Beware of the High Cost of a Cheap Price
Sometimes bargain hunting nets you a great deal, but other times the gamble is simply not worth the risk. The 19th century social commentator John Ruskin probably said it best, “It’s unwise to pay too much, but it is worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money — that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better.” This is often the case when we are hiring the services of another person or company. While it is true that we want to get the lowest possible price, we still expect quality and performance.
There is a saying that when you hire the services of another you can have two of the following three things: You can have it on time, on budget, or done right. You can never, the saying goes, achieve all three of these at one time. Cheap carpet cleaning requires cheap equipment, cheap chemicals, and cheap labor. Even one of these would cause a problem, but specifically, how does each of these budget cutting measures affect you?
Cheap Equipment
To be effective, a cleaning machine must remove maximum soil and allow the carpet to dry in a reasonable amount of time. In addition, the equipment must not damage the carpet. The best machines do a superior job of removing soil and recovering cleaning agents and waste water. Naturally, these machines are more expensive. A carpet cleaner who uses cheap equipment simply cannot get the carpet nearly as clean as you really need it to be.
Cheap Chemicals
The best cleaning agents are formulated to remove soils and leave behind little or no residue. Sticky detergent residues will cause rapid re-soiling. Cheap chemicals are often harsh, and can damage your carpet fibers and dyes. In addition, the carpet’s soil and stain resistance will be compromised by harsh chemicals. So, although the carpet looks clean, your carpet will re-soil faster and become susceptible to permanent stains from common food and drink spills.
Cheap Labor
Unethical operators hire inexperienced workers and pay them extremely low wages or commissions. The only way that the worker can make a decent living is by “up-selling” additional services. In many cases these additional services such as “deep scrubbing”, “traffic lane preconditioning” or “sanitizing” are steps that reputable companies include at no charge in every cleaning.
Additionally, the underpaid “technician” must often resort to high-pressure selling to get you to spend more money. In the end, you don’t get the cheap price that you were promised.
Finally, these companies are like a revolving door, hiring and losing employees every week. They never take the time or spend the money to train and educate workers to become competent certified professionals.
Protecting Your Carpets
When all is said and done, cheap carpet cleaning can cost you plenty. After all, what can you expect when an inexperienced worker using harsh, ineffective chemicals, and inferior equipment rushes through the job? You really do get what you pay for. That’s why Van’s Carpet Cleaning, while perhaps not the cheapest, provides the best value for your carpet cleaning dollar. You get dedicated, certified technicians, using superior equipment and the best cleaning agents every time. Isn’t that what you really want?
