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I have had a couple jobs recently where the traffic areas in my client’s home were very heavily soiled. Sometimes it’s from pets lying on the carpet, sometimes it’s from kids running around, and sometimes it’s just from people who never vacuum or clean their carpets. In one specific instance, I cleaned this home for 3.5 hours. I was spraying, buffing, spraying, buffing, I had mixed up some 101 with citrus booster, etc. Eventually my pads weren’t even coming up that dirty anymore. So I threw in the towel. I took my payment and left. Attaching a picture of the carpet in question:
[attachment=0:2mfryft9]IMG_8206.JPG[/attachment:2mfryft9]
The next day, the customer called very upset. She said her husband went out and rented a Rug Doctor after I left, and it pulled up all of the dirt I left behind. I promptly refunded her, and thankfully she left me a 5 star review for being so professional and willing to correct the situation.
But this bothers me… if I can’t beat a Rug Doctor, then how can I grow a thriving business? This isn’t the first time I’ve been less than thrilled with my results. I’ve worked miracles in homes with stains from juice, coffee, soda, pets, etc. But every once in a while I walk into a house with these dark areas in the carpet, and I know I’m going to be disappointed in my work.
So my question to the board: how do you clean a mess like this? FAE? Upholstery mate on the heavily soiled areas? Buy a Rug Doctor and slap a Heaven’s Best sticker on it (kidding)?
If I can’t find a solution, I’m going to start getting some bad reviews and losing customers.
Simple answer to your question……….you don’t.
I think Kenny Rodgers said it best “You gotta know when to hold’m, know when to fold’m, know when to walk away, know when to run.”
Our system just isn’t capable of cleaning a carpet that heavily soiled. A steam cleaning system is though, and that’s what you recommend to the customer. It’s a learning experience for you though Reuben. We’ve all been there. So, the next time you come across a carpet in that condition, you make like Kenny Rodgers……..and run.
@EVAN LEISERSOHN wrote:
Simple answer to your question……….you don’t.
I think Kenny Rodgers said it best “You gotta know when to hold’m, know when to fold’m, know when to walk away, know when to run.”
Our system just isn’t capable of cleaning a carpet that heavily soiled. A steam cleaning system is though, and that’s what you recommend to the customer. It’s a learning experience for you though Reuben. We’ve all been there. So, the next time you come across a carpet in that condition, you make like Kenny Rodgers……..and run.Haha, thanks Evan. Now that song is stuck in my head. Looking it up on Spotify now.
But that’s exactly what I was afraid of hearing! I have a large territory filled with steam cleaners. If you live in greater Milwaukee and have cleaned your carpets in the past, you hired a steam cleaner. At least until I opened up shop. So when I tell skeptical customers (about 20% of people who call) that low moisture is just as effective as steam cleaning, I’m either wrong or a liar. It would be great if every customer sent me a photo of their disaster zone before I agreed to the job, but most people with trashed carpets don’t say a word until you show up and cringe.
It would be ideal to say “Your carpet is too soiled for my low moisture system to get the results you want. In your high traffic areas, I’m going to use a different method. Those spots won’t be dry in 1 hour, but they will be cleaner when they do dry.” Then you whip out something that approximates steam cleaning, and eliminate all the dirt.
As the new kid on the block, I feel compelled to take every job I’m offered. And that means providing the best solution for any given customer’s problem. Feeling a bit limited by our low moisture offering right now. Hoping to find a long term solution that puts money in my pocket – not my competitors’.
Let me re-phrase what I said. Our system IS capable of cleaning a carpet in that condition, but it’s not practical due to the amount of time it would take and the high price it would cost the customer. If you were to tackle something in that condition, it would definitely need a dual process (both extraction and bonnet). In my experience, the amount of money that I would charge to take on such a job, the customer could find a steam cleaner who would do it in half the time and half the price. It’s not that the steam cleaning process is more effective than our process, it’s just capable of cleaning heavily soiled carpet a whole lot quicker.
I have experienced your frustration. It comes with experience and knowing what your dealing with. Dirt, the pile brush does wonders. Grease, FAE. Dog hair, a gallon of gasoline and a match? No No No! Pile brush, FAE, and orange deodorizer added to your 101 mixture (not in your power sprayer) and rake like crazy. Yes, there is time to run and there is time to learn. I have owned a truck mount. I was in awe what I easily removed with a buffer after FAE then the truck mount HWE. Some times a duel system is the answer. Most of the time it’s not. Some times you need a shovel instead of a vacuum. It’s not the same in each area. For example: Your local soil Ph may be different. That’s why you become the “Expert in your area”. Sometimes you must put the manual down and drive the car to get the driving experience. Every time I read the book the tortoise always wins. Just persist and win.
