Common Carpet Cleaning Complaints

In this article we are going to go over some of the most common complaints the general public has about carpet cleaners.

As always, we want to make this perfectly clear:

We are not perfect, we also make mistakes at times. But at Linton's Carpet Cleaning we do our best to make sure that all of our clients are happy with our services.

We are also very proud of our reputation as one of Vancouver, Washington's very best carpet cleaning companies.

So let's get started.

Common Carpet Cleaning Complaints

1. Long Dry Times. This is a very common complaint about carpet cleaners and many times it is totally justified.

With almost all carpet cleaning jobs the dry time should be six hours or less, but there are factors that can lengthen that time.

What are those factors?

A. The degree of soiling. If the carpet is heavily soiled more water is most likely going to be needed to properly clean the carpet. This can extend dry times.

B. The face weight of carpet. The "thicker" the carpet, the more fabric there is to clean and therefore get wet. The more fabric in a carpet the longer it will take to dry.

C. Weather conditions outside. If the air outside is warm and dry the carpet will almost for sure dry faster than if it is cold and damp outside.

D. The type of fiber. It the fiber is synthetic the carpet will dry faster than carpet that is made of natural fibers. Synthetic fibers absorb LESS moisture than natural fibers like wool.

2. Carpet cleaners not showing up on time. This, honestly, could be the number one complaint for most people.

Far too many carpet cleaners show up late for an appointment, or simple don't show up at all.

If a carpet cleaner tells you the job is to start at 9am, they should be at your home, or place of business, at 9am. That would most likely be the first job of the day for the carpet cleaner and they should RARELY be late for the first job of the day.

Now, there are times when a carpet cleaner runs into problems on the first or second job, and you might be the second or third job of the day and the
cleaner is late. Those things happen, but the carpet cleaner should give you a heads up if they are running late.

3. Bad Carpet Cleaning. Most carpet cleaners really try to do a good job when they clean your carpets. But there are still far too many carpet
cleaners that do a bad job because they simply do not care about doing a good job, or they don't know how to do a good job.

Far too often we see carpet cleaning jobs that were performed poorly.

What would be good examples of poor carpet cleaning?

A. The carpet simply not being cleaned and far too much soil being left in the carpet. In most cases it is almost a physical impossibility to clean all of the soil out of the carpet. But after you have your carpets cleaned there should NOT be a high percentage of soil left in the carpet.

B. Stains that should come out - not coming out. What really separates the top carpet cleaning companies from mediocre carpet cleaning companies is the ability to out stains.

Far too often carpet cleaners leave stains in your carpet, like Kool Aid or wine stains, that should come out, or least most of the time should come out.

Many times we have gone into clients homes and were told that "this stain won't come out, the other cleaner said it was not removable" and we were
able, with minimum effort many times, to get the stain out.

All stains should be addressed when a cleaner cleans your carpets.

That is not to say all stains should come out. Some just will not, but many times cleaners are in a hurry and just rush through the job and  don't attempt stain removal.

In many cases cleaners do not know basic stain removal techniques.

C. Long dry times. As discussed earlier, long dry times are a common complaint and are also considered bad carpet cleaning.

4. Carpet cleaners not honoring their quotes. This is a very common problem.

There is a big problem in the carpet cleaning industry with companies not honoring their prices and playing many pricing games.

This should not happen and will never happen if you hire Linton's Carpet Cleaning.

Make sure your carpet cleaner gives you a FIRM WRITTEN QUOTE on all areas to be cleaned and that they honor their quote. This is why having
a FREE ONSITE carpet cleaning quote is so important.

5. Spots or stains that come back. Every carpet cleaner that has ever cleaned a fair amount of carpet has had a complaint or two about spots
or stains coming back.

Sometimes "wicking of spots or stains" is the issue. And sometimes spots or stains don't actually come back, they are removed at the time of cleaning, but a sticky residue is left behind that attracts soil and makes it seem like the spot or stain came back.

So let's go over both issues.

Wicking. Wicking is where soil, during the course of drying, makes its way from the bottom of the fiber to the tip of the fiber. The soil is accompanied by moisture. The moisture moves up the fiber with the soil, the moisture evaporates into the air, and the soil remains.

Wicking ONLY occurs during the drying process.

Is wicking the fault of the cleaner? Sometimes it is. Other times it is not. Carpets that have heavy soil loads are more prone to wicking than others.

Also, carpets that have soil embedded deep down in the fiber are also more prone to wicking because it is very difficult to remove that soil, but not so hard to get moisture down to that soil.

Sticky residue left behind. One reason for "spots coming back" is sticky residue from pre-sprays or spotters being left behind.

This is a very common problem with cleaners that try to "nuke" the carpet with heavy, sticky pre-sprays. They leave behind too much of the pre-spray and, in most cases, that pre-spray actually dries a bit sticky.

Over the course of a few days the sticky residue attracts soil and it  appears the spot or soiled areas came back. Well, they did not come back, they are a new soil addition because of the sticky residue.

Can wicking and leaving behind sticky residues be avoided?

In most cases yes, but not all of the time. Wicking is very tricky. But leaving behind sticky pre-spray residue and sticky spotter residue is inexcusable. This should not happen.

The carpet cleaner should be using as little pre-spray and spotters as possible in order to get the carpet cleaned properly. And the pre-spray should be rinsed out.

Again, we are not perfect at Linton's Carpet Cleaning. We occassionally have some issues with all of these common complaints, except for pricing games. But these complaints are very few and far between.

One thing that never happens with Linton's Carpet Cleaning is pricing games. EVER.

Pricing games are premeditated, and usually a sign of a low price carpet cleaner that doesn't have the confidence or skill to deliver quality cleaning results.

Those are the most common carpet cleaning complaints that professional carpet cleaners deal with. There are others, and maybe at some point we will write another article about the common carpet complaint.

But the five listed here are the most common we hear about.

Thank you for reading this article. If you have any questions about our services please contact us today. We will be more than happy to answer any and all questions about our carpet cleaning services here in Vancouver, Washington.