Complain about a product or service

Merry Maids

Gail of Copiague NY (8/5/03):
I was referred to Merry Maids by Service Master, and told I would receive a 10% discount on my first cleaning. I was given an estimate by Merry Maids of $80/hr for a 2-person team to do a deep cleaning of my house. I was told to expect a 5-hr. job.

They subcontracted out the job to a husband and wife team. Only the husband turned up at 8:30 due to wife's car trouble. He cleaned till 10:30am then left to get his wife. They resumed at 11am. At about noon he suggested he should steam clean the carpet since he had the machine. I said ok. This took over an hour to do one small room. They finished everything at 1:30pm. The bill I got was $625! They charged me a flat $500 for the cleaning plus an additional $125 for the steam cleaning, which was not mentioned upfront.

I felt very pressured and paid the bill though I was quite upset. After they left I found they had not even touched the tub in the bathroom, and did not mop or clean around the litterbox. I realize it's not the most pleasant job, that's why I was paying someone to do it!

Then I started adding things up and realized how badly I had been ripped. It was supposed to be $40 per person per hour. The man was there from 8:30 to 1:30, for 5 hrs, or $200. The woman was there from 11am till 1:30pm, 2.5 hrs or 100. This is a total of $300 for the cleaning. I do not believe I should have been charged the hourly rate for the time they were carpet cleaning as they charged a premium for that service. So the cleaning should have cost $220. I still think it was very deceptive of them to not explain how much extra the carpet cleaning was, I would not have done it if they had. To top it off, they never gave me my 10% discount either.

Jean of Worth IL (3/5/02):
I contacted the company to inquire about housecleaning, decided to have them clean. Frank R stated that a "spring cleaning" would be done the first time for an additional cost up to $350 and that we would have to pay half upfront with a bank card.

The cleaning was done and was not a "spring cleaning," just an average regular cleaning. I called to complain about the poor cleaning job and the fact that they had broken an item. They came back, no improvement in second cleaning and they broke 2 additional items. I requested my money returned and the broken items paid for.

Mr. R said he would either return my money or pay for the items, not both. Two weeks later he took an additional $112.00 on my bank card. I called the corporate office. They really did not believe me but had Mr. R agree to pay me $100.00 for the broken items with no involvement from the insurance company> I am out approx $340.00 for a less than good house cleaning.

After this happened I checked their literature. Nothing was stated about a "spring cleaning" at additional cost and the brochure states they "guarantee" their work.

Judith of Walnut CA:
They bleached the carpet in front of the toilet in my master bathroom while cleaning. Evidently there was an oversplash. I contacted them about the problem the very next day. They said they would take care of it. They came out and tried to redye the carpet in those spots. The color faded immediately - and the white spots reappeared.

I called them again. They said they would try it again. They did (after several weeks) but again the white spots reappeared. I called them again and they said they would come out and try something again. No one ever came. I called several carpet places and was told that carpet can't be redyed once it's been bleached.

I wrote them a letter indicating that I was going to have to replace the carpet. They wrote back to me "refusing any liability to replace the carpet". I feel that they ruined my carpet and they shold do something to compensate me. Unfortunately I failed to log the dates of each phone call. I naively felt they would remedy my problem.

I paid approximately $475 to have my bathroom carpet replaced with ceramic tile. The carpet couldn't be matched at this point in time. This has been very upsetting to me. I think I'm most upset that they never apologized for what they did plus I had to come up with this amount of money that I had not planned on spending at this time. Furthermore, I never wanted tile in the bathroom. I wanted the carpet which we had installed about 3 years ago.

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