What is the worse you've been dinged?

[Mikey P]

Have you or one of you techs shrunk a rug? Bled one beyond repair?
Shrank, torn or bled a upholstered piece?
Scratched or warped a wood floor?
Etched or damaged a stone floor?
Knocked over a Ming Vase?
Chipped a Baby Grand?
Stained silk wallpaper?


What horror stories have you got?

 

[XTREME1]

I started cleaning the ceiling in a yacht and it cleaned awesome until halfway through it just came away and hung there. It scared the crap out of me until I talked to an installer I knew and he told me it was no big deal $50.00 and he was in and out the client never knew

 

[gasaxe]

put my knee through a glass curio cabinet a long time ago. It was curved glass. I thought i was on a wood piece of it trying to scoot it..all of a sudden POP!!!! i about craped my pants..lol then when i tried finding a piece of curved glass at a glass shop :shock: big$$$$ ended up going to furniture store where she bought it and order a replacement. only cost me 25 bucks. customer was very understanding. she ended up being a long time repeat....

 

[Scott]

Tech ramrodded the unglided wand into an Italian glass marble table with etched mirrors, cracking 2 of the mirrors at the base about 10 yrs ago. I was pretty surprised it wasn't that expensive @ $500 to repair.

We lost a customer's rug once. Well, we know where it is - another customer who swears she doesn't have it but we know better. That cost about $300.

We messed up 3 sofas in 25 yrs for a grand total of about $2,500.

Knock on wood, that's about it that I can recall.

Scott

 

[bob vawter]

Did you hear the story about me killing an old lady?

It was my FIRST job wit my new Big Red Truck Mount.....everthing was going great till i ran across this plant stain that jus disintegrated in front of my eyes......it was powdered from a pot sitting there for years.....well the old bat got so worked up over this BARE spot in her rug that she jus passed out and died...I swear to God!

 

[Jack May]

Had a subbie working on a fire job for me. She scratched a laminate top. Big deal I thought until a realised that the top was totally integrated with the pillars supporting the first floor and I was facing a $3600 bill for replacement and who nkows how much to have the whole damn kitchen removed and replaced to fit the stupid top back in.

I came across a guy who specialiesd in scratch repairs on laminate surfaces and got out of it for $320.

The owners are both well to do earners. He is a top ortho surgeon and she a head pysch community nurse.

The repair was so well done, they couldn't find it. If there was a chance she could see it, there was no way she would have accpeted it.

They too, have given me a long time client work and referrals.

John

 

[vincent]

2nd job after buying the business, slipped in the foyer and went straight through the storm door and landed on the front porch.

Home Depot had the door in stock.

 

[RickL]

Taken it

Customer responded to a direct mail special the special stated "Exposed Carpet Only"she agreed but when i got there she hadn't moved anything
but she's real nice,just had a baby and has a 3 yr old that keeps her right out straight. So I'm cleaning and need to move the couch a little to get in the corner i move it a couple of inches and hear a huge crash, turn around and theirs a lamp the that's 5 feet tall and ceramic in pieces in the foyer. I refused payment and told her i would search it out and we could do a check for the difference. Got home she called and had talked to her husband they insisted on paying and mailed the check that day. Have become a regular customer and have given me several referrals.

 

[harryhides]

Cig butt thrown out the window. blew back inside into a pile of cotton pads.
Guys inside cleaning for about 45 mins before the fire really got going and my techs "noticed".

Ten yr old HM 4.7 CDS - insurance paid out far more than I could ever had sold it for so it was not all bad.

 

[XTREME1]

did they finish the job? I bet the water was SMOKING hot

 

[harryhides]

Yes they finished the job, lol.
With not water or vacuum, wicking is never any issue.

But the dump tank could not take the heat.

Anyone want to buy a pump or blower - will give you a real hot deal.


.

