Renaissance Carpet Cleaning
Washington, DC 20001Excellent company, professional staff, outstanding customer service. Our technician was great. We walked through the areas we needed cleaned. I was provide quotes for deluxe and basic service. There was no pressure to up charge. I waited about a month to write this review to see if the stains would reappear after the tech left after we walked through the areas. About 90% of my bad stains were removed and all of the light stains were gone. Service took about 4 hours for about 2, 500 square feet of cleaning. My base cheap carpet that came with our new home, that we've had for 5 years looked amazing and will definitely last throughout the holidays. We will use this service again to clean the rest of the carpet we didn't get cleaned! Highly recommend. I almost used a company I found in VAL PAK so happy I checked Yelp first.
The service was advertised as excellent and so forth, so I called and scheduled a cleaning, but the situation transpired quite differently than advertised. They called several times to confirm, and then to offer a lot of qualifications about the service. They wanted to charge me a high-rise fee, even though there is a freight elevator, no steps, and they would be able to park in the loading dock. I thought that was nickel-and-diming of them, but shrugged my shoulders and went along with it. After all, the service is advertised as amazing. On the day of the cleaning (today), the technician called an hour and a half earlier than my two hour time window and said "Hey, we're here early and can be there an hour before your time at 1pm." I had made plans on a saturday to do some work, so I apologized that I would not be available until the quoted time of 2-4. The technician then intimated that if I couldn't take him an hour earlier than expected, he wouldn't be able to make my promised time frame. He said he guessed he could wait around until 2:00pm and see, and I said if you need to arrive closer to 4, that's ok. Just keep in touch about time frames. At 3:45, I had heard nothing further from him, so I texted him to ask whereabouts he was and he said 25 minutes away. Ok. 10 minutes late. That's not terrible. I had plans at 5:30, so I figured we'd still be good. At 4:30, the office calls and says he's got a flat tire. They apologize and say I can reschedule. I've torn my house up to be ready for the tech, cancelled a work appointment for the window quoted, and now I'm late to my plans. I mentioned to them that I have already paid them with my time and now I'll have to reschedule and pay them with my currency, which I found unacceptable. They said that they'd be happy to give me a whopping 10% off for my trouble, which worked out to $8.30. I mentioned that my hourly wage is $70 an hour, and I had sat around not only doing nothing, but actively cancelled work engagements to honor the time frame. They said they couldn't do it for free, which I wouldn't have expected, but when they only deducted it from one line item (whatever the base cleaning fee was), outside of all their fees and whatever, I felt that was pretty cheap of them. I don't know, the tone was never grateful. The attitude was never grateful. It always seemed like I was being unreasonable that I couldn't accommodate them early, that I couldn't take them late, that I couldn't be happy with my $8.30 off for my trouble, and further, maybe they just weren't the company for me. It's too bad that we couldn't make it, but you need to understand where we are coming from, never mind about your time or experience. I mean, I hate to say it, but it reeked of entitlement, from start to finish today. I don't understand how they not only took the condescending tone that "Well, it's not his fault he got a flat tire" when I mentioned "Yes, but time management is important, and considering that he already intimated that he wouldn't make my window if I didn't take him egregiously early, this isn't acceptable. You should budget your time for emergencies, and you should plan your appointments so that he isn't 'all the way across town, ' as he had complained to me. I'm not responsible for your company logistics, that's your responsibility." I'd say that for however excellent their service might be, it's not really worth it if that's the hassle, the tone, and just the poor management of the situation. I suppose what galled me was the flippancy of the experience. I don't know, I expected to be treated better than that.
