Both Lisa's 11/2 post (comparing the SOA to ASE certification) and Bryan's 11/5 post (regarding the source of commercial and residential carpet complaints) were excellent.
Lisa's post did an excellent job of illustrating by analogy why many professional carpet cleaners object to the SOA. While I may quarrel with whether some of the parallels drawn are truly analogous, all in all she makes a lot of very persuasive points.
Bryan's post described the motivation for and implementation of the SOA program in terms that are consistent with my understanding and experience with the CRI and carpet mills.
In particular the commercial market has serious cleaning problems due in part to ineffective (or even counter-effective) cleaning chemicals, equipment and techniques. The primary motivation to initiate the SOA program was to address these often glaring deficiencies.
As Bryan noted and I have previously stated, cleaning issues are not the primary affliction causing carpet to lose residential market share. Bryan also correctly noted that some residential cleaning systems have caused problems in the past, probably most prominently the old Chem-Dry system of bonnet cleaning cut-pile carpet. (I know that Shaw in particular had problems with that.)
I suspect the CRI decided to include both residential and commercial in the SOA because they thought the effective cleaning systems used in the residential market (i.e., mostly truck-mounted HWE) would pull the less-effective systems in the direction of what is demonstrated to work best. Similarly, the mills' decision to require the use of Certified Firms (which, by the way, is not a part of the SOA) as a warranty condition was motivated by the belief that the
IICRC was the organization most responsible for promoting higher levels of professionalism in the industry; so by aligning with it they would promote the companies that are embracing higher levels of professionalism (i.e., the good guys). I think they were somewhat tone-deaf to the controversy that decision would generate.
Which is why, I think, there is such a disconnect between the two sides. I really think many on the mill side of the issue are dumbfounded at the negative response on the part of people/companies the mills intended the program to help.
I suspect that in hindsight the mills wish they had stayed focused on the commercial side, and perhaps that is what will ultimately happen.
With this post I'm going to "retire" from this issue. Hopefully my words were of benefit to some. And to anyone I offended by my sometimes passionate defense of the decidedly less popular side of the issue (Tony, you pegged it right: 80-20), please forgive me; that was not my intent.
John Downey
