Strange, none of you chemical users has mentioned the high ph you will be leaving behind?
Unless you address the residue issue then the poor custy will end up thnking that the carpet DOES need cleaning again!
Reminds me of something:
bodgett and SCarper profesuanal kleeners
Introducing a special offer for two weeks only. Half cleaned pricing in your area.
article written by Chris Myers (MBICSc) IICRC Thames Valley Carpet Care
Ok Ok, we've all seen the leaflets. In fact most of our customers seem to show us these flyers and invite our comments. Well, I came into this industry by answering an ad in my local labour exchange. I lasted about three weeks with the company and to this day I'm not sure whether I was sacked or resigned, the two coming within seconds of each other. Talking to Gerry Parks at Warwick about my experiences, he thought that they might make interesting reading, so here goes.
Glossary of terms used in the leaflets.
Fully trained technician = 2 days out with another tech, receiving useful advice such as "if it's not dirty don't clean it"
Latest high tech equipment = Italian made wet vac similar in power to Henry's big brother. No spotting chemicals, no prespray and one tub of very high pH powder.
Hundreds of satisfied customers =
thousands of really p****d off ones.
Prices from = we have to charge extra for stains, the type of carpet, prespray, stainguard, extra time taken etc etc etc. Bait & switch.
Curtains cleaned on site whilst hanging (this is the best one) = Mist the air near the curtains with white spirit then dry vacuum.
My brief career
I was based in an office in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, although most of the work I was given was for Southend, Basildon, Rayleigh etc. The deal was that I got £12.00 per day car allowance, 20% of the job price and 40% of any extras. With suites at £25.00 and 3 bed houses at £37.50 the pressure is on to upsell the ticket. Stainguarding was the easiest and I'm ashamed to say that I sold a lot of it. I'm ashamed because I believed what I was told "that a capful of stainguard in the solution tank is plenty". One 5 litre container of stainguard was expected to last us at least 2 weeks and if it was running low we were told to water it down. Times allowed were 2 hours for a 3 bed house and 1 hour for a suite, this included travel to the next job, which could easily be 1/> an hour away. My problem was that I went against the company guidelines and attempted to clean. This resulted in me always running
However, it had been noted that I didn't get any call backs, and in fact two customers had called the office and expressed their satisfaction with the job. This caused some consternation in the office as this situation was not covered in the operating manual. What to do with a cleaner that wasn't fast enough but never got call backs to reclean. Solution, promote him to assistant office manager and send him out on any recleans.
This was effectively the beginning of the end, already unhappy with the quality of my own work, I was truly aghast at what I was being confronted with on the recleans, and spending most of my day working with very irate customers was, to say the least, demoralising. On the last day I was working in Rayleigh, I was more or less on schedule as my previous customer (not a reclean) had booked to have a set of curtains cleaned, and since I flatly refused to clean curtains, I refused to do it. I utilised my usual technique of teeth sucking, then saying "well missus, in my experience, this particular kind of fabric doesn't respond well to our system" and suggested she cancel me. I always told the customer to tell the office that they had heard very bad complaints from somebody else, and strangely enough they always believed her. This was my fourth set of curtains and I didn't do any of them. On this occasion however they told her that she would have to pay a cancellation fee, to which she responded "well that's what your bloke told me to say" result? THE SACK.
Meanwhile, blissfully unaware of this I was working down the road on a reclean of a particularly badly soiled carpet. The customer had seemed even more offhand than usual, but on seeing the carpet that she had complained about I could see her point. I was therefore completely unprepared for what happened next. I was kneeling down working in a corner when I heard the front door open, the next thing I know is I'm on my back, already having been kicked in the ribs, with another kick being aimed at my face. Rolling out of the way and getting to my feet, I realised that I disagreeailant was about a foot shorter, several stone lighter and about ten years older than me, and I was just about to kick sevens bell out of him, when his wife rushed into the room saying "stop, that's not the bloke". It turned out that the first cleaner had been
new film, Confessions of a carpet cleaner, and had made several comments and innuendos, making the lady feel very uncomfortable indeed. The husband, naturally had taken exception to this and it was me that reaped the consequences. The outcome? My RESIGNATION. This was the last straw and, as you can imagine, the air was blue as I walked back into the office. It took several moments to realise that whilst I was quitting the boss was sacking me. I guess I'll never know who got in first.
The silver lining however was that I'd been introduced to an industry I hadn't even realised existed, I'd found a brochure from a company based in Acre Rd, Kingston and realised that there was a lot more to this game, and I was certain that I could do a better job than that rabble. The year was 1991, I bought my first machine, second hand, booked myself on the 2 day introduction to carpet cleaning and the rest, as they say, is history.
I worked fairly successfully by myself for the next seven years, undercharging, thinking of all other carpet cleaners as the enemy, generally believing that I was doing a fairly good job. That was until I went to Swindon, where I was introduced to the IICRC. This in turn introduced me to Paul Pearce and thus to the NCCA. I would just like to say that the help, information and advice that I have received since being involved with both has been immeasurable. I now enjoy a much better lifestyle and instead of thinking of this business as a means to an end, I am now proud to be a carpet cleaner, and look forward in the future to also putting something back in.D
NB Bodgett & Scarper is a fictitious trading name and reference to a cleaning company of that name is neither implied or intended, and lets face it, we know who they are.
Membership Details
Every day we receive calls from the general public requesting details of members in their area
Although these calls are being logged, we thought it
appropriate that we highlight this benefit to the members, particularly as we realised we are doing this
more and more frequently. During the last month the details of 291 members
have been given out.
The standard procedure for giving out member's
details fairly is to select 3 me..iber companies nearest
to the enquirer, it is then up to the enquirer to define
their appropriate choice.
