Kiwi Carpet Cleaners/ Kiwi Services Extremely ineffective method of cleaning carpets Carrollton Texas

I love these dry cleaning guys. They remind me of teenagers. All of the knowledge in the world is given to teenagers.

The company marked vans indicate the company does not change their name on a monthly basis. The uniforms show professionalism (and make you feel professional as well.. "the cloths make the man"). About 90% of companies with full page ads in the yellowpages are reputable. They either have to A> good credit to get them or B> pay for them up front. And I don't know anyone who is going to make a $50,000 investment only to turn around be the biggest scam in the industry.

OH! And my favorite! Michael knows best when it comes to the melting temperature of carpet. Even though the manufactures state the cleaning should be done between 200 and 270 degrees, that can melt the back of your carpet! YIKES! Someone needs to educate the guys at Shaw Industries!!!!!! Quick Michael, CALL THEM NOW! While you're at it ask them why leaving chemicals in the carpets voids the warranty and why you SHOULD NOT scrub stains with a brush! I'm sure they'll tell you it's because you deteriorate the fibers (wink).

Shaw Industries
1-800-441-7429


What you're not telling your customers is that dry foam removes ZERO DIRT. Yes, ZERO DIRT. It's not meant to. Dry foam is a method developed by janitorial companies who once again, do COMMERCIAL CARPET. The theory behind this is the dry foam crystallizes the dirt and has to be vacuumed up after it dries. I'm sure you don't tell your customers this because there is no way you would get my business if I paid for a service that wasn't going to be done!

Dirt starts from the BOTTOM UP! When you see dirty carpets you have several layers of dirt built up in order for the dirt to surface. That is why bonnet cleaning and dry foam was designed for COMMERCIAL CARPET (fibers with no depth) because it cleans the surface and that's it.

I use to make carpets sparkle with a buffer but it's not a lasting effect because you're only removing the surface dirt. It's like these Wal-Mart shoes I bought. I figured well, I should buy the cheap ones because I want nice looking shoes when I go into a customers home so I replace them often anyway. Well, they lasted ONE MONTH and then tore. I spent $20 on them. A pair of brand name, I'll spend $60 and have to replace them every 6 months. So I can either spend $240 on cheap shoes or $120 on brand names that will last. But the up front price is much higher compared to the Wal-Mart shoes.

In conclusion, sorry if I sound a little frustrated but I am. Carpet cleaning is my lively hood and the way I feed my family. When I see people being so unprofessional, attempting to operate without proper training, certifications and tools then it brings up emotions I would rather not touch upon. But my biggest problem are the cleaners who just don't care about the industry and give us all a bad name. I take it personally because this is who I am and what I do. It's not until you get out of the mentality of "I'm in this to make money" or "this is only part time" and get into the mentality of "I want to do the BEST job in the industry" do you start to fully develop the skills and acquire the tools required to do the job right. Right isn't what you see, right is WHAT YOU DON'T SEE. What if a dentist only cleaned the front of your teeth? Would you be happy if you saved a little bit of money?

You've got the craigslist guys and you've got the yellowpages guys. We can all be craigslist guys, even you, the consumer who is reading this. All it takes is about $300-$500 for a used buffer and another $50 for chemicals. But if you are going to spend $150,000 between A SINGLE VAN, chemicals, advertising etc. so you can charge a mere $30-$40 per room, then you are in it for the long haul and if you don't do the job right your investment is GONE because your only salvation comes from your REPEAT CLIENTS!

And the fact remains that 80% of your first time customers will become my repeat customers. If you find that arrogant and egotistical, INVEST IN A TRUCK MOUNT AND DO IT RIGHT and earn some respect in this industry. Then you will why steam cleaners seem to have their nose in the air when it comes to the buffer and coupon guys. It's called PRIDE IN YOUR WORKMANSHIP!

Yes, bonnet cleaning is dumb. Always ask the company before they come out if they use the bonnet method. If you want a good cleaning at a nice price, contact a company that uses a chemical/foam method applied with a buffer and a hard brush. They normally won't rip you off on the price like steam cleaners do, your carpets will smell and look nice and stay that way if you vaccuum regularly, the owners will usually come out themselves to clean or supervise to make sure things are done to your satisfaction, and are not concerned with gas lighting you into buying extra services that you don't need. they are usually small companies trying to make a living and are not happy unless their customers are. They are people who throughout the years have gathered lots of cleaning experience working with various methods, know what chemicals to use and how much, and what to do to get your carpets looking good. But they are not very flashy, or wear pretty little uniforms, or have the big big big luxurious offices with their huge warehouses, and big shot full page ads in the yellow pages, big egoes (some of them have made rebuttals already) and their useless certifications that amount to nothing. AND because they don't have all those irrelavancies, you don't have to pay for them! I find that they do the best job and the price is 3 or 4 actual times cheaper than the big truck mount dudes that will oversaturate, and melt the backing of your carpet with their hot water extraction. Ask yourself a question. Can an expensive office clean your carpets at all? What does a nice uniform do for your carpets? Can a big CEO's personal jet get your carpets clean? (especially when he's on the golf course)

