Spot Cleaning Carpet and Upholstery
The old adage, “It can’t hurt to try!” applies in many ways, but not in spot cleaning. Failed spot cleaning often leads to permanent stains.
On the other hand, time is your enemy as well. The sooner you can remove the spot from your carpet or furniture, the less likely it is to stain the fabric. Thus you have a classic, damned if you do — damned if you don’t scenario.
If you’re not certain you can get the spot out yourself, it’s best to call a professional carpet cleaner out as soon as possible. If you do attempt to clean the spot yourself and fail, there is still a good chance a professional carpet cleaner can still get the spot out, but it is even more important to act quickly.
Expect to have to get the whole room or piece of furniture cleaned if it hasn’t been cleaned recently as cleaning one spot can make the rest of it look dirty.
A lot of carpet cleaning companies have spot cleaning tips or procedures on their web site as a feature for their visitors. These often involve the use of products not readily available to the average consumer. Also, some of the remedies involve techniques that require a bit of skill to apply. A high percentage of these spot removal techniques require the use of multiple steps and products increasing your chances of permanent staining if you fail. This is not to say they don’t work. On the contrary, most of them work if applied properly using the correct products and techniques to a correctly identified stain.
I’m not trying to discourage you from do-it-yourself spot cleaning. I’m just trying to give you a complete picture of what’s involved so you can weigh all the factors before deciding what to do.
The carpeting in our bedrooms is sixteen years old, pink and full of little stains. When I spill something I just grab a few things and do the best I can. If it gets most of it out and leaves a little stain I’m fine with it because the carpet is not in great shape to begin with. So, It’s all relative. If my carpet was in excellent condition I wouldn’t hesitate to call a carpet cleaner.
It’s sad to see customers ruin thousands of dollars worth of carpet to try to save a few dollars. I don’t know if you’ve seen the Stanley Steemer commercial where the driver of the van stops in front of a discarded carpet lying by the curb and gets out, hugs it and starts crying, “Why! Why! I could have saved you …” Oh well, enough plugging my competitor.
Many potential permanent stains can be avoided. I would not recommend polishing your nails over a carpeted or upholstered area. Drinks with food coloring like fruit punches or Kool-Aid also present a difficult problem. These substances can actually dye your carpet.
If your carpet is fabric protected and you catch the spill immediately, you can often blot up the spill and prevent a stain. Keep in mind protectors lose their effectiveness over time and need to be periodically reapplied.
Professional carpet cleaners have products available to them that the average consumer won’t find in the super market. They also are trained in what product to use with what spot. Trial and error can be deadly in spot cleaning as each failed attempt compounds the problem.
All said, the good news is that most spills don’t leave a permanent stain and there’s a good chance that even if you do the wrong thing a professional can correct the situation. I hope the above helps you make the right decision if the need arises.
Why Choose Quality Carpet Cleaning?
Our organizational structure allows us to deliver the same or better quality of service as any of the major companies out there for a much lower cost. We invite you to compare.
There’s no secret to doing what we do. There are industry and manufacturers’ standards. There is certified training. There are apprenticeships. The best equipment and cleaning solutions are available to anyone. If you strip away all their attempts to distinguish themselves, you will find that all the top companies essentially clean how Quality Carpet Cleaning does because it’s what works best. A rose by any other name is still a rose.
Quality Carpet Cleaning has thousands of independent reviews on sites like Yelp, Angie’s List, Google, the BBB and various other review sites. These are not reviews we collect on our site where we can filter and control them. Thus, though we are rated highly everywhere, not all of our reviews are great. However, you will see that when a problem does pop up, we go out of our way to make things right with the customer.
If you are unhappy for any reason, we will gladly come out and re-clean any area you are not happy with.
We at Quality Carpet Cleaning appreciate how important your time is and give it the highest priority. We schedule ideally 3, but no more than 4, jobs per day for each technician where other companies schedule up to 6. In this way our technicians have plenty of time between jobs and don’t have to rush through a job to get to the next.
In the real world, situations arise where someone needs service right away. As a result, we keep our schedule flexible enough where we can do a reasonable number of same-day jobs. Obviously, the earlier you contact us the higher the likelihood we can accommodate you.
Our staff cares about our customers because we care about them. We look for people who like helping others and then train them on how to. We have an unofficial policy: If we have to supervise you, you don’t belong here. Our people know and like their jobs and it comes through when you talk to them.
All our products are safe for kids & pets. What most people don’t know is that California regulations are so strict that many cleaning products sold in other states are not allowed to be sold here. Some standards even go beyond “green”. That said, we also carry a line of green carpet cleaning products for hyper-sensitive people.
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