How Not to Clean Your Carpet

Since my house had recently become catless, and was about to become rabbitless as well (and therefore entirely petless), I thought it would be nice to have the carpet in the whole house professionally cleaned - no more fur or dander, a fresh smell, that sort of thing.

So I signed on to have a local outfit called "Deluxe Carpet Cleaning" over for a house-wide carpet cleaning. It sounded like a decent deal: I have a big house, and with the living, dining, and family rooms thrown in, plus the stairs, I did the math and figured I was doing OK. When the Deluxe folks said that their people would move "all" the furniture themselves, that clenched it: I had a winner.

The Deluxe fellows showed up promptly Friday afternoon: two guys, one about my height, the other one even bigger - between the two of them, clearly capable of manhandling my furniture. The bigger fellow was the boss, and he did most of the talking. I thought it was a little odd that he left a religious tract on the kitchen counter and tried a couple of times to start up a religious conversation - it was the typical Southern Baptist stuff I'd yawned my way through in college. I told myself that in a little while I would have nice clean carpet, so I just chatted with them while they worked.

As they were about to start on the last room, I ran upstairs to see how the bedrooms looked. I thought it odd that the master bed was exactly where it had been, as was my computer desk in my upstairs office. I don't know if you're familiar with carpet cleaning equipment, but it's not exactly the kind of stuff you can just squeeze under a bed and still reach the whole carpet.

Puzzled, I went back downstairs and asked the cleaning fellows if they had any trouble moving the bed. Imagine my surprise when I was told that they don't move beds because their insurance won't allow it (not quite "all" the furniture after all).

Concerned, I called the Deluxe office and asked to speak to the manager who had sold me the package. Of course he wasn't in, but I did get another manager who explained to me that their insurance didn't allow them to move heavy furniture like beds, and that a computer desk wasn't a piece of furniture because it held an appliance (a computer).

Frustrated, I pointed out that I had been sold a package in which the cleaners were supposed to move "all" the furniture, and that no distinction was made at the time between normal furniture and other kinds of furniture. The manager replied by saying (about four or five times) that that was the deal, that I really didn't want carpet cleaners to move an expensive computer around, that there was really nothing to be done, etc.

Angered, I pointed out that the time to tell me this was when I was buying the service, not moments before the job was about to wrap up.

Still angry, I then told the guy in my house (you remember, the one bigger than me) that I had a problem: they weren't delivering what I had purchased.

That's when things started to turn really ugly: the big cleaning guy started arguing with me. Frustrated even more, I raised my voice. He raised his voice back. I raise my voice some more; so did he. Then he started scolding me.

That was it. I was shouting now: I told him that no one talks to me that way in my own house, and that it was time for him to leave.

He refused.

Remember that he was bigger than I was. And the second guy lurking in the background was about my height as well.

Scared, I started shouting, "get out of my house" at the top of my lungs.

Instead he stood toe to toe with me and kept arguing.

We went around this way for several minutes: me angry and scared, him scolding and shouting back. Then he said he wasn't going to leave without his equipment - so I told him to get his equipment and leave. Then he said he wasn't going to leave without being paid - so I told him that he would be paid when he left the house.

He still didn't leave. But he did keep arguing.

This big guy.

And another big guy, about my height, moving around out of sight doing who knows what.

Did I mention that I was scared? To death?

By this time I had shouted at him to leave well over a dozen times and had opened the front door of the house to help him on his way out. When I didn't get the result I was after, I told him that if he didn't leave right away I'd call the police. So I did.

After what seemed like an hour but was probably only 10 minutes, two cruisers pulled up. In the interim the big cleaning guy and I had shouted at each other several more times, until he sat down and ignored my demands to get out while he wrote up the bill. I finally got the guy out of the house by grabbing his pen and throwing it out the door; he went after it.

Now I was just scared again.

The police stayed until the two guys left. While they were present, I paid the cleaner what I owed him ("just get him out of here!" I told the officer), and the cleaning guys got their equipment out of the house.

Spread the word: "Deluxe Carpet Cleaning" is how not to clean your carpet.