Watch out for these Carpet Cleaning Ripoffs!

Low Price Bait & Switch

There are a lot of Raleigh carpet cleaners offering very low prices for carpet cleaning. Many times these operators have no intention of honoring their advertised price.

Fiber Clean's prices are published online.

Charging more than quoted

I've heard this one a lot: a cleaner comes in to someone's house and performs a job. Then, when billing the client, tells the client that they had to do more work than was agreed upon and charges a higher price. Sometimes intimidation tactics are used to make this work.

Fiber Clean's quote is always the final price

Ineffective equipment

There's a big difference between a truck-mounted hot water extraction machine and a little, portable machine that doesn't even heat the water. The more powerful machine will do a much better job of removing the dirt and drying the carpet.

Fiber Clean uses a state of the art Butler System truck-mounted hot water extraction system.

The wrong chemicals

There are some very strong chemicals available for cleaning your carpet! These are usually used by low-price cleaners to get good results on the job. However, you may save money that day, your carpet can suffer irreparable damage. Some carpet cleaning chemicals will strip the protectant right off of your carpet. The shine will be gone, and stains will set much more easily. After using an overly abrasive chemical, nothing can restore your carpet to its original condition.

Fiber Clean uses gentle chemicals and depends on very hot water, agitation, and multiple wand passes to get the carpet as clean as it can get.

Putting detergent in the rinse

The minimum appropriate process is a two-step detergent then rinse process. Some cleaners save a step by putting the detergent in the rinse, thereby leaving detergent in the carpet after the job is done. This leaves the carpet very vulnerable to resoiling--if you have ever heard someone complain that their carpet got dirty much faster after having it cleaned, this is probably how their carpet was cleaned.

Fiber Clean separates the detergent and the rinse steps in both its Deep Clean and its Basic Clean.

Too few (or only one) wand passes

I have frequently received the complaint that the last cleaner had made one quick pass over the carpet and hurried out of there. Cleaning carpet is not like mowing the lawn, where one pass gets the job done. It is more like washing dirty dishes: the first stroke gets some of the soil, the second some more, and so on until it is clean. It is the same with carpet: the first stroke usually does not get all of the dirt out, and multiple passes are required.

Fiber Clean always continues making wand passes until the carpet stops getting cleaner.

No dry passes with the wand

A "dry" pass (using the wand without water) is necessary for each "wet" pass, to evacuate the water from the carpet. This, too, is often skipped for the sake of expediency. This will leave your carpets overwet--they will take a long time to dry out.

Fiber Clean always makes at least one dry pass for every wet pass performed.

Windows

Doesn't this one drive you crazy? "We'll send someone there between 9 am and 1 pm." Then you're stuck waiting there all day, and they may not even show up during that window.