Shawn, John, Jim, Chris, Micha and the rest of you suppliers

[Mikey P]

Would you mind sharing with us some stories from your shops about some of the ridiculous stuff you have had to do for us cleaners.

How many times has a Marty brought in a truckmount that dont suck anymore that just needed it's blower filters cleaned or a pressure hose that dont squirt right because in reality a jet or four is plugged or the wand don't clean good because the fresh tank is empty.

Or the call from the customers home about the broken PTO truckmount that he wants a full refund on be cause it wont start.


Without the van's engine on... :shock:


Can each of you give us a couple stories to make us feel better about ourselves.?

 

[davegillfishing]

you must be bored or you ned to get layed..or just get a life..a hobby maybe??
who cares how stupid other people are, we already know that..come on leader you can come up with something better than that cant ya??
and where the hell are my short shorts?

 

[Mikey P]

That means Gill pays his supplier to swap out the female QC O rings.

 

[John Olson]

I can't count how many times I have had people call me freaking out their machine shut down and won't start back up. I ask them is your waste tank full? They say no i'm not stupid. I say well do me a favor and just check. They say ok but I no it isn't then it gets real quite and then they say. I'll call you back later.....LOL

I have pictures of a clogged waste tank filter that is just unbelievable. Customer brought the machine in thinking he needed a new blower because he had no vacuum. I'll have to find it and post it. Worst I have ever seen 3" of crap surrounded it.

I'll come up with more stories and post pics later.

 

[davegillfishing]

That means Gill pays his supplier to swap out the female QC O rings.

no dick head..that means that i am sitting at the dearliship getting 2 new tires a front end alingment the tail cone on the trans was dripping and needed replaced and a oil chenge.
all but the oil change was a surprise..the tires are wearing on the inside fast so i dodnt catch it tha tail cone just started dripping and is a warrenty item..
it is 10am down here and i have 2 large and one small job to do still, i cant move them because we are booked out for 2 weeks so they have tobe done..
however there is a hot ass hell chick sitting across from me that is not used to wearing a sun dress because she has flashed us 4 times now..and she is going comando....sweeeeet
i am going to try to get a camera phone shot..

 

[Shawn Forsythe]

We had a guy, a couple months back, pick up a used unit at our place in southern California and drive it back up to Sacramento (Northern California). 9 or so hour drive. He called on his first job to say that the unit was a piece of junk, and he was mad as hell.

The unit had hardly any vacuum. Within a few minutes, he was on his way back down to us, another days drive. When he arrived, he was fuming, wanting his money back and some compensation. Mind you, on the phone he was totally disinterested in talking about troubleshooting, saying it should have been usable when it left our store.

When he arrived, we closed his drain valve for him.


We had another guy, brand new Chem-Dry install. Once installed, we train the people in the use of the equipment. Too many of the CD guys give you the "yeah, yeah, yeah, I already know this stuff" and they just tune you out. Others say they would rather do the equipment training with their CD salesman. We try and tell them that CD will not go over the equipment as in depth as we are offering. Anyway, this guy comes back a few weeks later with the complaint that his solution compressor is down. He says he has absolutely no pressure. In fact, over the weekend he disassembled the compressor to find out what the problem was, but to no avail.
The first thing I do is start the unit, and switch the compressor on (using the extraction-mode/cleaning-mode panel switch). The observant customer asks we what I just did. I say, "I have to switch on the compressor to test the unit". He says, "Is that what that switch does?"
I go ahead and test the unit, and the compressor output is less than half what it should be. I ask him to give me more details about his attempted repairs of the compressor he just did. He then tells me that except for not finding the problem, that it went alright, but that he did have a few "left-over" parts.

 

[hogjowl]

But, I bet nobody has come in yet not knowing how to start the motor ... right?

 

[packfancjh]

I've had people drive 1 to 2 hours in to our shop because they couldn't get pressure. They get all the way in to find out that they didn't push the pump on switch or hook up fresh water. I've had a local restoration company come in complaining about not having any vacuum only to find out that they had no idea they had to clean out waste tank filters. They did a crawl space sewer job and filled their filter with enough rocks and dirt to sink a mobster in the Hudson. More to come later.

 

[Mike Draper]

Wow! One time at band Camp I cleaned some carpet.....oh wait, I'll save that story for later.