Yes, bonnet cleaning is dumb. Always ask the company before they come out if they use the bonnet method. If you want a good cleaning at a nice price, contact a company that uses a chemical/foam method applied with a buffer and a hard brush. They normally won't rip you off on the price like steam cleaners do, your carpets will smell and look nice and stay that way if you vaccuum regularly, the owners will usually come out themselves to clean or supervise to make sure things are done to your satisfaction, and are not concerned with gas lighting you into buying extra services that you don't need. they are usually small companies trying to make a living and are not happy unless their customers are. They are people who throughout the years have gathered lots of cleaning experience working with various methods, know what chemicals to use and how much, and what to do to get your carpets looking good. But they are not very flashy, or wear pretty little uniforms, or have the big big big luxurious offices with their huge warehouses, and big shot full page ads in the yellow pages, big egoes (some of them have made rebuttals already) and their useless certifications that amount to nothing. AND because they don't have all those irrelavancies, you don't have to pay for them! I find that they do the best job and the price is 3 or 4 actual times cheaper than the big truck mount dudes that will oversaturate, and melt the backing of your carpet with their hot water extraction. Ask yourself a question. Can an expensive office clean your carpets at all? What does a nice uniform do for your carpets? Can a big CEO's personal jet get your carpets clean? (especially when he's on the golf course)

Yes, bonnet cleaning is dumb. Always ask the company before they come out if they use the bonnet method. If you want a good cleaning at a nice price, contact a company that uses a chemical/foam method applied with a buffer and a hard brush. They normally won't rip you off on the price like steam cleaners do, your carpets will smell and look nice and stay that way if you vaccuum regularly, the owners will usually come out themselves to clean or supervise to make sure things are done to your satisfaction, and are not concerned with gas lighting you into buying extra services that you don't need. they are usually small companies trying to make a living and are not happy unless their customers are. They are people who throughout the years have gathered lots of cleaning experience working with various methods, know what chemicals to use and how much, and what to do to get your carpets looking good. But they are not very flashy, or wear pretty little uniforms, or have the big big big luxurious offices with their huge warehouses, and big shot full page ads in the yellow pages, big egoes (some of them have made rebuttals already) and their useless certifications that amount to nothing. AND because they don't have all those irrelavancies, you don't have to pay for them! I find that they do the best job and the price is 3 or 4 actual times cheaper than the big truck mount dudes that will oversaturate, and melt the backing of your carpet with their hot water extraction. Ask yourself a question. Can an expensive office clean your carpets at all? What does a nice uniform do for your carpets? Can a big CEO's personal jet get your carpets clean? (especially when he's on the golf course)

Yes, bonnet cleaning is dumb. Always ask the company before they come out if they use the bonnet method. If you want a good cleaning at a nice price, contact a company that uses a chemical/foam method applied with a buffer and a hard brush. They normally won't rip you off on the price like steam cleaners do, your carpets will smell and look nice and stay that way if you vaccuum regularly, the owners will usually come out themselves to clean or supervise to make sure things are done to your satisfaction, and are not concerned with gas lighting you into buying extra services that you don't need. they are usually small companies trying to make a living and are not happy unless their customers are. They are people who throughout the years have gathered lots of cleaning experience working with various methods, know what chemicals to use and how much, and what to do to get your carpets looking good. But they are not very flashy, or wear pretty little uniforms, or have the big big big luxurious offices with their huge warehouses, and big shot full page ads in the yellow pages, big egoes (some of them have made rebuttals already) and their useless certifications that amount to nothing. AND because they don't have all those irrelavancies, you don't have to pay for them! I find that they do the best job and the price is 3 or 4 actual times cheaper than the big truck mount dudes that will oversaturate, and melt the backing of your carpet with their hot water extraction. Ask yourself a question. Can an expensive office clean your carpets at all? What does a nice uniform do for your carpets? Can a big CEO's personal jet get your carpets clean? (especially when he's on the golf course)

Ahh. That explains it. I was never taught to BS my customers or use fake certifications or any of that non-sense you described. No. I've always kept it 100% honest and legit. Integrity is the reason I am a preferred vendor with Farmers, State Farm and other large insurance companies. Oh, yea, that and my equipment. Try going up to an adjuster and showing him/her what you are working with. Let's see how many jobs they send you hahahaha.

I would like to point anyone interested to a rip off report on Chemdry. One of the owners wrote a big apology here about he's sorry for misleading his customers and slamming steam cleaners.

