ma'am, as the supervisor I'd like to come out and inspect the job, I can be there tomorrow, would that be ok? I can see here from the notes that our crew removed about 98% of the spots on the carpet including large clusters of spots that 4 other companies were unable to remove, is that correct?" She said "well, yea, but it's not about the spots, there is still dead bugs on my baseboards, they never wiped them down". I explained we do not wipe down baseboards because we are not a bonnet cleaning company therefore there is no need.

Long story short she refused to have a supervisor inspect the cleaning! Hahahaha. Oh man, when I am able to make the carpets look beautiful when other companies can't then I usually love the job, but every once in a while... it's just a customer trying to get a refund. Really sad.

The key is I leave them with NO reason to complain! I am really proud of what we do because we do it the best we can EVERY TIME!  Every once in a while though.. you run into the crazies. So I'm just wondering what are some of your experiences?