 

[Out of Character - 0]

Most Costly-I replaced a wood floor in a large living room, we cleaned the sofa and flooded the floor. The day before the same moron tech ruined a laminate bedroom cleaning the t&g in the bath. I didn't find out about the laminate until after we ruined the wood

Scariest- We flooded the EPA's Radon testing lab while dusting and servicing VCT. There was a high voltage room connected to the room we flooded. There was $100k electrical equipment new in boxes on the floor. It took facilities 20-30 min to shut the water off. We had a tm about 1 mile away that has permanent dents from my hitting a concrete guard pole while rushing it back there. We had all the water extracted before the team of EPAsses arrived to build a case on us. All of their pictures were of dry floors and wet boxes full of dry machines we luckily saved. I thought we were going to be bankrupt if the high voltage didn't kill us first. They never paid us for the job, but we never paid them a dollar either, so very lucky.

 

[packfancjh]

I had a story like yours Bob. Back when I repaired furniture though. 500 lb guy with a bad back slipped while walking to the garage with me. Ended up breaking his back and did some other damage. We called about a week later to see how he was doing and his wife said he died in the hospital.

 

[Al]

1 old sofa, they said I ruined it but that wasn't true, you could still sit or lay on it and watch tv from it, all I did was change it's appearance.

I bought a stainless steel oven door, probably could have been fixed.

Shawn broke a tail light on clients car with truck.

Those were the most significant ones.

 

[Guest]

I was cleaning a were the furniture guys track in dirt!

So I was there to clean it and it was a hard set up so I was stretching the hose a little more than I should have and the extraction hose was rubbing
the corner of the new leather sofa and ripped it.

Two weeks later I was to clean it again! and the lady said to me "those dam furniture guys rip my new sofa and didn't say anything about so they gave me a new one" and I said "those sons a bitches"

 

[B&BGaryC]

The tech I fired used his wand with a rock stuck in the glide to etch a hounds tooth pattern into a VCT floor. I don't see how he kept doing it over the whole floor. I would have stopped at one V, or not tried to extract their tile entryway in the first place. Then the guy I hired to fix it, who came highly recommended, sent a sub who didn't know what he was doing to slop some wax onto it. Finally they just got their building maintenance to fix it, because he does all their VCT in house anyway. Cost me $3000.00 annually. That was a good account. In fact, I would trade it straight up for another account I have that brings me $12,000 annually.

 

[Stevea]

Wow, some interesting situations many have had.

Mine pales in the light of these but I did have one experience with a Certified Pile Lifter.

While I have pile lifted or pile brushed almost all the carpet I have cleaned for a long time, I did have one that made me wonder if I should ever use a Pile Lifter again.

I started to Pile Life a consumer's living room. This room had a whole wall of glass windows which also had a whole wall of vertical blinds that could be opened or closed with a cord, similar to many homes we get into. The problem, the cord was a little longer than I had anticipated, my pile lifter caught the cord and the entire wall of blinds were pulled out of the wall and on the floor before I could let go of the pile lifter. Talk about ones' heart beating faster! Fortunately I had just pulled the screws out of the wall, was able to re-hang without any trouble and only lost a few inches of the cord by trimming it. Nothing serious but it almost made me think I would never use a pile lifter again.

SA

 

[Ken Snow]

All pf the above and many more. One of these years we'll publish a book though we would never want it seen :-)

 

[Bruce Humphrey]

I knocked a lamp off of an end table , instead of landing on the soft carpet it landed on my wand. $35 off of the bill and the customer was happy.

 

[FB7777]

lol @ Ken... Carpet Cleaning Casualties of War... the Hagopian Chronicles


Early on, tech shrank a 30 year old wool wall to wall, cost $300 to steal a piece for the closet to re-install on the tack

one of the most costly out of pocket cleaning errors... the guy that fixed this one is still a savior to me... I thought I was gonna have to replace 800 square feet of carpet.

 

[Luke]

$1500 to recover an off white cotton sectional that a tech pulled some color out using a Drimaster tool.

