Merry Maids of Tacoma

Gave a call to Merry Maids on 9/29/2015. I left a voice message that I had just lost my house cleaning service and was interviewing and would like to get an estimate. Never received a call back. I left both my home and work number. To me, no response from a company totally turns me off to ever doing any business with them. First impressions are golden. Merry Maids receives an "F" for Failure to call back. Very poor first impression.

I'm a relatively new customer, but underwhelmed so far. I've employed two smaller businesses for routine housekeeping in the past, but one moved out of area and the next was unreliable re: timing and I got tired of waiting at home for hours every time they were behind schedule. So Merry Maids gets points for having a staff large enough to set an appointment and actually show up on time. Unfortunately, they charge more than 25% more for the job (more than $100 for two cleaners for about an hour of cleaning, once every two weeks, vs. $75 with each of the other two companies) and do about 50% less work per visit. This last time, I complained - three straight visits with no visible effort made to clean in the spare bedroom at all, and huge dust bunnies under/behind the furniture - they promised a 50% discount on the next cleaning, and to do a surprise inspection following the cleaning. Instead, the cleaning team showed up with a song and dance about an online survey I was being invited to fill out, and how important it was to them I give them at least a "9" or it would make their office "look bad" to corporate. I could tell they tried a little bit harder on this one visit (they actually moved the stuff on my kitchen table around instead of wiping around it), but it was only "good" in comparison to how bad the previous few had been. So I pay more and get crummier service, but they show up when scheduled so I don't have to wait around forever to let them into the house, which is at least less stressful than the two really delightful, super-hard-working-despite-frequent-phone-and-smoke-break taking cleaning teams who preceded them (but couldn't show up within 3 hours of a scheduled appointment time to save their life). I signed a contract and will probably give it another 2 months to see if things improve, but, seriously thinking about paying back the $200 discount for the initial deep cleaning and trying a different service if they don't... I've had a lot going on and I can really use the help (plus, I hate cleaning). I understand there's a cost to running a business and their employees make a fraction of what I pay. But when I pay this much and they send two employees who consistently do less work than I could do in that same hour by myself, I really don't feel like I'm getting my money's worth.