About that dirty house

So, here's the story of the dirty house. Takes a little background. We have a company called MaidPro clean our house. They are a national chain that franchises. We contract with the Seattle eastside group. They have been pretty good so far and they charge a fair price for cleaning our condo.

Last Wednesday, they called me to rearrange our Christmas week cleaning. They normally come to our home every other Friday but in December, one of those Fridays will be Christmas Day and obviously they weren't going to come that day. So when the manager called to reschedule (a nice touch I thought) us to December 23rd we also discussed them coming last Friday. You see I knew that we would probably not be here on Friday as we were headed north to see Bob and Judy. (See previous post.) I told the woman I talked to this and told her how the cleaning ladies could get into the house. I gave her very explicit instructions for getting into our home through the garage. I told her the code to the door and also told her that if there was any problem, they should call my cell phone as we would be driving north most of Friday morning. I made sure they had my cell number.

I even set up for Josh to come by our place on Saturday to make sure that all was locked up correctly after they had been there which he did. Heck, I even taped over the outside light switch that we have continuously asked them never to turn off but they do each time they are here. Why they always feel the need to turn off our outside lights, I have no clue.

So of course, all was supposed to go great. We would get home on Sunday to a clean house and all would be well with the world. No phone calls to my cell on the trip North. I had kept it on and made sure to check that the ringer was on high and that I would not miss any calls. In checking my call log yesterday when we got back there were no calls from anyone.

But when we got home there was not only a message from MaidPro on our house voice mail there was also a DIRTY HOUSE! No one had been here. And the message on voice mail said, "Hi, I am calling from MaidPro about getting into your house." WHAT!??? Hadn't I just spent 20 minutes on the phone with them on Wednesday giving them the garage code and my cell phone number? What the heck is up with this.

So I left a pretty "detailed" message on their voice mail. I should add that their voice mail is particularly annoying as it features a message from their "celebrity spokesperson" Anne B. Davis who played the maid Alice on The Brady Bunch. Her little spiel goes on for what seems like forever. I think Alice could come to our house and clean it before you get to the point where you can leave a message.

But my message was pretty clear. I was (and still am) pretty unhappy. If MaidPro can't get someone here today to clean this place then I am going to have to put in some valuable work time doing it myself and MaidPro will have one less client in Redmond. And I might add a pretty vocal one. This is not the first time they have let us down but it will probably be the last.