We have all been in similar situations. Based only on the picture, the carpet looks like long, thin fiber, poor quality polyester. Strike one. It also looks like this carpet was very abused and neglected. Strike two. That customer expecting a brand new looking carpet after she gave you that to work with. Strike three. I may have missed this but is this a before or after picture? How did the rest of the house end up looking? Was this the best room or the worst room? Was this a rental or an occupied residential home? Did you look at the carpet after you got the rug doctor call? Did you give a free estimate before you were hired? What expectation level did you give the customer? Give us the step by step procedure you followed on this job (from the initial phone call right up to the last conversation) so we can better understand everything.
Listen to Dan Small. He speaks very, very, very wisely.
I would recommend listen to all three of us. It appears as though we have a combined 30 years of carpet cleaning experience between us.
Reuben,
I agree with what all of these wise men say. Provide us more info and we’ll try and help even more. Two other points. First, how long did it take the customer using the rug doctor to get it to an acceptable level of clean? You may have been beat by a rug doctor that made multiple passes over the course of 2-3 hours in that one room. If you had been able to add another 2 hrs to your time in the home (and charge accordingly), would you have gotten similar results? In addition to that, did you see the area after they cleaned it with the rug doctor, or are you just taking their word for it? That leads me to point #2. There is a saying that you can spend 90% of your time trying to get the last 10% of soil out of the carpet. Determining when you’ve reached that acceptable 90% level takes time/experience and you’ll get there. If you can spray some pro spotter in a small spot in the center of the dirty spot and see a big difference when you wipe it with a towel, you haven’t gotten there yet.One other point, we have all felt your frustration when dealing with heavily soiled carpet and wondering if truck mount cleaning is the way to go. For heavily soiled carpet, that truck mount/hot water extraction will remove more soil faster than our low moisture system can with pads, but without proper agitation, it still can leave soil behind as well (and don’t get me started on the wicking). Here’s the one thing you have to remember, that heavily soiled carpet job is not your ideal customer. Starting out you will (have to) take on jobs like that and learn from them, but as your business grows, you will realize that those types of customers/jobs do not make you money and you will clean fewer and fewer of them (but unfortunately they never fully go away). Let the 3-5 room $99 guys fight over those extremely dirty jobs (and go out of business) while you clean for customers that appreciate a clean home and have you return again and again well before it ever reaches that level of soiling. It takes time to get there, but you will get there.
Thanks everybody. This is all excellent advice! I spoke with Cody and heard many of the same things from him. Sounds like I need to invest in the pile brush sooner rather than later.
For more clarity, this was a rental unit where the tenant was moving out. They were concerned about losing their deposit (for good reason). The photo is before. I didn’t bother taking an after because it wasn’t much better. I set expectations that the carpet was not going to look new again. This was the worst room in terms of dirt. There were stains in other rooms that came out pretty easily.
I didn’t bother asking the customer to see the carpet after they used a Rug Doctor. I just promptly refunded them, thanked them for the opportunity to serve their home, and said I was happy they found a solution that worked. Seemed like the best way to prevent a negative review.
In terms of pricing, I offer all of my customers the 3 room $99 special right now. $33 for each additional room. Of course I try to get info about the condition of their carpets over the phone, but I’m finding that most people radically understate the soiling/staining issues. I’ve only been cleaning for a couple of months, so a price increase will have to happen at some point to weed out the bargain seekers with filthy homes and high expectations.
I’ve started using FAE more often now, and it seems to help with a little dwell time. I tried the dirt napper the other day, but I couldn’t get the thing to spin. It actually tripped a circuit in this customer’s house! Hopefully I can get it to work on future jobs. The brown striped pads have also really helped on homes like this. I’ll learn over time.
Gotta keep pushing forward! I’m hiring my first employee now. It will be nice to have an extra set of hands on these jobs.
