You've probably seen the cheap coupons. Some carpet cleaners will come out to your home for as little as $5.99 per room. But what kind of cleaning will this get you?
Expose' have been done on both 20/20 and NBC Dateline that expose bait and switch carpet cleaners. The conclusion is carpet cleaning can't be done for such little prices. So then why do some companies advertise cleaning that cheap?
It's really so they can get their foot in the door. Once they come out to your home they fully intend on switching the price to something greater or forcing you to buy some of the extras. And if you don't buy into their forced up sell, in turn you'll get a lousy cleaning.
Think about it. How could any company make money by sending an employee out to your home to do work for an hour? And then include the cost of cleaning chemicals and machine usage. Professional carpet cleaning machines cost in the range of $15-$25 thousand dollars. There is no way a company can deliver all that to you for $5.99 a room or anywhere close.
So instead they rely on their employees to switch you into a different price bracket. And the even worse part about this is the companies normally don't have the means nor the education to do a quality job on your carpet anyway. They're more concerned with skirting around the sales tactic of bait and switching you.
What should a quality company do for you? First, they should be able to either give a somewhat accurate estimate on the phone. Or even better, they should come out to your home to give an exact quote before the job. If the company tries to pull a bait and switch before the cleaning, ask them to leave.
Professional carpet cleaning should include pre-vacuuming before the cleaning, followed by pre-spotting, and then either truck mounted steam cleaning or portable hot water extraction. All of this should be included in the cleaning price and is standard for the cleaning industry.
If any spots should return within a reasonable amount of time after the cleaning, the company should gladly return at no charge to take care of these spots for you. The one exclusion may be urine stains or other extreme soil conditions that were noted before the cleaning.
Do your homework. Make sure you don't hire an unethical carpet cleaning company.