Cleaned behind competitor today

So im out hussling work and dropping off cards here and there when a guy says "did I hear you right? you clean carpets?" I said yes sir....he asked if I could follow him to his office and look at what was just cleaned friday......he said the carpets were really bad and came clean except they turned brown.....lol when I got there he was right! brown spots everywhere. I explained and he wanted it in writting...obviously going to hit the other guy with this ....I said,did you call him to tell him and give a chance to fix it?....said nope can you fix this...I said absolutely and did. ever run into this?

I assume it was commercial carpet, since it was at his office?

Which makes it very possible it was Olefin, and since "carpets were really bad and came clean except they turned brown", more than likely it turned brown during the drying process due to "Wicking".

Easy fix, especially on Commercial carpet, with just a light encap cleaning............if re-cleaned using HWE, the same problem is also likely to happen again, unless an encap rinse was used, which could help prevent it.

Personally, I wouldn't bother even chancing it again with HWE, just encap clean and be a done deal.

You asked "have you ever run into this"?............Yes many times before!!...........it's a very common problem with carpets that aren't properly maintained by frequent vacuuming and cleaning, ESP. if it's an Olefin fiber where wicking is always a problem because of it's lack of absorbancy.

I don't understand why he doesn't want to just call the cleaner back, if I was the cleaner I'd be pissed but yes it happened before and I ended up fixing it.
Dave is right, I have a storage facility that I cleaned 2 - 3 times a year and it used to always get brown and I used to have to go back minimum 2 extra times but I've learned to deal with the issues by pre vacuuming, do a light pre spray and hwe it with less pressures and put some fans right away and it hardly ever wick, once in a while it still does but only on 1 or 2 small areas which I touch up right away, eliminating the come backs.

I get that at least 3 times per month. Not mine wicking, but being asked to fix another cleaner's work.

The reason around here is that cleaners tend to cut their own throats to low-ball their bids with commercial. Then they try and cut corners to clear a profit on a bad bid. That means no pre-vac, no stain treating, fast wanding, no dry strokes, too high of psi, and way too high ph of their chemicals, and always never air movers.

That is also why I tend to get a lot of commercial work....I don't cut the corners and I "try" to never paint myself into the corner with a bad bid.

I really like that you tried to get him to contact the previous cleaner to allow a correction, but it sounds like you just found a contract job for the winter.

carpet is prob full of residue from last cleaners high pH rinse and bad suction, left with high pH and wet for too long


personally I would pre spray and encap then light rinse to remove the cocktail of chems thats prob in that carpet


but depends if its soil wicking or cellulosic browning,   if its brown spots then definitely rinse.         if its traffic lanes re appearing and its on a commercial glue down then encap it

The brown is in the areas of heavy soil...he worked it hard but just a few spots of brown where the trouble areas were...not over all. I suspect over wetting. I feel as though there was effort just no experience which is why I got into this in this area...the one guy who brags about all his training and certified this and that knows but he sends out a guy who doesn't. It's funny how his "training and Knowledge" is just for marketing and not for use in the door of the custy.

I fixed this problem within 30 minutes and gained a new customer to my list. A light quick rinse was all I did.

Yes, when I first got into a REAL commercial setting a fast food chain, we cleaned it I came back the next day and it looked like CRAP!! I was so upset, it made me question if I was really a cleaner or not.
Mark the manager was there and he asked what was wrong...I said LOOK AT IT it looks like crap!
He said it looks 100 times better than the other company? Really I thought he was just trying to make me feel better. That night we came back with RX 20 and went over it again, the soil it pulled out was unbelievable, we just kept going over it till, I was satisfied, had fans to speed up the dry times, and after about the 3 month we were back to just using RX 20 every other cleaning.
The type of carpet only lets the finest of soil fall to the backing of the carpet and the tight nit of this type of carpet makes it very hard to come out (like powder almost) and makes wick back very possible as it dries.
This type of work is a totally different type of animal and can really be a challenge to make it come out right, and due to it usually being cheaper type work, a lot of times corners are cut by cleaners making it hard to get it to come back to a presentable look after the splash in dash that has been done on it for so long.
We kept the account for 3 years till they finally pulled it all out and went to tile.

ya thats the problem around here,    the commercial work is super competitive.     The guys you see doing it look like total bums/crackheads and the businesses dont care because its after hours and they are saving lots of money

if its too dirty for the dirty bums with portys to get it clean then they just replace with carpet tiles so next time its too dirty for the bums they can just replace the squares for 100x cheaper than paying a more expensive carpet cleaner


many other buildings just have janitors that encap, they can go to jon don and learn everything they need to know about encap in one trip then just keep all the equipment in a utility closet


another huge reason why I heavily favor TM and residential, your providing what other people cant just do themselves