[HQCS (John Kastrian)]

Letting agent called us in to reclean lounge/diner/hallway carpets in a small terraced house that an outgoing tenant had paid chemdry to clean.
The carpets were very soiled and appeared not to have been cleaned at all,we got them back to almost new looking with very little effort,this is not the first time we have gone in behind other ccs.
Whoever cleaned those carpets should be ashamed of themselves.
Due to time constrictions,the agent could not let the tenant arrange to call the original cleaner back to do the job again,so the tenant pays twice.-John

[craigp]

tell the letting agent to make sure the tenants use you,

i guess the tenant could chase chemdry for a refund, or complain to chemdry head office.

[jinky230]

I have seen chemdry advertise very big in the area but have not got a clue to how they clean carpets, would like to know just for interest

jinky230

[Spot On cleaning]

Craig,

You will probably find some Chem dry chummie from this forum will be quick to defend one of them selves over this topic, proving once again that they watch what is said on this forum to gleam information from people to benefit their business, but not helping others by passing on information.

Dave

[Spot On cleaning]

Jinky

They charge an absolute fortune to buy into their franchise, around £24000 i believe as i acquired their franchise information. They use a process where carbonated (Fizzy) water is used along with a chemical to clean carpets and upholstery. They advertise the fact that the bubbles break up the dirt, so less moisture is needed meaning carpets are drier quickly.

I think they must be getting worried though about all of us who now use truck mounts as they are bringing out their own one. These people always like the upper hand. Personally i started from scratch building my business without any fancy gimmicks. I think i read somewhere once that a popular method of stain removal was using a soda syphon, so it looks like somebody has jumped on this bandwagon and built a multi national franchise out of it.

Insurance work is a large part of their work so i am told with their domestic side slowing down.

Hope this helps you.

Dave

[stains-away]

Dave, i thought they had been brought out by another firm and they were losing all the insurance work,leaving the franchisees with just the carpet cleaning, Andy

[Spot On cleaning]

Andy

I could of swore i read on here somewhere that only the insurance work was their mainstay of income. Perhaps their golden goose has been well and truly cooked. Too much competition for them out there. I would like to know the state of the other franchises as well.

I thik it helps if you are in the right area as well, preferably affluent.

Dave

[stains-away]

 Its started
« on: March 24, 2006, 09:00:36 AM »   

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have had a Chem Dry leaflet delivered today, the first I can ever recall in my area, and it's offering 10% off.
This was from an established franchise.
As I have mentioned in earlier posts, Chem Dry is a CARPET CLEANING franchise. However they have been so succesfull at marketing the fire & flood side of the business that they now have the lions share of that market, hence the purchase by Homeserve.
Homeserve are now beginning to buy up all the unsold areas and also offering to buy out established franchises. This will have the result that the existing companies will loose out on all the work they were picking up in the loop, basically if you were in an area with 4 licenses and only 2 were sold those 2 companies would get all the work. Once the 2 spare were sold the original ones work would halve.
This is what is now happening, as well as ex DRL guys buying up vacant licenses.
I believe through time Homeserve will start to cream off all the insurance work to their employees leaving the Chem Dry franchises with their carpet cleaning businesses which they will have to push hard to maintain their turnover.
In short guys expect a lot more competition in the near future.
One plus point, it can help you to get your price up.
Oh and don't forget all that free advertising thier getting on the BBC with disaster masters. Doesn't matter what you think of them, that Chem Dry name on the vans and clothing which keep flashing up on the screen is planting a subconsious message in peoples minds. When they are looking through Yellow Pages etc and they see a Chem Dry ad, their mind will subconciously remember it.
Masters of marketing!!!


I tried to put a link to it but being a technophob couldnt manage it so it got the good old copy and paste treatment, Andy

[Len Gribble]

I do a lot a letting agency/private land lords work, they recommend me to the tenants, then it’s up to them if the choose me/price, one thing for sure if they choose another and the agent/land lord is unhappy they will call me in and have to pay twice, not my problem, they know the risk.

