The client is correct in that she was on a biweekly cleaning service which she had ordered on Oct 2nd. The first visit was on Oct 10th and subsequent and last performed cleaning was on Oct 24th.
The client was scheduled to have a cleaning on Nov 7th as part of her regular biweekly interval cleaning.
On Nov 6th at 8:45pm we received an email from the client accusing our staff member that on Oct 24th cleaning visit of having damaged/ scratched her bathroom chrome faucet. She demanded that a repair person be dispatched and a full refund for a cleaning service that was rendered. The charge for the cleaning she is requesting a refund on for Oct 24th is $94.23 inclusive of HST.
We found it quite odd that the customer waited 13 days and the day before their subsequent scheduled biweekly cleaning to report these "damages" they thought was done by our staff on Oct 24th.
Our policy and procedure is to immediately contact the cleaner in question and start an incident report which we did. Our internal report result came back inconclusive. We do have a policy at our organization to report any damages as they happen to address them. Staff are not punished or penalized in any way for reporting accidents and the company takes full responsibility for the accident and provides any necessary training to improve quality and reduce incidents. This is the way we avoid having any surprises by clients when our staff know to be proactive in reporting. The cleaner in question is a Sr. member of our team for over 4 years and a trainer, hence our confidence in both our staff members feedback on the situation and credibility was strong.
We then responded to the client regarding the incident the next very morning Nov 7th at 8:45am after first seeing the email when we came to work at 8am and completing our internal incident report.
Our email stated our result of our internal investigation which proved to be inconclusive and that our cancellation policy would apply to her cancelling her service within 48hrs of service. And that we do not provide refunds per our satisfaction guarantee: Due to the subjective nature of the cleaning industry, we do not offer refunds.
The client responded that she was planning to wait to show the cleaner the scratched, but waited and decided to email the company instead and stated she refused to pay a cancellation fee for cancelling that same day's booked, confirmed and scheduled cleaning.
We then got management approval to waive the cancellation fee and advised the client we would cancel the same days cleaning and also all subsequent scheduled cleanings with no cancellation fees. We made our CEO available for a call to discuss this with the client.
We asked the client to first send any pictures to review the damage in question.
After receiving the picture from the client we again followed up with the accused cleaner and again were confident with her feedback of not having been her.
We reminded the client of our damage reporting policy and cancellation policy in an email.
The client responded that " Unfortunately I have a very busy schedule and dealing with a scratched up faucet was not my number 1 priority." She also stated that: "there is no policy in your company that says I have to report any damage caused by your company within 24 hours."
Here is our damage policy which was accepted by the client upon booking her biweekly schedule on Oct 2nd 2019:
Maid4Condos Cleaners promise to conduct themselves professionally in your home at all times. In the event of an accidental damage, notify our office within 48 hours of you service. We cannot guarantee reimbursement for any damages reported more than 48 hours after the end of the cleaning appointment. Maid4Condos requests that you are accessible to be contacted so that Maid4Condos or its representatives can assess and repair any damages.
Maid4Condos reserves the right to contract suitable professionals to repair damages. Maid4Condos will make payment arrangements directly to its contractors to settle any damage and/ or repair.
In that email the client also threatened to write bad reviews and complain to the BBB if we didn't fix the issued which to us comes across as black mail to threated to defame our reputable company online if we don't address something we are not sure we did and is outside our damage reporting period per our service agreement.. Client wrote " I cannot make your company pay for what happened and if your company chooses not to fix this problem that it has caused, then I will take it further to write a review of my experience as well as file a complaint with the BBB if your company is registered.."
We were taken back by the threat as a small family business who truly does care about our clients, staff commitment to quality service and our reputation. Our CEO responded:
Hey Amy,
Considering the circumstances and that we truly care about our customers.
I would be willing to come and address this myself. There are chrome scratches fix kits that I could buy and come and do it.
If you think this is fair and ok - please let me know when I could have access to do this next week during the day.
Please let me know.
Thanks,
Showing that even though we had found our results and incident report to be inconclusive as well as the report of the incident to be outside our damage policy reporting window, we decided to offer to go ourselves and try to help out by offering to buy a kit and attempt repairs on the faucet.
This last communication was on Nov 8th 8:56pm
At 9:27pm that night we received notification of any online google review that was 1 of 5 stars stating:
" DO NOT sign up with this company. Had expensive items in my condo scratched up and damaged from abrasive cleaning tools they use. When told the company about this damage, they refuse to take responsibility even though it's 100% clear from the photos I sent them that the scratches were caused by some kind of cleaning tool. Don't bother with getting a cleaner from this company unless you want to pay for things that they will damage."
We also subsequently received notifications from Homestars (another online review platform) and BBB about a complaint. With the same negative complaint.
We were again very much taken back by her statements and stating things that are contrary to what was actually occurring as we were trying to help and had set a time of Wednesday Nov 13th, 1pm to go fix the chrome faucet with a kit.
When we asked the client why she had still written these bad reviews and complaints which were false, her email answer was: " Happy to revise reviews when my faucet gets fixed."
To us this is blackmail and we did not appreciate being threatened by a client that we were in fact trying to help even though we felt as though we hadn't caused the damage in question.
For reference our cancellation policy and service agreement can both be found at https://www.maid4condos.com/agreement/
