Did You Know This About Most Carpet Cleaning Companies?

So I know this is not my normal positive leasing blog but I wanted to give a shout out to the Carpet Cleaning Industry and maybe educate some one else today. So here is my Did You Know blog.

Recently my significant other ( boyfriend, not legal husband but we call each other husband and wife, children’s father, free thinker, best friend) has become a Carpet Tech for a local Turn Key Company that specializes in Carpet Cleaning- they do a wonderful job seriously even before my honey pie went to work for them. Now if you had ask me four years ago when he was let go from his awesome IT Job would I ever see him cleaning carpets I would have laugh at you because the idea was absurd. But desperate times call for different ways of thinking and well now he is very happy about being a Carpet Tech- he even gave me a lecture on why I can't use Resolve to get my stains out of the carpet anymore... it was quite cute actually. Anyways getting off the subject matter and that is Did You Know That Most Carpet Cleaning Companies pay their techs on straight commission?

I for one did not know this nor did I even care at the time how they got paid just that my carpets in the units got clean at a low price. But boy has my thought process change sense my honey pie went to work as a Carpet Tech. He gets oh lets just say 25% of the sales on the units he cleans. So if he were to do a job that was a set rate of $250 (save unit) he is only getting paid $62 and could be in the unit for more than two hours but lets just say a max of two hours. I know your thinking hello "Jolene he just made $31 an hour that is more than the Property Regional makes so what are you complaining about?" I'm actually not complaining I just thought I would educate the group on some interesting things that I have found out.

Now lets say you have a save unit the guy can do it but you don't want to pay the $250 so you ask for it to go to $150 you just cut his pay in half. He is going to do it because they want your business but know that you just cheated your favorite carpet tech out of his pay because you did not budget properly for saved carpets- can I get an Amen...totally just kidding. So we all know that we just don’t have an extra $1500 around to replace carpet whenever we need to, so we have to rely on these carpet guys to save the carpet. My point is you don't want to work for less than what you are worth, so why would we expect these guys to do the same. So when you complain about the high carpet cleaning bill remember this you may be paying out $1500 but he just saved you 6 apartments that you would have otherwise paid $9,000 to replace the carpet. Also remember if you are cheap on the amount they give you for the carpet clean it will get around and the good guys, you know the ones who know what they are doing and take pride in their work will pass you to the weak one, you know the one who dose not know what he is doing or cares about his job. Then you no longer have a pretty saved unit but an ugly saved unit and you may just end up spending more money on it.

Now let’s address the whole Renewal Carpet Clean Price. We love deals, yes we do! Again never thought about this till my honey pie went to work as a Carpet Tech. So now we are at renewal time and we are giving an incentive to have a resident renew their lease with a free carpet clean and boy do I mean FREE. The carpet cleaning companies have reduced their price for renewals because you give them so much business. Its a give and take relationship but what about the carpet tech that is your favorite and you only want him what dose he get for the renewals...drum roll please...at $25.00 a renewal clean and 25% commission it comes out to $6.00 WOW that is less than minimum wage. So if you have oh say 15 renewal carpets that day your guys is now spending the day there (if not then he a horrible cleaner) and just made a total of $90. I know that I hate working for less than I'm worth so why do we expect others to. I also know we are not going to rush right to our carpet cleaning company and say "gee can you raise your renewal carpet clean price so your carpet guy is at least getting $7.25 a renewal clean" in a perfect world that would be awesome if it did happen. But let’s face it we have a budget that we have to abide by at the Property so if we can get something less than what the normal price is we are going to take advantage of it. So I know what your thinking come on Jolene what is the solution. Don't worry I have some suggestions but it’s up to you if you use them or not.


Suggestion 1: Don't Bargain with the guys to much on your saves. You know what a Save carpet is by now and know that if you make short cuts you’re just going to call them back out to redo it and pay more. If you don't know what a Save carpet is walk the unit with the tech and maintenance supervisor to learn. Pay the carpet tech what they are worth and they will do a great job for you.

Suggestion 2: On the renewals educate the residents to tip the tech. Yes tip him like $5-$20 for coming out to clean your carpet. If they know they are going to get tip they will do a fantastic job better than a normal renewal job. Seriously try to make up for the awesome deal by educating your resident. I did this and it is working.

Suggestion 3: Stick with your carpet company. If you have one that you like use only them not three or four at a time. The reason for this is you will get better deals and service by just using one Carpet Cleaning Company. You may think they don't know you’re using more than one Carpet Company but they do. So if you want to continue your good prices and clean then stick to the one carpet cleaning company.

Suggestion 4: Talk to who ever makes your budgets but giving you more play room in the Saved carpet area. Look at previous years and see where your heaviest saved units were, they tend to stay in a trend. By budgeting for this you are not stressing out over a saved unit and the fact that your favorite carpet tech just made less than he is worth.

Suggestion 5: Emergency Water Extractions...they are considering it an Emergency ( hello you called it in for an Emergency)  so therefore they are going to cost more. When you call out for an Emergency you are taking that Carpet Tech from a current job that they now have to make excuses for and possibly lose money on. Expect to pay for that emergency no matter what. If you’re resident has renters insurance then submit the bill to the insurance company to get your money back. Also you can submit the bill the resident if it is due to their negligence and take the proper procedures. You can also budget for the emergency cleans at budget time; you know that when it’s the raining season there are bound to be leaks or floods so make room for them. Keep in mined when you go to the ER you know that you are going to pay that high bill because it was an emergency so why would you cheat your company out of pay when they dropped everything for you.

I'm not sure if this helped anyone or not, but for me it did. I truly did not realize what I was doing to the guys who come out to get my carpets pretty so I can move in someone when I tried to get them to lower the bill. It's important that we keep the techs happy because hello they in the end save us allot of money. Also with out pretty clean carpet people tend not to move in or just make our lives at the office hell.

Jolene Sopalski
Assistant Manager
Finlay Management, LLC

*Originally Posted on Multifamily Insiders on November 11,2010*