 

[FB7777]

I have had a van towed to a garage because of a fuel pump failure... only to find out the truck was outta gas :shock:


I've gotten calls from prop managers call thanking us for cleaning apartment units that the carpet is getting pulled :shock:

not been able to clean a carpet because the unit would not start, troubleshoot the electrical, check the waste tank float only to discover the truck was not on :shock:



then there's all the stupid shit my employees have done :shock: :shock:

 

[Larry Cobb]

I've got a good technician story....

Customer bought a new Dynachem TM with standard equipped fresh water tank.

About two weeks later he calls and says the TM has no water pressure at all.

After he brings the unit into our service department, we insure that the tank valve is set for the fresh water tank.

Then we check the water filter before the pump inlet. It had a little lint, but was not clogged. (1st Clue)

When we checked in the fresh water tank, the fresh water looked kind of murky.(2nd Clue)

It should have been crystal clear ....

Turns out the "tech" ran out of water on a realtor job where the water was off.

Since he only had a small area left to do, he did what quick-thinking techs do...

Emptied some water from the recovery tank,
and "recycled" it into the fresh water tank.

Clogging the 1/2" pipe outlet fitting with a nice clump of carpet fiber.

I think he even kept his job.

Larry

 

[Duane Oxley]

The funniest one was a phone call I got a few years back:

"Hey, Duane. Sumpin's wrong with my system!"

"Okay, what's it doing or not doing?"

"It's got no vacuum."

"Did you just dump your tank?"

"Uh huh." (Then, after a brief pause for his wheels to turn...) "Oh, shit. Thanks."



Then there was the guy who came back with a different problem every week with a new Hammer he bought from me in the 1990's. They were weird problems, that nobody ever had, much less so many.

Finally, his wife came in with him and took me to her side:

"Duane, it's him. It's not the machine. Come here, let me show you something." And she showed me the dashboard of his brand new van, all in pieces, gauges exposed, parts missing, etc.

"He does that to everything. He has to know how it works. But he never puts it back together right. We have a new 52 inch Mitsubishi TV at home. He took it apart the first week and it hasn't worked since."

 

[Mikey P]

Damn Larry.

That was a good one.



What about that time you told me about when that Cowboy brought in his new EZ 33/18 and complained that it was a piece of shit.


And you agreed with him.

 

[Kevin. McCreary]

I worked for a supplier in Detroit for a while in the service department.

Some Guy brought in a Hydramaster CDS unit with no vacuum.

I lifted the guys waste tank lid and apparently one of his techs

was doing a construction clean up job and vacuumed up 20 or 30

broken bags of quickcrete powder, then cleaned a couple rooms of carpet.

Needless to say the four or five baffled chambers in the tank where solid

concrete with carpet sludge chunks embedded in them. We had to replace the tank.

 

[TimP]

Yeah when I first got my machine I screwed up the idle increase computer thing on my CDS. Don't ask me how or why but it cost me right at 500 and I feel like an idiot for doing it already. Actually I got it working w/o a new one but about 6-9 months later the computer went out cause of me screwing with it.


I have actually left the dump tank open and couldn't figure out why I had little vacuum, but I figured it out shortly on one job. I also did a whole room of carpet in a rental house with it open and realised when it was too late.....I didn't go back over it either, maybe if it was an occupied home I may have. However the carpet did get clean it probably was just a little bit wetter than usual.

There is a lot to keep on your mind cleaning carpet and you can forget a thing or two easily.

 

[Curtis Pennington]

fooken mARTY rags me for over a year on ICS where I cant post bitching about how the booster does not work as good with the new motor as it did before.

bla bla bla

Well Marty does not know how to install a vacuum hose with out pinching it.

Marty sold the unit to Nate the Great and new hose works like a charm.

Merty wins the dip shit of the year club.


There was nothing wrong with the booster or the new motor.






just that Merty cant use a screw driver.

and cant start a PTO and dosent clean the risers.........now claims to be a "High heat guy" after...previously operating/owning an LP unit......top 25 ..lol....HACK!!

 

[hogjowl]

Oh, of course nothing was wrong with it Odin.

We can all take your word for it.

 

[Dolly Llama]

I've never done anything stOOpit like;

grabbing the defoamer while cussing the Chem-Lie dude or Mrs Phiff for using her soap dispensing Hoover wetvac and thinking this is the WORST case of soap/foam carpet ever.....before figuring out the waste tank drain valve was open.

and of coarse I've never been stOOpit enough to leave a job and drive down the road with a back doors open and jugs of juice littering the hi-way...

..L.T.A.