Hi All,
I have been cleaning carpets for almost a year and a half now, but have come across a situation with a customer that I can't quite get my head around.
Bear in mind- The job was done 6 weeks ago and the customer only called this morning to report an issue.
Standard house three bedrooms, two staircases and a small landing plus two rugs downstairs. All the carpets are wool pile- light grey. First vacuum cleaned thoroughly about five passes with an upright.
Im using a portable extractor- nothing fancy Karcher Puzzi 30/4 and an upholstery tool as rooms aren't that big and want to get as much water out as possible during extraction.
Mixed up Prespray gold at 30ml per litre of cool water (made sure it wasn't freezing cold). I sprayed the carpet with the upholstery tool and left it to dwell for about 8 minutes, whilst I mixed a batch of Fine fabric and fibre rinse at 15ml per litre. Made sure I rinsed all the remaining solution out of the clean tank first. extraction-rinsed out the pre-spray with the fibre rinse, passed over to get out as much water as possible.
Left to air dry.
Here's the problem:
Customer tells me this morning that there are stains everywhere. I go round to the house as is local customer to take a look. It looks like bleaching, but is not consistent in all the rooms cleaned, not on the rugs cleaned downstairs using the same method (although different material) and not present in one room that was not cleaned but has the same light grey carpet. I cant upload photos due to technical problems on the site but will try to post them in comments below.
The rest is like a camouflage pattern, but it looks different when you look at it from different angles and is worse in traffic areas.
I'm a bit wary because this was not reported sooner- a lot can happen in six weeks. Customer claimed that they didn't realise until yesterday when they did a spring clean of the house. The housekeeper who rang this morning was in the house a week after the cleaning and didn't mention anything, but now all of a sudden the stains have 'only just been noticed'.
Spoke to Prochem who said it was strange and that I had followed the methodology etc properly. They said it was suspicious that it was only reported now. Spoke to two people there with a lot of experience between them.
Also did some research and found that if fertiliser, de-icer and a bunch of other things ranging from hair dye to mustard are walked into a carpet, they bleach it, and the bleaching is only visible after professional cleaning has taken place- but surely not six weeks after or maybe?
Any advice on what this weird bleaching may be would be appreciated! Anyone had anything like this before? Bear in mind these are wool carpets. Is it possible for stains to develop over six weeks, if so is it likely given the methods used?
Also, has anyone got experience of how to deal with a suspicious claim like this one- any advice on how to deal with this with the customer would be great. If cannot work out the cause will get an inspector to establish it for me and take action accordingly but want to avoid going down that route if possible.
Many Thanks in advance!