I am going to start this response out with an explanation of the types of payments we accept and about the check system we use which is Cross Check: We accept all major credit cards, including American Express, cash, and approved personal and business Checks. For the clients that want to make payment by check we fully explain in person and in our service agreement the ins and outs of check acceptance. All recurring clients receive a signed copy (ours and their signature agreeing to all terms) of the service agreement. The Service agreement is the: everything you need to know and expect about your cleaning guide. We had to make a decision in 2010 to either quit accepting checks altogether or pay for a check approval system, due to the high number of bounced checks we were incurring. This was a business nightmare for a lot of small businesses, the economy fell and times were getting rough for a lot of people. The rules that come along with the check approval system (Cross Check) are no predating, no postdating, and no initialed mistakes, this is listed in the service guide and told to in person one the 1st day of cleaning. We have called all of the check approval services and all of the same rules apply. When we run the checks through they will be declined if these rules are not followed. The check may also decline if the account holder has bounced checks anywhere previously or doesn’t have funds in their account to cover the check. Clean Sweep does not make the decision on declines, cross check does that. If a check does decline, of course we do not accept the check. Now that I have explained the acceptance of Checks, I am going to explain what happened on the member’s last day of service: The manger called the office to report that the check was written out for 14.00 instead of 141.00. The manager scanned the check through to our office and upon running the check it was declined. I was praying the whole time that it would not do that because I didn’t want to call the member about payment due to the members check had declined a couple of times before and the member has also had to rewrite the check before due to an initialed mistake once. The member wasn’t nice about any of this before and I was praying the check would go through) (I am also including the email from the member where she states that she sees where it says 14.00 and she sees where it says 141.00) The problem was how the 4 was written, the one was included into the 4. Anyhow, I called the client and explained why the check declined. She was very nice and said that her husband worked right down the street and she would call him and have him come out to rewrite another one. I told the cleaners to keep cleaning and call the office back if he hadn’t arrived within 1 hour. 1 hour later: the manager calls me and says he hasn’t arrived yet. As I was telling the manager to wait another 15 min. He arrived. The manager says to me “oh, he does not look happy at all” I then ask what do you mean? Then I hear the member’s husband say to the manager this is bulls**t , I have been writing checks for over 40 years, I know how to write a da** check, this one is going to look exactly the fu*king same. The manager says to me, “What do you want me to do?” I then tell the manager remain calm and be polite no matter what and stay on the phone with me. The husband then starts to cuss at manager calling him a son of a ***** and is shoving the check in his face saying this is 141.00 see, see . The manager is telling him to calm down please. The manager then asks me what do you want me to do? I tell the manager go get (the other cleaner’s name) and leave the stuff and walk outside now. The manager follows what I say and they both proceed to go outside. I am telling them both to remain calm and if we have to we know the address where they are at and can call the police, everything will be okay. I start telling the manager that wait a couple of minutes for him to leave and then they can proceed back inside and get the equipment and leave (they stay on the phone with me). About 3 minutes go by and the office receives a call from the member. She states that we have really made her husband mad and that this will have to be our last cleaning. Kim takes my line with the cleaners and I take the line with the member. I explain what happened and ask her if she can talk with her husband to let the cleaners go back in to get their stuff, so they can leave and to please tell him to stop cussing at them, they are really shaken up and scared. She says yes, I will call him back. She then asks if we are leaving what about payment. I tell her that they only were able to complete half of the home which would be 70.50 and it is okay if she can’t pay right now, my main concern is just getting the cleaners out safely. I think she could hear the urgency in my voice and told me she understood and she was calling him now. I take the cleaners line back from Kim and hang up with the member. (I also have this in the email she sent me, where she states that her husband lost his temper) The husband comes outside and hands the manager a check for 70.50. He doesn’t say anything and walks away. The manager says to me after he walks away that the check is written in pencil!??? I told the manager, don’t worry about it, just put it in the job box, stay on the phone with me, and get the equipment loaded up. The husband didn’t say another word to the cleaners, he let them load up and leave. I then received the email from the client about 1 hr later. I did not respond to the email, because it didn’t want to make anything worse than it already was. It wasn’t until the next day I saw the report. I then called and talked with the member and she stated that she didn’t write it her sister did and she would review it. I explained that it states that our cleaning was bad, we had broken stuff in the home, didn’t do 70.00 worth of cleaning that day, and we were always late. She agreed that our cleaning was great, we had only been late one time, by 1hr. due to an employee calling out ( we had to call in another cleaner and wait for them to get to the office) , and the one light that was broken was due to it not being installed properly. I also told her that I didn’t want her to think that we were overcharging her for the last cleaning and tell me what she thought was a fair charge and we would accept that instead. The cleaners had also completed way more than what her sister listed. She told me no that she felt it was a fair amount and that her sister wrote the response, not her. I told the member I apologize for any problems that they had with check writing and why we had a check system, and also that we accept other forms of payment other than check. I also explained that I understood why the check problem could get frustrating and apologized for any inconvenience that she experienced, but could not change the way we take checks without taking a risk of non-payment, but we can take credit, debit, or cash. – To finish I just want to talk about some of the other statements made in the response – The member states that we do not schedule routine visits. – The member is every 3 weeks. This is very hard to set up on every 3 Thursdays, if she was biweekly (every 2 weeks) or weekly that would be a different story. What we do is set her appointments 2months out in advance. Can’t go past 2 months because we acquire new clients every day and let’s say the new client is biweekly or weekly, this changes the set schedule. I honestly think that 2 months of set appointments is not too bad, and wished we could do more. Also, the arrival time of a 2 hour window – This is Charleston SC the traffic here is horrible, there is no way I can give the client an exact arrival time. Also, we are a business, employees can call out of work, other clients can cancel last minute, etc… this would change any exact arrival times we were to give out, which is why we have 2 hour windows. We are a business, just like your cable company, except their arrival windows are 4 -5 hours long, or your alarm system company again 4 -5 hour windows, pest control, landscaper, rotor rooter, HVAC Techs, need I say more??? The client states we left cleaning equipment behind twice – they left a little lamb’s wool hand held duster at 1 of the cleanings. I do apologize for the inconvenience and we will do our best to not let that happen again. I really wanted to look at this from another angle and find where we could improve our company to prevent a situation like this one. The only thing I could come up with is accept checks even if they decline, but that would put us at risk for non-payment? Here are parts of the email she sent me – It is too long to include the whole thing. If you would like for us to email you a copy, we can:Trying to keep things in perspective and understand your point of view. I want to address several things. Today's conflict over the legitimacy of the check provided for services: I have looked at the check and can see where you might misinterpret it to read One Hundred and Fourteen but I also can see One Hundred Fourty One. My husband then rewrote the check and presented it - and again was told it was written wrong - that it still said 114. Indeed Forty was misspelled but was followed by the word "one" - so the bank would have accepted it because of the confirmed numerical entry of $141.00. I believe this then escalated the conflict, causing my husband to lose his temper. Generally, we have not had any issues with the quality of the cleaning done by your team and found the team members polite. I have found it stressful to use your service and believe it is the best for us to use another company. Concerns I have had: Having to set up a cleaning time every month rather than establishing a set day and time. When I asked if I could set up multiple dates in Jan, you could only commit to two months. I have not liked the two hour window time for arrival. It has been very stressful not knowing exactly what hours my house would be tied up being cleaned.