ServiceMaster Clean services

On Friday December 28, 2012, I came home to our house on fire. The claims adjuster hired by our insurance company recommended we call a company to start the cleaning and restoration process so I contacted Service Master(SM) in Mason City, Iowa. Kurt Quam, owner and Ryan Allen, production manager, came to our house to assess the damage. Ryan explained the process and I learned our house would be emptied completely, the items would be taken to SM warehouse and cleaned. The items would then be boxed up and stored until we?re ready to have them returned. I asked ?how do you determine what to throw away.? Kurt said ?you?ll be able to see everything before we throw anything away. We won?t discard your things until you?ve seen them.? I distinctly remember this because the image that instantly popped in my head was all our belongings lined up on the floor of a warehouse. I envisioned being able to physically see the damaged items and determine which ones we would chose to keep and chose what would be denied. They gave me the impression we would be fully aware of what was going in the dumpsters prior to it happening. Nope! Not the case, not even close. When I called SM to start bringing our items back to the house there were minimal boxes delivered. Everything they returned fit in one small area of our living room. When I asked where is everything else they said it was thrown out. I asked the owner?s wife who said it was okay to throw away our items, she was very rude and was not able to answer my question. Later she said the claims adjuster said it was okay. (He denies ever receiving that phone call). She told me they needed to get the items out because they were stinking up her office. Our computer among ALL other electronics in the house were thrown out. We never had a say and they never attempted to clean them. I said I need to have the hard drive from our computer and she said she would check on it. I called SM again and again to get my computer hard drive and this whole time no one called me back. It took several weeks and on June 13, 5 ½ months after the fire, they finally sent it to me. They threw all our clothes, shoes and coats away. A leather coat my father gave me before he passed away, my mother?s wedding shoes, my husband?s high school memorabilia, all my children?s Christmas toys they just received the week before the fire, the list was 25 pages long! She was loud and nasty with me, not once was she sympathetic. She said it wasn?t her fault we had a fire. She also said she?s not responsible for the type of insurance we had. I tried to explain it has nothing to do with insurance or being reimbursed. We would have chosen to keep many items regardless of the condition it was in. Those were items near and dear to our hearts! Numerous things hand quilted by my Mother given to us as gifts. They didn?t even take the time to talk to us about it. We did receive items that weren?t even ours - wall art, towels, bathroom rug that I?d never seen in my life. There was dried cat poop in our rolled up area rug. Again, no apology. She said she?s done all she could at this point and would have no other contact with us.

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