By the way, you never mentioned what kind of damage you "fix" that is left by steam cleaners. I knew you wouldn't. hahahaha. I guess you learned that too when you learned how to BS your customers and use fake certificates.


Here is the bottom line. I have a buffer, I have a Ninja (portable unit) and I have a truck mount thats paid off free and clear. I choose to use my truck mount, I cringe when I have to use my Ninja (high rise apartments etc) and I use my buffer for sanding and finishing wood floors. I use to carry my buffer in the van and offer both steam and dry until I realized that none of my customers (who knew any better) would ask for dry cleaning. Now the only comments I get are "you are using a truck mount right? Oh thank God, the last guy was in here with some little machine and it was terrible!"

LOL, I think it is so funny reading post from people who only know about "KIWI SERVICES" and not carpet cleaning. You must have read some other post concerning "simple green" and "KIWI" not true carpet cleaning.
What is 'simple green" I never heard of it untill I read about KIWI?
We both agree how bad Kiwi is, both not about true carpet cleaning. I know that in your heart you belive your way is the best but the most important concern is the customer.
We must give up the oil lamp and emprase the elictric light bulb.
Times have changed and if you belive that soaking a customers carpet, causeing damage to thire carpet padding, foundation and helping MOLD grow than there is nothing I can say.
I know that you and people like you have invested in a lot of money in equipment and need to recovery your cost, but its not right to recovery it at the customers expenice.
This will be the last post from me concerning this subject. I started out almost 20 years ago on a truck mount and the first thing I was taught as a new carpert tech was how to use false data, Bull**** certificates and classes that were sponcered from the same companines that sold the equipment to trick customers into paying more.
Good luck to you and yours. Thanks for the bussiness.

If you were I.I.C.R.C. then you would understand cleaning carpets is far more difficult than spraying some Simple Green down and going over it with a buffer. And FYI, I own my unit and van free and clear.

I am curious to know though, you claim to clean up messes that truck mounts leave huh? What kind of messes exactly? The only thing that can happen is an inexperienced technician over saturates the carpet or doesn't rinse the carpets out completely leaving residue (which is the same thing as dry cleaning). So how are you going to correct these problems with a buffer? What do you do, spray your simple green on it and twirl your little buffer over it? And you call that fixing it? You're talking about FLOOD DAMAGE or RESIDUE.

If a carpet is over saturated the only thing to do is extract as much as possible. Then you apply a disinfectant through a power sprayer (not a little hand pump up), wait 15 minutes, rinse it out completely with cold water and put a fan on it to dry it fast. How can a buffer and Simple Green extract water out of carpet? What, are you using 20 bonnets in one area because that is what would be required in order to achieve the desired result.

If the carpet has residue from not being rinsed properly the only thing you can do is use a fiber rinse running through your TRUCK MOUNT and neutralize/rinse out the residue. I still don't see how you can achieve this Simple Green and a buffer!

And charge ridiculous prices? We charge fair prices and we don't go in and say "well, this has to be deep cleaned so that's extra" and "well, this spot doesn't come out with our buffer so that will be extra". No. We charge a FAIR price and do the job right!

I'd really like to know what kind of problems you are fixing and how you fix them! But I bet you won't reply.

I can understand why you would file a rebuttal. if I would have spent $45,000 on a truck and had to over charge my customers to make the lease payments I would say anything I could to convence customers that my method was the best.
After seven years of cleaning up after truck mounted jobs I know (and so do you) that bonnet cleaning not only cleans carpet safer but better. Why would you charge customers up to 400% more? I know, you have to cover not only your truck payments put gas. With the cost of gas going up I am sure you will incress your prices.
Cleaning carpet is'nt rocket sience and I am tired of companys taking advantage of their customers just to make a buck. I see companys who try to post misleading technical data about the process of carpet cleaning just so they can justify the outrages prices they charge. You have to understand that your customer works just as hard as you do to make a living and if you can delivery them a better product at a lower price, than they will always come back.
I am sorry you have been traped into the hype that is truck mount cleaning is thet only way to clean but you and I know better.
I know that you and others like you will rant and rave about how much better you are and how bad we are but the bottom line is I make a living doing
after truck mount jobs and I get more repet and reverance jobs than I can handle.
All I can say is good luck to you and yours and I hope you can sleep at night knowing that your type of product is cheating your customers.

I too worked for Kiwi for about 3 years. I have to say that I didn't learn a thing about cleaning carpet until I left. Let me tell you (and the guy who responded). Bonnet cleaning= too cheap to buy a truck mount! That's it.

