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Here’s How You DON’T Do Customer Service, Biz Owners

Yesterday I had a completely rotten experience with the owner of a small business. I am still stunned over the way he responded to my issues and am recounting the story here to see what you guys think. Warning: This post is REALLY LONG.

We live in a townhouse with a fireplace. Because our buildings are all connected, we’re all required to get our chimneys inspected and our dryer vents cleaned on a yearly basis. We made an appointment with the recommended company. They called the other day to remind me they were coming, and the woman on the other end of the phone was delightful.

Yesterday the guy comes over, five minutes early, very nice. He tells me he’ll start with cleaning the dryer vents. As he’s working, I hear a big BANG and figure he dropped one of the many bottles and jugs of cleaning stuff we have stashed in our laundry closet. Then he goes down to the living room, comes back up to the office a few minutes later to let me know our chimney is fine. I sign the form for the association and write him a check for $79. And then I go back to work.

A bit later, I walk over to the laundry closet to put the ironing board away. The top of the washer is covered in powdered OxyClean. Well, now I know what he dropped. Sigh. I shrug and clean it up with the Dustbuster. After eating lunch and working for few more hours, I get ready to go down to the living room to do a workout with the Wii Fit.

So, I go downstairs to pull out the Wii and I stop short. About six inches from the fireplace hearth are three large spots of soot. In my carpet. WTF? He didn’t even do anything except look at the flue! Yet there they are. We haven’t touched our fireplace for weeks. My cleaning lady was here less than a week ago and she actually cleaned it out. No soot anywhere, INCLUDING on my carpet. Obviously this guy did it — either by touching something in my fireplace and then touching the carpet, or he tracked it in on his equipment, or something. But he did.

Again, I shrug. I’ve cleaned up soot before, right? And here’s where I make a mistake. I freely admit that I made the wrong decision. I try to clean it up. I grab my go-to cleaning foam from the closet and IT’S BROKEN! Nooooo! So I reach for a different cleaner, spray it on the stain, wait a bit and then gently blot. Blot blot blot. Some of it comes up. But the rest of the soot is really pushed in there. Then, to my horror, I realize that I used a cleaner with some sort of bleaching agent in it. ARRRRRGGGGGGGGH. As soon as I see what I’ve done, I cover the area in salt to dry it out and then vacuum everything up. So now I have three spots of gray soot on a beige carpet, all in a pool of light beige. Disaster.

However, I can live with a light spot on the carpet. But not with three blobs of gray soot. So I call the chimney people. The same nice woman answers the phone and she is absolutely shocked that this happened. She tells me they’ve never had someone complain before, she is SO SORRY, she’s going to call the owner of the company and he will actually come over to my home after work and assess the damage. Excellent, I say! Thank you so much for helping me out, I say!

Later on, I’m chopping vegetables for dinner and the Owner comes over. He asks me what happened; I tell him. I inform him immediately that I tried to clean up the stain myself and I realize that I shouldn’t have done that. I just want him to see, because I’m quite unhappy that his employee stained my carpet with soot. Owner goes over to the fireplace and stands on the stains, staring at the fireplace. I say, “Um, the soot is actually between your feet.” He steps back, looks down and says, “But this isn’t even right next to the fireplace!” I say, “I know. I have no idea how he did it.” And Owner says, “He probably didn’t.” I’m like this.

Let me stop here and just remind you about who I am. Those of you who know me understand that I am a clean person, someone who notices and is driven insane by every little thing out of place. I know EXACTLY what my house looks like. I can point to various tiny little stains on the carpet and tell you exactly how they happened (a baby drooled chocolate here, a toddler spilled eggnog here, etc.). And while we’re discussing stains, in my fifteen-odd years owning a fireplace, I’ve had soot on the carpet. I’ve always cleaned it up and the stain never resurfaces.

I tell Owner that the stain was not there before, we haven’t used the fireplace in weeks, etc. He says, “Maybe you just didn’t notice it.” I tell him OF COURSE I would have noticed it. Now, all I want at this point is for this guy to apologize for the carelessness of his employee and tell me how to get the stain cleaned free of charge. Mostly I really want that apology. And as I realize it’s not coming, I want it even more.

Owner re-inspects the fireplace just so he can show me how it’s impossible for the soot to get on the carpet. “Yet there it is,” I say. He starts taking photos of the carpet and the fireplace. Then he starts asking me what I did to try and clean it up and I tell him yes, I know I screwed it up and yes, I know I bleached out part of the carpet by accident and that I DO NOT expect him to fix that. But the stains, I want out. He says, “Well, you really ground it in. You never should have tried to clean it.”

At this point, I’m getting upset. AGAIN, I say, “Yes, I know I shouldn’t have tried to clean it.” I tell him I’ve cleaned up soot spots for years and have never seen one like this. He says to me, “Well, then, you’ve been LUCKY, haven’t you?”

…

At this point he still hasn’t taken responsibility. So I tell him about the spill on the washer. He asks me to see it. I tell him I already swept it all up. And he says, “Well, then I don’t really know if that happened.” Now I am holding my head on to prevent it from FLYING ABOUT THE ROOM.

He goes back to taking photos and I go back to chopping carrots. He comes back in and starts berating me again about my screwed-up cleaning attempt. Then he gives me a card and says to call this company and they’ll come over and see what they can do. He tells me they’re not going to clean the entire room, just the spot. I’m like, DUH. Again, he makes a comment about how no one has EVER complained before and again insinuates that his employee didn’t do anything.

Does he think I’m going through all this just to get a free spot cleaning? That I set up the whole thing? Am I insane?

I explode. I start yelling, shouting at this man in my house. I am completely unhappy with the way you’ve been treating me! Yesterday there was no stain on my carpet. Today there is. A man was looking at my chimney today. YOU DO THE MATH. He was sloppy and I’m mad and I expect your company to be more respectful of my complaint. You are acting like I made this stain myself and it’s really upsetting me, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

I realize later that while I’m yelling, I’m waving a chef’s knife around.

He looks at me and says, “What do you want from me? I’m getting your carpet cleaned, it’s going to cost me $200.” (which, btw, LIE) “I came over here on MY OWN TIME. No other company would do that. No other company would even bother with you if you had called them complaining.” (WHAT?)

I choke out, “Thank you for offering to clean my carpet. I appreciate it. I do not appreciate the way you are speaking to me and I intend to let the association know about my experience with your company.”

He retorts, “They LOVE our work.”

I say, “You will never get my business again.”

He says, “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME.”

I shriek,”I WANT YOU TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS.”

He again reminds me that he’s paying to have my carpet cleaned. I realize this man is never, ever going to apologize or take responsibility for his employee’s carelessness. I tell him we’re done, he leaves, and I go back into the kitchen and cry for 15 minutes out of complete frustration.

I know that some of my frustration lies from the fact that I bungled the clean up job. But what he failed to understand was that I wouldn’t have been trying to clean something up if his employee hadn’t made a mess in the first place. If he had just sympathized with me, explained what he could do and what he couldn’t do, and that his company rarely makes mistakes, I would have been just fine.

So why did I end up in the kitchen crying? Was this an overreaction on my part? This was the OWNER of the company!

Anyway, thanks for listening. I’ll let you know how the carpet cleaning guy works out…