Professional House Cleaners are a Genuine Rip-off!

Several months ago, my grandmother’s furnace backed up on her and her whole house was filled with black soot, followed by billowing smoke that set off the fire alarm, causing us to evacuate her from her home for five weeks during which time she lived with us. A relative insisted that we should not attempt to clean up the mess ourselves, that we should instead hire professionals to do the job. Now it used to be that when I thought of house cleaners, I thought of a little woman with a vacuum cleaner and a feather duster, with her hair up in a bun, and wearing an apron.

What I absolutely did not picture was a guy in a suit and tie coming in and telling us that the house was not only going to be cleaned, but remodled as well, because that’s what house cleaners do. This guy promised with a million dollar grin on his face, that the house would be literally re-built from the inside out. New paneling, new carpeting, new refrigerator, new everything. The ceilings would be reinforced, as would the floorboards where necessary. He promised that it would be an entirely new house, beautiful and perfect. He also promised that all the contents of the house would be removed, packed away, cleaned and returned in the precise locations they were removed from.

He gushed about how precise the workers were, making notations about everything in the house, including a toothpick on the kitchen table if one existed. They would note that toothpick, take it, clean it and return it to the exact spot where they found it. Yeah, no kidding. That is what he said. My family is not exactly worldly but we’re not gullible hicks either, so we took his words with a large spoonful of salt. We figured if they just made it look like a normal house again, it would be worth it. Also, if they made it livable again, that would be a wonderful bonus. So, we convinced granny to sign the permission papers, and off he went, supposedly to get started on the rebuilding process.

Three months later, the house was virtually gutted, all of the furniture crowded into one room, and everything labeled with my last name, spelled incorrectly of course. The carpets were torn out of the house, and tossed out on the lawn where they proceeded to get saturated with rain water and mud. Several pairs of granny’s shoes were also abandoned in her yard to be ruined, and almost all of her house plants, some of which were over sixty years old, were tossed out to freeze and die. All of her knick-knacks, dishes, silverware, pots and pans, jewelry, needle-work, photo albums, and framed photos were removed from the house and taken Lord knows where, supposedly to be cleaned.

In three months time, one would assume that a lot of re-building and cleaning could get done, yet as of this writing, that house still sits empty, and void of life. The stuff is still missing, no floorboards have been replaced, the ceilings still sag very badly, the old wallpaper has been ripped in strips from the walls, in a pattern that can only be described as “hit and miss”, and yet, they have already started to paint the walls over the top of that mess, without any regard to technique or the end result. The ceilings have been partially re-insulated and white sheets of wall material nailed haphazardly to create a ceiling of a sort. Not only that, but granny’s brand new couch now has a rip in it’s seat cushion that was not there before. the furniture that they did not remove from the house is now covered in dust from the remodeling process, which makes them dirtier than they were from the soot.

The very same guy who appeared in a suit and a grin to have my grandmother sign forms so he could decimate her home, now tells us, “well, at least it’s better than it was.” Strange. From the way he described the process before, we were expecting to end up with a palace. He did not show us any color swatches, or ask us what type of paint or paneling we wanted. He simply took our money and picked out whatever he felt like, and destroyed whatever he felt like. Then, when we complained about the shoddy work, he went berserk and blamed all the delays on us. We had hired an electrician to fix up the wiring, as long as the walls were exposed anyway. The electrician’s work is now done, but the house cleaners are refusing to work because they are waiting for the electrician to finish.

Plus, they claim that the work the electrician performed is not up to code because he did not get a permit before beginning the work, so as a result, they cannot finish the work on the rest of the house until we sign a disclaimer stating that if something happens to the house because of the wiring that was “not up to code”, they cannot be held responsible for it. All of this is simply a delaying tactic, so that they don’t have to deal with us yelling at them to hurry up and finish the work they have begun. Or should I say, finish cleaning up the mess they have created in their hurry to get absolutely nothing done.

Considering that this whole process is definitely not cheap, it should at least be a good job, if not a fine job. It should at least be a livable house, which, at the moment, it is not. Nobody is bothering to come in to clean up the furniture that was left behind, and nobody is bothering to salvage much of anything from my grandmother’s house. Most of the stuff that we have not already evacuated, or that has been removed by these so-called “cleaners”, has simply been broken and dumped in a huge dumpster out back. Plus, the irony of this situation is the fact that this particular house cleaning company is the proudly-boasting, supposedly top rated house cleaners in the State of Michigan.

My suggestion is, that if you are in need of professional house cleaning, due to a fire, smoke damage, or flood damage, if the insurance covers it, do not pay your house cleaners all of the money before the job is done. If you do that, they will simply move on and ignore your home until you finally give up and clean it yourself, much the wiser. Plus, remember to do your research. Do not choose the first house cleaners you can find in the yellow pages. Do your research and find out which ones really are the top-rated in your area. Oh yeah, and don’t believe the outrageous tall tales they will dish out to you to get you to sign away your home. You will not like the end result of a rash decision.