Just a few items for you Reuben. You will always be competing against HWE guys and you will always be educating customers about our process and what it is we do. Don’t let yourself start thinking that the HWE process is better because it is not better it is just a different method. You did not get “beat by a rug doctor”. Having been in this business for 13 years and having dealt with my share of rental customers my guess is that the guy never rented a rug doctor. They just told you that in order to get their money back. I have caught many renters, land lords and property managers in lies over the years. As far as the pile lifter I have no experience to offer you. I do know that lugging a 70 pound vacuum up and down all day will catch up to a guy. Stairs are hard enough to vacuum with the Hoover let alone that huge pile lifter. Plus, for the money that thing had better be God’s gift to carpet cleaners. Just my opinion. (I’m sure I just ruffled a few feathers) As far as hiring an employee it will help you shorten up the jobs, especially bigger ones. They can be off doing other things while you can focus on problem areas. I have had people working part time with me during the busy season (college age family members usually) for years. Once they get trained their jobs are vacuuming, raking, cleaning stairs and any upholstery. It really speeds thing up. I bought my business from my father in law. He had it for many years. He loved rentals (he liked empty places, and not having people around). His business was made up of about 65% rentals, 25% residential and the rest commercial. I kept his ratio of business without realizing it. Rentals can be good money and should be a part of your business for diversity reasons. But, after several years I will say that all of my headaches come from cleaning rentals. Land lords and property managers are cheap, they do not like to spend money. So most of the time you are dealing with low end carpet that wears too fast and is hard to clean. Once you clean it that carpet is now your problem. The tenant will blame you as will the property manager or owner if the carpet doesn’t look brand new (no matter the circumstances). The next tenant can now hold you responsible too. When it comes to the tenant hiring you cheapest wins. They won’t pay you $100 when the last guy they called will do it for $60. I have lost a lot, and I mean A LOT, of rental business in the last 2-3 years because of this. There are guys in my area cleaning studio apartments for $35! Land lords and property managers are willing to pay you good money for a good job (as long as there is deposit money left) but only a few are in it for the long haul. So my advice to you is this: don’t do what I did which is put too many of my eggs in the rental business. Over the last couple of years I have been building up my residential customers (the carpets are better quality and in better condition) and my commercial customers (businesses are recovering from the recession and willing to spend a little money). Residential customers and commercial customers are willing to spend more money for a quality job, I have far fewer headaches and I rarely get lied to 😀
I turn down jobs like those nearly every time they come up. I tell them why the carpet will be hard to clean and even though I can perform the work and it will look better, they and myself will not be as happy with the outcome. There definitely is a place for HW people in these instances. There is nothing wrong with taking on what looks to be a lost cause and use it as a learning situation. Try it and if it doesn’t work out then don’t charge them for the test.
I wanted to post an update to this now that I’ve been seeing more success. The photo I attached in my original post is a job I would likely turn down now. It’s simply too far gone. But my newest employee and I have found a method that is getting drastically better results. For heavily soiled areas, here is what we do:
1. Vacuum as usual
2. Mix half a gallon of FAE w/hot water, and spray it heavily on the soiled areas. Lightly spray on the less soiled areas
3. Wait 15-20 mins
4. Spray 101 w/Quick Boost on top of the FAE
5. Next my employee uses the stair buffer and a green striped pad on the heavily soiled spots. He says he is “loosening up the dirt” for me. At first I thought this was a little ridiculous, and it wasn’t going to help. But I’m finding that when he doesn’t hit these spots with the stair buffer first, we don’t get the same results. He hits all of the darker areas for a few minutes while I work in another room. Usually after he is done, the carpet is already looking much better. I don’t know if the stair buffer spins faster or just concentrates it’s scrubbing powers more efficiently than the Minuteman… but it works
6. Next I bring the big buffer in and clean the entire room with a BBC pad. If the situation is really bad, I use both sides of the pad for that 1 room. After this the carpet will probably look fine and you can stop. If it isn’t up to our expectations, we go to steps 7 & 8
7. The carpet is probably starting to dry up, so I lightly spray some more 101 & quick boost. Then I go over the area with a thin white pad. If the 1st side of the pad comes up dirty, I use the other side of the pad on the entire area
8. Finally, I use a finishing towel to get that last bit of dirt out of the carpet fibersAt this point if the carpet doesn’t look great, I can’t do anything else. But we’re probably seeing about 90% success. My customers have been astonished, and our positive reviews / referrals have increased rapidly.
Not all carpets are the same. Some of the long, thin stranded shag carpets don’t clean up as well in my area. But pretty much every other type of carpet we encounter is getting great results now.
This process is probably old hat to some of the veterans here. But after struggling for months to get the results I wanted, it has been a life saver for me. Hopefully it can help another operator who may be facing the same obstacles I faced.
Lesson learned (somewhat): if you work your stair buffer too hard, it will croak. Just had our Oreck XL start smoking and the motor burned out on our last job today. After talking with Cody, it sounds like using the green stripe pads and adding pressure to the machine can cause early failure. So be careful with the method I describe above. You might be out of a stair buffer for a while!
My recommendation would be adding an extra stair buffer to your repertoire so you can keep working while the main unit is being factory serviced.
We have still had fantastic results with the method I describe above, but it puts some wear and tear on your stair buffer. So expect to service/replace that unit every once in a while. In our case, every 5 months or so.
PS – Thanks to Gordon Kohler for the call the other day! I didn’t manage to get back to you, but your advice was welcomed and received. I really appreciate you reaching out to a new owner with your years of knowledge.
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