John

As you state you do follow up’s after cc’s sadly so do I, but do I, only once did a customer show me a receipt, big mistake it was a dry cleaning shop.

Dave

Some of there agents are good so are some of SM. Keeping mum! Soda siphon may be? Gillette do a good spotter, bit cheaper than wine away, any way it worked for me!


Andy

Thanks for the post

Bit confused Homeserve are now beginning to buy up all the unsold areas.  This must be a tax fiddle.

Len

[HQCS (John Kastrian)]

Len,I also do a lot of letting agent work and in most cases they do recommend us to their tenants as you say,but in this instance the tenant booked privately with another cc before handing the keys back,and was insistent that she did in fact have the carpets cleaned and was charged £65-00.
I asked the question about chemdry quality of cleaning as this is the second time I have seen their work and have not been very impressed with the standard of workmanship, or rather lack of it.
Regards,John

[Spot On cleaning]

John

£65 sounds cheap by their standards. I did a job for a customer who used them and was charged £175 for one medium sized lounge, one small and hall, stairs and landing. I charged her £85. Funny how she never went back to them. A few people think they are building their own truck mounts now?

Dave

[John Kelly]

Len

As far I understand it, Homeserve bought the master franchise for the UK. They paid 19 million for a business with a turnover of 32 million but which only made 3.6 million profit. As you are aware the fire & flood business is a high profit concern.
I was told they couldn't do anything drastic to the current setup until all the vacant licenses had been sold.
Prior to Homeserve purchasing Chem Dry they themselves had a number of self owned operations including one near Heathrow.
Homeserve have in the past bought the Highway drainage franchise, they ditched the franchise, bought them back from the owners and offered them jobs.
The are now buying up Chem Dry franchises and operating them with employed staff. What I would be worried about if I was a Chem Dry guy is, if there is major flooding are they going to utilise these employed staff to go in and blitz the work therefore keeping the bulk of the profit for themselves.

[Paul Kettless]

Only two weeks ago, I actually had Chemdry in cleaning my carpets on behalf of my insurer, Asda.  Chemdry as I am sure that most of you know, have the main insurance contract for Norwich Union.

The carpets had only been down approx a year and in A1 nick, when I had a very bad flood within my kitchen and dining room.  The kitchen floor and tiles had to be lifted leaving the bitumen.  Five months of drying out, building works and walking in dirt/bitumen left my carpets in a poor tired state.

I asked if I could clean the carpets myself, but the loss adjustors told me that they would have to be done by chemdry, as they are there only contractor.  The carpets are a 60/40 twist.  I explained that I worked within the industry, and I obvioulsy would be checking the job that they undertake.

Chemdry turned up on the day of the clean at 12.30, when I was told that they would be with me first thing.  The operator had no idea what carpet had to be cleaned, and I had to instruct him.

He performed no PH or fibre tests, took a carpet rake from his van and tickled the surfaces for a few minutes.  He then proceeded to hoover for a while, did not pre-sray or spot (even though the carpet was covered in stains)

The carpets were cleaned with a Karcher Puzzi 100, and he informed me that they use there own chemicals and that he would be using a detergent with a neutral PH, although could not tell me what it was.  All in all he did 2 lounges, a hall way, stairs, landing, bathroom and a toilet in under two hours. Obviously no protection was applied.

To say I was amazed is an under statement, I was in shock.  My wife when arriving home from work, actually asked me if they had bothered to turn up, so you can imagine how good the clean was.  I was honestly expecting them to turn up with a TM or a seriously powerfull HWE, erm no, absolute bunch of ....

