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Why Does Cleaning Mate Take Money in Advance?

We take payment upfront to cover ourselves for when the customer refuses to pay once the job has been completed.

Why we Take Money Upfront
Anybody within the service industry, whether it be carpet cleaning like us, bond cleaning or even construction or maintenance (lawns, plumber etc), can tell you a story where they have completed a service or job from somebody and then have never been paid. Although most people, especially in Brisbane, are very honest, there is still the minority of people that when given the chance, will skimp out on a payment.

The Cleaning Mate Team has had this experience more times than we would like and so we decided to put an end to the lost payments, by ensuring we have the money is in our hand before we start.

However we do understand that some people may feel uncomfortable about this. " What happens if we don't like the end result?" They say. So to put our customers mind at rest, we give a 5 day backup on all our work. We do understand that sometimes carpets can be so dirty that cleaning them once is not enough, so we allow a 5 day time frame in which we will come back and redo the carpets free of charge. As we are willing to return to the property for free, we do not make any profit from doing this. We even lose some petrol money! So we will avoid doing this as much as possible, and how do we do that? By ensuring your carpets are in the BEST condition we can make them, before we will finish the job. Of course as we mentioned before, some carpets are quite dirty and require 2 attempts (between drying) to cleaning them before they come out great again.

However, the other day Cleaning Mate dealt with a certain customer (Hannah Leu, 043****640). This young girl made the booking online and was provided with the information on all our accepted payment methods and they requirement that payment was needed before we commenced the job. When we arrived at the property (2/10 Cooke St, Redhill) to clean her carpets, the customer was not there. Upon calling her she informs us she was 'setting up a charity stall' and what was her payment options? We informed her that since she was not present at the property to pay cash, the only option left was credit card payment over the phone. She then informs us that her credit card was in the car, and she was very busy setting up that charity stall and could we call her back later? She further promised that she would make the payment and was not a dishonest person. We decided to do the best by this customer and complete the job for her then, and take her word that she will make the payment later in the day.

ALAS, we called her that afternoon to process the payment and got a voice message. From that day (30 November) we have called this customer at least once a day and either gotten a voice message or had the phone ring out. We have sent two emails and left multiple voice messages and text messages. However since that phone call on the day of the job, we have not heard a single thing from this customer.

This is a situation where we have tried to do the best by the customer, yet we have been the ones to lose out. This recent event inspired us to write this article in order to bring to light some of the issues we face as one of Brisbane's largest carpet cleaning companies and let our friends and loyal customers see things from our point of view.

So no, we do not ask for payment upfront as a way to cover ourselves if we do a bad job on your carpets (Somebody once accused us of doing just that!). We take payment upfront to cover ourselves for when the customer refuses to pay once the job has been completed.