 

[Ken Snow]

Man I wish we weren't so high profile. It seems whenever we break a little figurine it ends up being something that a long lost relative brought over to America in the 1800's after trekking through a desert with it for 2 years subsisting on only the water and pulp they could squeeze out of cactus. Then not only do they want a million dollars for this unsubstantiated piece of art (that is art spelled CRAP), they want the rest of their furnishings replaced because everything coordinated around it, the technician flogged and fired, plus a written apology to our customer database of over 200,000 names.

Then, after we do all that they still bad mouth us to everyone saying we didn't treat them fairly and should have done more!!!!!!

 

[FB7777]

the reminds me of another life lesson in this business...

same technician, was cleaning and the lady of the house walked down the freshly cleaned hall and slipped on her kitchen floor. My tech didn't report it to me because she said she was fine.

She called the next day very upset that I didn't call her to see if she was OK, actually the excuse she made was that a few spots were still there.

I went to her home, re-cleaned the dining area where the phantom spots were and refunded the cost of cleaning( $120 back in 1993)

 

[Blue Monarch]

I break about one thing a year. Currently, I'm due.

1. Broke globe on light fixture while cleaning kitchen tile. Man, I've rammed my head into a lot of those things. Can't believe I've only broken one. Told the guy about it and he was just happy I was honest. He wouldn't accept lower bill or replacement. $0

2. Knocked over vase in entry. It had dead brush in it and one of them caught my shirt on the way by. In slow motion, I watched it go to the floor. $80

3. Knocked over lamp. Only the bulb broke. $0

 

[Mikey P]

Your stories remind me of just how good I am at talking my way out of things.

 

[R W]

Not much here. The scariest was a newly installed ceiling fan over a glass topped table, with a glass vase containing about 1000 glass dropletts. The customer had the "nice guy" down the street install the ceiling fan and do some painting. He installed the ceiling fan with 2 drywall anchors right into the drywall......no studs or fan hangers. I finished the room, and when I went to pull the string on the fan, down it came, right onto, but not breaking the glass table top, broke the vase and spread the glass dropletts (marbles) all over, and hit my hed.

When customer came home, I explained that it was a good thing his Grand Daughter wasn't sitting there, or she might have been badly injured! He agreed that it wasn't my fault......

 

[rhyde]

I had a temp ruin a Suzani (embroidery) it cost me 2,500.00 to replace that's the only mishap in 9+ years

 

[DevilDog]

van got hit by Terra clean at mikey fest and the bassturds hippies never paid for the damage.


T

LOL. Don't you ever forget a thing? God, you would make a horrible wife.

DevilDog

 

[Mike Draper]

Was done cleaning a room, went to turn the ceiling fan on to dry the wet carpet. The "NICE guy down the street had just installed" pulled the string and it electrocuted the HELL out of me, knocked me on my butt and blew the main circuit. Now, If it was my custy that got electrocuted I would have been sued to high hell, nut since I'm just the carpet cleaner they had a good laugh.

 

[The Great Oz]

While waiting for other employees to arrive at the Governor's mansion, I decided to roll up the smaller rugs. A 10 x 10 in the library had only one curved leg of a round-top table about two inches on the edge of it, so I lifted the the table by the top and slid the edge of the rug out. When I set the table back down, that leg collapsed.

I caught the bound originals of the State incorporation papers in one hand, a lamp from the 1889 railroad exposition in the other, and kept a glass case with another document from hitting the floor by blocking it with my shoulder. The hand-etched glass top of the lamp came off and shattered. Much discussion with the State Historical Society ensued.

They found that the table was infested with powder post beetles. They felt they were actually fortunate that it happened to me and not a tourist, as a person standing next to the table wouldn't have been able to save anything. I bought a replacement glass for the lamp, but they paid to have it cut and for the table repair.


Stuff happens, and the only way to be sure you don't break something is to stay in bed.