I contacted the loss adjustors and stated that I wished for an independant inspection which was completed, and they were also shocked at the lack of cleaning, spots are still all over the carpets. The loss adjustor told me that he has many complaints made from his customers about chemdry, and kept apologising so much that I actually fely sorry for the guy in the end.   I also found out that chemdry had charged the insurer £3.75 per sq m for the clean, and £75.00 for the inspection, whatever that is

I told the insurers that I would in no way be having them back in my home, and they agreed without arguement to replace the carpets old for new.  Enough said....

Regards
Paul

Edit: typos

[Liahona]

Off the subject a little but my question is.........previously it has been mentioned that chem dry were expensive in what they charged for.......if they are only charging 3:75 per meter for a flood clean how is that considered expensive.. I know my pricing is much higher than normal but thats not my point.....Anyway Paul I am glad you got your carpet replaced but having said that if it was left down from the flood during the restoration of the rest of the floors the insurers would have had to replace it anyway. Best, Dave.

[Ian Gourlay]

Paul,

That is interesting about The Karcher Puzzi, as last summer I drove past a house that had Chem Dry working there,  Patio Door Open at the time I could not believe my eyes as I saw them  working with a a Karcher Puzzi.

I was so amazed and pleased I turned round and had another look.


I thought this was a one off   machine broken down,  but maybe its a regular occurrence

[Graeme@Access]

Hi,

CD are in the middle of a large leaflet campaign in the Glasgow area at the moment as we have been competing with them over the last few weeks on a munber of residential C&U jobs.  We were pretty amazed that they had to supplement their Fire and Flood work, untill i read the post quoted above about homeserve taking work away from them.

My sister works for Glasgows largest loss adjuster who deal with the RBS insurance group (tesco, direct line etc).  She informs me that the underwriters have a list of prefered contractors from which she must choose the C&U / FF company.  The only way i can see any of us getting on such a list is through the likes of the NCCA negotiating with the underwriter.

However, If the client appoints a C&U / FF company (and they are allowed to do this) then the loss adjuster will allow them to undertake the work.  I guess we need to go out and follow chem dry vans and start pitching their insurace clients?

Apparently this happens a lot with builders (they dont have a list of preferd builders) so the client gets to choose which building firm and the loss adjuster pays them.

Dont know if this is any help, but its nice to have people on the inside 

Graeme

[carpetclean]

access
 i think the idea of the NCCA getting involved and trying for the work from insurance companies is a very good idea as they must have members covering all of the country. if NCCA did it right and managed to secure some contracts its money in their coffers as well as money in the members wallets as well.

[John Kelly]

As regarding Insurance companies imposing their contractors on you. You are not obliged to accept this and are entitled to use anyone you like.
A recent example, we were insured with Norwich Union when we suffered storm damage to our roof. As soon as their contractor turned up we knew it wasn't going to be a smooth ride. After what was a farce over a period of 8 weeks we kicked them off and informed Norwich Union that none of their contractors were acceptable and told them straight that our own contractors were going to do the work.  They accepted this without any argument. Consequently Norwich Union have lost our custom not just domestic but also our business insurances.
As regarding the NCCA obtaining insurance work, I doubt very much this would be possible. Insurance companies are primarily investment companies and fixing your house and car is not their primary business. Your premium is the investment money. The repair side of their business is therefore farmed out to companies who are big enough to take it on. The most important aspect of these contracts is the claims handling side and the supply of endless management information and key point indicators. The NCCA would have to invest in the office infrastructure to take this on. However there are a few smaller insurers who would maybe be interested in a professional network.
Re Homeserve, there are now rumours they are going to buy Rainbow from ISS.

[carpetclean]

my other business is decorating and i have done many an insurance job. it is true that the insurance annot force you to use their own contractors but if the independant contractor comes in dearer than their own then the client must foot the bill for the difference

[stuart_clark]

I have just cleaned an off white nylon carpet this morning,The customer had it cleaned by chemdry 5 months ago and wasn't impressed he rang them to complain that the carpet in his oppinion diddn't look any cleaner !! they replied tough S**T,they didn't even bother to put coasters under the furniture and it has left wood stain marks all over the carpet