I recently had a panicked call from a new prospective customer.
She hired the $4.95 a room guy to clean her large (4000ish F2) home. The total bill was around $120. She had no pets and claimed the carpet smelled like urine when she was done. In defense of our illustrious industry, I stated that there are not any solutions available that add urine odor.
Do you have any pets? No.
Did the previous owner of your home have any pets? No, the carpet was new when I had the house built 7 years ago.
I was leery because I had the impression that she thought that the service should cost $120, but the service provider just did a sub par job. I spent 30 minutes explaining our process and equipment. I stated in no uncertain terms that I charge a minimum of $95 to just pull into your driveway and there was no way I could do her job for anything near the previous cost. I was nearby, wrapping up a job with a little padding on the schedule, so I said I would be right over.
Measured up the job and it came out to $650. She explained that she did call back the original carpet cleaner to address the odor issue. He applied a topical deodorizer and left. Most of the furniture was still moved and her life was not yet back in order. The carpet did not look bad and I could not detect an odor. I did book the job and cleaned for her at my price 2 days later. Lesson learned? Yes, one more customer realizing you get what you pay for!
My assumption is that the portable the previous guy used was not cleaned out well after doing a pissy job. He brings in the porty and fills the home with a pissy smell as he toiled for 6 hours on her carpet. The poor guy actually did a nice job on her carpet, working for $20 bucks an hour, if you forget about overhead and the callback.
Fix it and be the hero!