Buyer beware! unfortunately for the consumer, the carpet cleaning industry has been, and probably will continue to be plagued with unscrupulous companies. These companies have many dishonest tactics to get in your home such as offering very low prices on the phone or in an add and switching to higher prices for various dishonest reasons once they are in your home. The worst part of this type company is, if you agree to have them do the work, they do a "terrible" job using sub-standard equipment, procedures, and awful employees!!
3) This is an article in the Los Angeles Times...July 22nd, 2009 and unfortunately, this scam is currently being done right here in our area!! and has been for years!! Have you seen coupons for 5 rooms for $34.75 or $9.95 per room, for carpet cleaning? Yes they are out there!
Carpet cleaner pleads guilty in bait-and-switch scam July 22, 2009 The owner of a Los Angeles-based carpet cleaning company has pleaded guilty to 10 criminal counts resulting from a pricing scam, said officials from the Santa Monica city attorney's office. Sharon "Sean" Gilboa was convicted of four counts of grand theft and six counts of false advertising. His company, which operated throughout Southern California, was formerly known as Clean Dry USA but later did business as Target Carpet Care, Clean N' Dry Carpet and SoCal Dry-Tech. It ran glossy ads in the Clipper magazine, Money Mailer and other circulars, offering to clean three rooms of carpet for $49.95 using special "dry" cleaning technoloqy. But customers reported that the company sent a representative who used bullying, intimidation and false statements to coerce them into paying much more than advertised. Elderly customers were charged more than other customers, and most customers' carpets were left wet and in worse condition, said Deputy City Atty. Adam Radinsky. An 85-year-old Santa Monica woman brought the scam to the city's attention. A company representative demanded she pay $2,000 to clean the carpet in her 570-square-foot apartment. When she balked, he lowered the price to $995, then to $795. Intimidated, the woman finally agreed to pay $560. Her carpet was wet for three days, and the company did not return her calls. Under an agreement with the Santa Monica city attorney's office, Gilboa was sentenced to three years' probation. He was ordered to provide full refunds to all known customers, totaling more than $20,000 and to perform 360 hours of hard-labor community service. He also was barred from operating any cleaning business in California.
4) This is an article written by an X-Chem-Dry franchise owner!
"THE CHEM-DRY RIPOFF"
As a past Chem-Dry owner who left the system on his own, and who was not forced out, I feel that people have the right to know that they are being ripped offby every Chem-dry franchise who walks through their front door. I will not lie to any of you when I say that until I got involved with Chem-Dry I had never cleaned a carpet before in my life. I was one of the many franchises who was brain washed into thinking this was the best system that was available to clean any type of fabric, carpet or otherwise. I was also told how to inform the customer how bad Steam Cleaning was and how to slam everysteam cleaner out there. I left the system for a lot of reasons but one of the biggest reasons was I really could not understand why they would force us to buy a $6,000.00 portable “STEAM” extractor to heat our cleaning products that could also be used to STEAM CLEAN heavy traffic lanes and so on. I now own a “steam” carpet cleaning business well out of my old franchise area and have a truck mounted steam cleaning unit. I have never seen berber carpets, commercial carpets & residential carpets clean this bright before. EVER! I feel that I lied to & took advantage of every customer I ever did work for. I just did not know any better. I got tired of trying to explain to someone why their carpet didn't look brighter through the traffic areas. I really didn't think it could look any better. I made Chem-Dry sound good to people because everything I had was in this franchise. I truly don't think most of the Chem-Dry franchises know the real difference. I was afraid to leave the system & now I thank GOD every day for the courage to leave and if this post will help one person out there to either leave the system or not get involved with Harris Research (“Chem-Dry”) then it was worth it. I'm sorry to every Steam Cleaner for the false things I told customers about their process. “Steam cleaning does a better job”. If this wasn't the case,Harris Research (“Chem-Dry”) would not now be talking to companies like “Bridgepoint Systems” about building them a Truck Mounted “STEAM” machine.
For legal reasons, this letter must remain anonymous Thank you for your time & God Bless.
