MOLLY MAID of the Midlands and West Columbia

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We are firing them today. Sadly, but inevitably. We gave this company a very fair shot: 3 months. The first time (2 people arrived, instead of the 3 promised) they did such a bad job that the manager of the Molly Maids branch in our area (North East Columbia) waived the fee for that day. Were it for me, it would have finished there. But my husband, who is a very patient and generous man, insisted we give them a second chance. For the second time, however, we demanded a totally different team. So, second time: 3 new women come and did a better job—although a lot was still unsatisfactory. My husband said, “If we ‘train’ them and explain what we want I am sure they’ll do better with time.” (I doubted it would work that way but conceded.) To make a long and sad story short: after three months of bi-weekly service, every time these ladies leave the house, we have to do extra cleaning and touch-ups ourselves. They are good at giving the “impression” of cleanliness without the actual cleanliness. Lots of scent and perfume are disseminated throughout the house—to the point of making one utterly noxious. But they regularly forget to vacuum our two carpeted flats of stairs; constantly leave the sofas untouched (no reviving the cushions, no vacuuming the fabric, nothing); they lift up the bamboo rags in the kitchen in order to clean (let me correct that: to wet) the floor, and, since they run out of the house as soon as possible, they don’t wait for the floor to dry and don’t put the rugs back. When we do, we invariably find out the rugs have not been cleaned, or even shaken out of normal crumbs, house debris and pets’ hair. No way you’ll catch these teams cleaning a storm-door, a window pane, the entrance door glass (full of fingerprints). There are shelves they never clean, so there is dust accumulated on them. We moved away a dish from these open shelves, and it left a visible mark on it (where the dish was the shelf was clean, but dusty all around)… A test to see if they were going to dust the shelf (which, by the way, you can’t miss, it’s at eye-level, on the main wall of a room): they failed the test. Our floors are part carpet part (expensive) laminates. The wet-ish (hyper scented) stuff they use to wash them leaves a dull residue and we had to buy a specifically designed electric mop at Sam’s to clean them ourselves and get the dullness and marks (left by the cleaning ladies’ cleaning method) off. They leave stuff in the garbage bins, don’t clean the garbage bins at all (they get dirty too); etc. etc. etc. Today the two workers were done in 45 minutes. A 4000sq.ft. house in 45 minutes! $148 for a 45 min. poorly done job. We have a dinner party tonight and, while I cook, husband will have to touch up the left-undones. As I said, we canceled this company’s services for good. One important detail: We have no children. We are two adults in a big house, which is kept very neat and tidy—therefore, a maid could really take the time to pay attention to details here, since the larger bulk of the work is done (all is in order, I sometimes dust while I pace around talking on the phone, we leave all dishes washed and arranged in cupboards, we make the beds, and every morning before the cleaning team comes I make sure to put everything out of the way (newspapers, mail, etc.)—because I imagine it’s hard for outsiders to know where one wants his/her stuff, so I spare them that trouble). ONE GOOD WORD: this is not a judgment of the people themselves. The girls are nice. In particular, we can only say good things about the manager of this branch of Molly Maids: he is a truly kind, pleasant, intelligent, accommodating, professional man.

Overall they do an excellent job.

I have had them for a couple of years. They come in on a regular basis as scheduled and they come here on schedule. They were quite effective in all areas. I need to give them supervision initially and tell them exactly what I want and they go ahead and do it. If I find that anything that hasn't been covered etc., then I just give them some guidance and they come back and get it done. I am very pleased with their service.

I really answered this part of the report in the first space above. I have given the information from start to finish above. All I can add is that they are bonded and insured. They are still doing a great job at whatever task is asked of them.

The manager who came with the cleaners was very polite and professional. The cleaners were excellent. They tried very hard to get everything clean and even did the windows. They were very nice and asked lots of questions about how we wanted things done. I would recommend them to anyone for any type of cleaning needs. They are not cheap, but none of the companies I checked with were any less, so I think that is about the industry standard.

They kept offering me spend more money on packages that was more than I wanted them to clean.

Representative came out and gave an estimate. I liked the scope of the services they offered and the price, and arranged for an initial cleaning and several specific dates for follow-up with a bi-weekly schedule thereafter. The first cleaning was quite thorough and the team did a very good job, though I did note some missed spots about the house. The second cleaning two weeks later was sub-par compared to the first. Water pools were left on our hardwood floors, kitchen countertops were not wiped at all, some type of water-based solution was used on our stainless steel appliances that left terrible streaks, and obviously dirty glass exterior doors were not cleaned. In general, the second cleaning was unacceptable. The third scheduled cleaning was for the following week on the same day and time of the week, however, due to a "scheduling error," no one showed up to clean. I made a call to the office that afternoon with no response until after I left a second message the following day complaining. I ended up having to take time off of work to clean the house as my in-laws were arriving the next day for an extended stay.

I hired Molly Maids to do an initial deep cleaning (something they require before starting routine bi monthly cleanings). The service was OK, despite a few minor irritations. I left the house for about 1 hour and when I returned, there was someone I didn't know lounging on my couch. Then, I got to the door to discover that it was locked, which means that they locked both the bottom and dead bolts upon my departure from the house, which concerns me. Turns out the unexpected visitor was the office manager, who said she was just checking up on the two girls cleaning my house. I thought that was very odd. So, I scheduled another appt. with them, and rushed home from work on a Thursday to meet them; nobody showed up, and nobody called me. So, I called the office only to be told that one of the girls was sick and they weren't coming that day. No explanation of why they didn't call to tell me that, nor were they really apologetic. Totally unreliable and unprofessional. Don't use them.