[garyfindlay]

Busy today cleaning a bedroom carpet and rattled the mirror wardrobes. Don`t know how it never smashed. What`s the largest item you`ve "owned" or any near misses?

[jasonl]

Did my upholstery cleaning training  with chemdry in 1992 , they showed us what viscose was , and stressed that we would only see it once or twice a year.

Second suite I cleaned was viscose, the customer was a right cow, cost my insurance co 3500 and me 250 excess.

Only seen 2 like it since.

Next biggest  was £360  to french polish the doors on a Stag wardrobe  gouged by me  when dragging a bed back into position.

[Colin Day]

An oven glass door last week.... Shattered when I was cleaning it into thousands of pieces.... Only £62 to replace though... £50 job

[derek west]

phone socket, pushed a sofa back and it shattered, fukin £9.99

[Shaun_Ashmore]

Done that one Derek, inlaw at the time worked for BT, FFFew I said!!

Nearly owned an expensive Turkish rug and a brand new state of the art kitchen and expensive wooden floor, lighting etc in Jan when my quick connector leaked on the rug and the kitchen was underneath and it went through the flooring down the lights into the new kitchen, luckily everything dried okay and managed to get dye removed, cost me some flowers, a funny look from my missus when the flowers weren't for her but customer insisted on still paying me for work.

Shaun

[Jim_77]

My one and only insurance claim was a marks & sparks suite (from a range called Modena for anyone's future reference!).  It had a wadding foam that was a blue colour, and as the suite got older the foam went into a fine powder below the surface of the fabric.  I'd done my pre-testing on the bench of the sofa but all over the arms etc it pulled this dust through and then I couldn't get it out again

I think if I'd have been a bit more hard-nosed I could have got out of it, claiming it was a manufacturing defect, but it's hard to say in hindsight.  The job was about a mile from home and bad news travels fast....

The suite got re-covered by an upholsterer who was a good friend, we managed to "minimise" my losses which was nice

[colin thomas]

broke a reading lamp once at an old girls place, replace it and send me the bill i said. the one i broke was a tatty old thing from the local market by the looks of it, the bill she sent me was for £45!!
looked big and paid up,

 

[Joe H]

One of my domestic cleaners spilt some flash on the carpet in a spare bedroom.
This spare bedroom happened to be larger then the double garage below, was very expensive.
I paid the first £500 of the insurance claim (probably about £1000).

BUT, I asked the insurers could I have the carpet.
I got a carpet fitter in and its now in my front lounge.
The size of my lounge is more modest and the "spill" is no where to be seen.

[clinton]

Broke a wordrobe mirror years ago was claning around the bed and caught it with my and wand and watched it crack into 3 peices : Just gave them the money to replace it.

[Doctor Carpet (Ret'd)]

Just as on observation; why is it that these issues normally happen within the early days/years of our profession-and especially when we are least able to afford them?

I attended a suite which wasn't that dirty and she said that if it didn't come up very well she'd be having it re-upholtered. Did all my tests as per NCCA and Prochem courses then cleaned it. It came up beautifully! Except it was now a beautiful matt finish as opposed to a gloss.

The fabric was a glazed cotton . Never come across one since.

Broken a couple of light fittings in the years. Most people are easy to come to an accommodation with providing you make a suitable apology. One client threatened to take me to the small claims court for the guest bedroom light fitting I broke (long story) which he claimed was worth £1500 but which he couldn't give me an independent valuation for.

I told him I was quite happy for him to take me to court providing he didn't mind me checking with the Inland Revenue that it was OK that his invoice he'd insisted i make out said cleaning office carpets at another address (as opposed to the guest bedroom at his private residence.)

I  never got paid for the job £60-he never got his light fitting replaced by me.

Roger

[Joe H]

Your a hard man Roger 

[M.Acorn]

I have been pretty lucky really.
Knocked a radiator off a wall in one house,lucky it was plastic micro bore so didn`t do any damage,just popped it back on the wall.
Just after xmas i turned on my pump,while the wand was in a lounge,pointing at a large plasma screen,little did i know that the trigger had jammed,which meant it was constantly spraying the tv, dvd,virgin box ect !
Quick frantic wipe with a towel before custy got back from shop,all was ok,phew.
Went and gouged marks all the way up a staircase with my wand,as i got stuck and just tugged at the hose,wall had been freshly painted,and gouges just filled from moving in !
Only have pub liability,not treatment risk,so if i do mess something up,it`s mine !!

[Joe H]

Mark
you want to enquire about treatment risk, you may be surprised.
When I enquired about it, my current insurance didnt do it, so I had to get a quote off other insurers and they were cheaper then what I was paying without treatment risk.

Just dont tell about your near misses though. 

[M.Acorn]

Yeah i did get some quotes when i was just starting out,but they were silly money,now i have been trading for over 6 years,i think it`s time too get some quotes in again,as i am sure it will be less.
My liability is about £86 a year up to 2 million i think,which is peanuts rally

[clinton]

Roger i remember that with the lamp years ago Called his bluff

[garyfindlay]

1/2 an hours work for you Mark

[M.Acorn]

1/2 an hours work for you Mark Grin

Ha ha !!
Well i did just get back from cleaning 1307 sq ft of low pro,started at 5 home by 9 £340.
Think they may call back though,carpet was filthy,traffic clean in large doses hot,sebo`ed the extracted,still was not 100% but then i dare not go any further as it started to ripple,had the blower on it trying to get it flat again,most of it went down,but there were some ripples before i started,so they will prob remain

[2cleanright]

Cleaning a regular clients lounge last year - big bng from the other end of the house - client comes rushing in saying "What were you doing up stairs in my daughters bedroom, I just heard a loud bang.
I replied - I couldn't have got back down the stairs to this end of the house faster than you got here from your office (big house).

He said "OK, walked off, screamed when he saw water pooring through the ceiling of his office. Turned out heated radiator in the daughters en-suite had fallen off the wall and split the pipes. Entire contents of the central heating system emptied through the office ceiling.

Made nice few extra bob drying the place out. Lucky though, I was due to spot clean in the daughters bedroom, and the client usually leaves us to it. Would they have believed me if they hadn't been there? I doubt it !!!