shady cleaning scam going on in our area

[WillS]

This is the 2nd time this has happened to us. Our technicians are pulling up to a job and as they pull up, I'm receiving a call in the office from the customer saying, our technicians did a horrible job, they want a refund, the carpets are soaked. Well... it wasn't our technicians nor our company! She says, well my appointment was scheduled with you.. your sure it wasn't your company?

Heres what happened: Our technicians just arrived at her house after another company came in an hour and a half earlier and cleaned her carpets and left. When we showed up, she was like, "your company didn't clean my carpets earlier?" NO!! Her appointment time with us was between 9am and 10am. This other company showed up at 7:30am.

Basically what is happening and not sure how to find out who this company/people are. This shady company in Vegas is doing this: customers are calling around asking for price quotes from different carpet cleaners. This company must be one that they called for a quote because, they save the persons number. The customer than books with for example our company or another, for a certain date/time. The shady company is calling this customer 2 days later, asking about their carpet cleaning appointment, and asking for a reminder of what time/day they scheduled. They then show up an hour or 2 earlier than us (I'm just using the word "us" since it has happened to our company, I'm not sure how many other cleaners in the area have had this happened) and then they clean shitty and leave. Soaking wet carpets, leaving stains you could use Natures Miracle on and they would disappear. Funny thing is, at the end of the cleaning, they had to ask her what she was quoted, $260, she paid and they left.

We asked this lady, did they leave you a receipt? NO
Did they have a name on their van? NO
Do you have the number they called you from? NO It was a blocked number.
Did you pay cash? YES

Well shit out of luck... the customer than asks us, since you are here, can you just do it? She meant for free.

No. But we did recommend trying to call the phone company and see how to get access to the number they called her on. She had no luck with this either. It is the customer's fault, why wouldn't you get a receipt, or anything?

Anyone heard of this going on??

 

[PrimaDonna]

OMG. That is so crazy f'd up. I hope they catch those assholes. Never heard of this but just goes to show you the lengths people will go to.

I wouldn't have cleaned for free, but would have done something so I come up looking good.

Hope you called the police to report this. And then my next call would be to the local news station. Expose it and get your company a little press/exposure.

From here on out tell folks that book with you what's been going on. That you company does not call to ask when the appt was cause you have a good scheduling system in place. Give the names of you techs, tell them what their uniforms and truck look like and that they will present a business card when they arrive. If anyone shows up not matching the description of your company and not producing a card without being asked, then it's not your company.

 

[Desk Jockey]

Are you sure you don't have an inside problem.The senario doesn't sound plausible.

 

[hogjowl]

Well, whatever is going on, warning future customers is in order.

 

[WillS]

No inside problem. The technicians don't handle our scheduling, they don't even see it until the morning heading out. Also, we can't soak carpets like this with our process, so no techs would be using our machines.

It's definitely an outside company. Because after this company they called her asking about what time/date her appointment was, they continued to call to confirm every day almost she said. The funny thing is, this lady had our phone number, we send conf texts the night before with a picture of our logo'd shirts, technicians, etc. All our trucks are fully logo'd and we have the same uniform for each tech.

 

[WillS]

The thing is, I'm wondering if I should call to our competitors see if they are having this problem. She said it was a old van with some guys that came in with hoses, so some sort of steam cleaner setup. Seriously, I felt bad for her, but we had so many more appointments to move onto after hers, we couldn't sit around and clean it up. The carpet was really soaked, allowing our fans to sit there for the amount of time needed would have made up late to the next appointment. She was also fine with it because she had other stuff to do with her kids that morning. She did reschedule with us and we gave her a free room of cleaning and removed some rust etc. for free.

BTW, we don't do hot water extraction cleaning, so we don't have a suction to pull up all the soaking water, only option would be fanning it.

 

[WillS]

And then my next call would be to the local news station. Expose it and get your company a little press/exposure.
.

Damn that is a good idea.

 

[PrimaDonna]

And it will go over better if they can do a human interest angle on how your company is "saving the day" and doing right by the customers that did get scammed by these people. Could pay off for you big time if you take care of a couple people that got scammed. Small cost to absorb for the big picture.

 

[Mikey P]

I had a the windshield replace today on my Ram 1500.
At 8 am I got a confirmation email with a photo of the tech and all sorts of information about the process and what to do if I needed to change the appointment last minute.

Very slick

 

[Goomer]

The thing is, I'm wondering if I should call to our competitors see if they are having this problem.

Only established known competitors, because it is one of your competitors.

The customer had to find the number that was originally called somewhere................so, where were they searching?

Craigslist??

Google??

These scumbags must be advertising somewhere.