Those bonnet cleaning guys will tell you all day long that they are better but the fact remains why would we spend $45,000 on a van and unit if we could get the same thing done with a $500 buffer? Plus the gas and repairs! It costs me about $10/hour to operate my unit much less the 12 miles to the gallon I get in the van with all of that equipment in it. Plus I spend about $500/ month in maintenance (oil changes, replacing hoses, replacing small parts which are EXPENSIVE). Why do I do it? Oh yea, because I'm "living in the 19th century". Or maybe it's because I can't afford a buffer? No. I have one of those sitting in my garage waiting for a wood floor job. Well hmm.. why don't I use it to clean carpets then?

It's a JOKE! Just ask them... where does the dirt go? I'll show you where the dirt goes! 80 gallons on BLACK water! And considering I use about 90 gallons on each house, that's only about 10 gallons left in an average 2500 sq ft. home! That's 0.004 gallons per sq. ft! I show EVERY customer this and ex-kiwi customer this (my client base is about 70% ex Kiwi customers. I don't go seek them out, they come to me).

And soak the carpet and pad? Are you kidding me? My carpets dry within 3 hours because I use a Prochem Apex! I remove about 92% of the water put into the carpet and there is no way that 500 PSI get's into the pad! Apparently the bonnet cleaner who responded doesn't understand mercury lift and CFM's. Why would he when there is NO extraction in his method?

And why is it that bonnet cleaning voids the manufacturers warranty? It's because they leave chemicals in the carpet! Yes! They cannot claim to not because they don't extract with anything! So they'll tell you that they use "non-residual" treatments. So... do you still want dangerous chemicals in your carpet after the cleaning? All chemicals are dangerous, even the ones that claim to be "non-toxic".

There is a reason the manufactures REQUIRE you to have a hot water extraction at least every 18 months (although they recommend every at least every 12), because chemicals left to dwell in your carpet are dangerous to your health and to the fibers!

Try this. Get a bottle of cleaner and pour some on a spot. Scrub it around with a white rag (make sure it's white because colors might bleed). Set it and forget it! See what happens a month or two later! It's BLACK! Because chemicals in your carpet, whether "non-residue forming" or not WILL ATTRACT DIRT! That's what they do! They attract dirt! That's the whole point of putting them on your carpet! That's why the "steam cleaners" go to such an expense to get equipment that works! Because we want to do the BEST job we can!

So bottom line is this. After you've had your carpets bonnet cleaned, call a reputable steam cleaner and you'll see the carpets are still FILTHY by what we pull out. Furthermore, if you've NEVER had a steam cleaning.. prepare to be AMAZED (so long a you find a reputable company because there are a lot of scammers out there!)


Speaking of scammers let me tell you a couple of things to look out for when looking for a steam cleaner. Carpet cleaning should cost about $25/room on the low end to $80/room on the high end. $40/room, with todays economy especially is a good price. But don't go by price alone! Do your research and make sure you check out rip off report first! You can see from what I stated above why $4.00 per room is simply unreal.

Watch out for the coupon and valuepack guys. I get them in the mail ALL the time. $6.95 per room. Sound familiar? The scam is to come in and say "well, these carpets have to be pretreated at $.25 per sq ft or they won't get clean. The average 2000 sq. foot home would be $500 to "pretreat" which is something a certified carpet cleaner knows has to be done regardless.

You should expect:

1. prevacuuming
2. pretreating
3. prespotting
4. deep cleaning
5. moving furniture
6. rinsing the carpet (preferably with a fiber rinse and not just water)
7. carpet drying with extraction
8. grooming the carpet

If the cleaner is skipping or charging extra for ANY of these then kick them out of your home and call someone else! This is I I C R C standards!

I go the extra mile. I use a special tool to get in the crevices of the carpet and extract (dry) the carpet 3 times. Harder work.. yes, but it makes me life long customers. And speaking of hard work that is one thing I forgot to mention. That buffer moves itself. A steam cleaning wand weighs about 20 pounds, grips the carpet so it's harder to move and required manual physical labor! I guess the steam cleaners just like spending more money and working 10 times harder? Or maybe we are just dumb? No. I don't think so. Most of us are certified by the IICRC.

Sounds like you got a bad subcontractor. As you know Kiwi uses subcontractors to do their jobs. I must admit when I first started my carpet cleaning company about 7 years ago I subcontracted with Kiwi. I subed with them for about two months and they are cheats. They subcontrat people off the streets, train them for two day and send them out. After being in the carpet bussines for over 5 years before Kiwi I laught at thire traning.
I have been using bonnet cleaning for 9 years and know that compines that still use extractin( truck mounts) are livinging in the 1900th centry. I laugh at those people still saying truck mounts are best. Lets soak the carpet, soak the pad (and help MOLD grow) and damage the foundation.
I know that if you have a good tec. who knows carpet will always make truck mount compines look like fools. After 7 years I have customer coming to me to fix problems that extration compines cause. Most of my bussiness comes after truck mounts leave. If its truck mount its truck trash!!!!!!!!!!