funny customer, what would you have done?

This guy wants a cleaning squeezed in on Saturday because hes selling the house,   so he gets us to schedule him for Sat afternoon.       We show up and nothing is ready whole house is a mess,   clothes everywhere,  video games,  cords,  computers,  boxes,  etc  

About a 1.5mil house with a swimming pool super nice but they were treating it like hell.      He has every color in the rainbow on his white carpet and wants the whole house cleaned wall to wall...    but wait,   he never mentioned any furniture moving just said it was a move out cleaning before real estate pictures.  

Apparently the real estate lady told him we usually show up with several guys and it would be no problem for us to help him move some furniture down into the garage,   this translated to the customer thinking we were going to move him out of his house?!      He was actually thinking we were going to move bookcases,  beds,   computer desks all down into the garage for him.     Behind all this furniture was years worth of dust.  

Hes rich so he says just add to the bill,    I keep saying this isnt the type of work we do,    he responds "just add it to the bill"  

I start thinking I dont even want this job if hes going to pay 1500.00...   not to mention most of these stains are never going to come out.    

We said this isnt the scope of work that we do,  were here to clean the carpets...    we dont do hauling,  general cleaning,  etc  

So he tells me "I absolutely have to have this done today,   real estate photo shoot is on Monday!"    

This is already a 400.00 job without furniture moving,   and its 1:30 on my Saturday.        He starts picking up crap and hords from a few rooms,  a little here and a little there...   his kids are saying  "dad ur acting like today is the move out day!"  he says "it is!  they are here to clean the carpets now and we have to have this done right now!"  

since when does "carpet cleaning" mean cleaning everything in the room on top of the carpet to get to the carpet!?

My employee and I are looking at each other like what the heck is going on here lol      what did this guy watch TV up until the point we knocked on his door?

I kept telling him we cant do this today its just not going to work having you move out 1 room at a time while we wait for you.    

Then out of nowhere he leaves the house to go drop his son off somewhere...     so were just sitting there with crap everywhere holding our hydro forces like "where is the carpet to be cleaned?"


We packed up and left,   I wrote him a polite note since we only had his home number.           I get a call from the real estate lady who is totally taking his side in the manner because hes the rich guy selling the fancy house in a really in demand neighborhood and were just the carpet cleaners.    

I was pretty mad,   this guy thought we were some magical number to call that is going to handle all his problems and make his house perfectly clean in a matter of a few hrs.          What an idiot I thought.      

found out later his wife just passed away and I felt terrible even though I think we did the right thing by leaving.    


what would you have done?  walk?    write a 2k estimate?      F that,  its saturday and its already 2pm

Sounds like a typical case of depression to me. Met a few customers that suffered from depression and the house was a disaster and they just couldn't seem to get motivated to do anything about it.

Despite that, his problem is never to become your problem. I think I would have walked too and told him to call me when he had things ready for cleaning. You have your life too, his money wouldn't have changed my mind.

I would have walked. Even if I had enough help, AND he agreed to 200 per man hour, no way I would want to take the risk of something of theirs getting broke or lost.

Besides, HIS lack of planning does not constitute a emergency on YOUR behalf.

Then I would have set his agent straight too. Hire a moving company to move your sheet. Hire a CCer to clean your dirty carpets.

You don't hire your car mechanic to work on your furnace!

Freemind1 wrote:I would have walked. Even if I had enough help, AND he agreed to 200 per man hour, no way I would want to take the risk of something of theirs getting broke or lost.

Besides, HIS lack of planning does not constitute a emergency on YOUR behalf.

Then I would have set his agent straight too. Hire a moving company to move your sheet. Hire a CCer to clean your dirty carpets.

You don't hire your car mechanic to work on your furnace!

You hit the nail on the head.
Were not that kind of problem solvers, not for any price-considering the day and time.

I've been in that situation bedore, the difference is there were a few guys that were working their behind moving all the craps, if I were you and he said just add to the bill, I just add $ 600 - $ 800 to the cleaning bill and have him sign the work order before we touch anything, as long as there's no piano or washer and dryer on the 2nd floor that needs to be brought down, after 2nd floor cleared, one guy starts cleaning and the other guy move craps on the ground floor, and make sure you charge $ 800 or more for the cleaning since there are lots of stains and don't forget to circle the disclaimer about no guarantee on stain removal, oh don't forget to call your next customer and tell them you're running behind
you'll be $ 1400 - $ 1600 richer and the real estate agent will refer you to more customers like that, lol.

Man that sucks about his wife but it sounds like he used to just throwing money at people to solve his problems.

Do you send out a pre cleaning checklist?

Walk, I would have told the guy if you understood the work load before hand , you could plan the time (2 days) to perform it. and the bill would be 5000 bucks. It's Saturday after noon and here we are. See ya!

I think we all had similar situations, absolutely rude and inconsiderate to not have things ready for us when we get there, no respect for our time what so ever. Walk away from these people, the real east lady has no business telling the guy what your going to do.

Fire her butt as well.

I had a real easte lady call me and tell me that I need to lower my price for a referral she gave me, apparently she quoted the price for carpet cleaning to her client ,

when the client called me I told them a higher price, But they felt I should honor the quote they got from the realtor, lol

Sorry the realtor has no authority to set my price. It's weird casue they (the realtor) need a good company to send their clients but they treat us like dirt employees and are the worse at paying on time.

The second you refuse to bow down to them they call the next guy. Tough situation because they can send you a lot of work, but all the stress of trying to keep them happy and bowing down like a dog all the time just anit worth it.

I would have walked. I had one like this a while back. They had been waiting on the movers all day and they never showed up. They never called me to cancel or reschedule, so when I show up the place is waist deep in boxes. They asked if I could hang out until the movers got there and I said I couldn't do that. I told them not to call me until the last box had been loaded and the moving truck was out of the way. Two days later I get the call to come back and clean.

Ive had similar situations but never one where they are expecting a carpet cleaning job to include packing up their stuff and moving out.

This guy had 100hrs of work to do before monday pictures and somehow he thought a carpet cleaning company was going to handle it? just weird unrealistic expectations

The other day I was doing a renter occupied unit. There was smoking going on outside and the wind was blowing it right in the place. I closed the window; it closed really easy and it kinda slammed shut. The student renter got p Issy. I told her it was rude to be smoking right by the window and I dont like being around smoke. She went on and on. I said that I could leave and she could explain to the PM why the unit didn't get done. She went on and on...so I walked. Pulled hoses; but she stood in the middle of a coil of hose and I couldn't get the out with out a real incident. She would not move. She wouldn't let me go back in to get my pump sprayer...so I called 911. She was one of those "I got to be right" kind of people. I think she was from the west side(Seattle) and I bet her parents vote Democrat.

What a spoiled brat. The college kids I clean for are cool never had any problems

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://foodartist.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/snickers-bar.jpg&imgrefurl=http://foodartist.wordpress.com/2010/08/22/32-some-sweet-illustrations/&h=400&w=778&tbnid=1T-DR-1xsVgLUM:&zoom=1&q=snicker+bar&docid=fOv8-xPywW1TjM&ei=p2EWVM6uIuWKjAKOt4DoBg&tbm=isch&client=tablet-android-acer&ved=0CCYQMygBMAE
Maybe I need one of these?

No You need a horse whip i

Mo wrote:What a spoiled brat. The college kids I clean for are cool never had any problems

I usually don't do occupied units. Mostly senior citz..and they are so nice to be around.
The funny part was, as I was done wrapping hose up...I could hear her roommates chewing her out on the back patio.