Aqua Steam

We were called on the telephone by Aqua Steam, soliciting business, at a time when we had an empty rental house in need of "between tenants" deep cleaning. The charge was to be $99 for the special, plus the charge for the extra room. Darlene, the person who called, said that because we had several rental houses she would send us a coupon which would help offset the added change of "more than 3 rooms". We set up the appointment for cleaning far enough in advance that we could get the coupon, according to Darlene. The coupon did not come before the serviceman. [The coupon NEVER came, nor were we given credit for it.] When the serviceman arrived, the house was completely empty, and the carpet was obviously quite dirty. We asked if he could clean it completely and asked him not even to start it if he didn't think he could get it clean. He assured us he could, and set to work. We saw a place near the front of the house [where we were waiting while he was in the back] that seemed to need more work. We pointed it out, asked him to hit it again. He did, and it was clean with the extra effort. He worked fast, finished fast, collected the whole amount, [ told us to call Darlene about the coupon],and then left. The carpet was still quite wet, but we set up fans and left also. When the carpet dried, it was still dirty throughout the house, so we set up a repeat service call. On asking about the coupon then, she said we must have misunderstood, that the charge was right. The same person came back the next trip, and he came with an attitude. We discovered that he was using only water, NOT steam, [Aqua"STEAM"} on the carpet. He was asked if it was hot, and he said it was hot from the truck; but it was cold to the hand as it came from the nozzle. It left the carpet wet and still not clean. Since he said that was the way it was suposed to be, we asked him to stop cleaning because we had someone moving in soon. Wet dirt = mud, and it ended up worse in places than when he started. We called the office, requested a refund since the job had not been done well at all, and were told she'd get back to us. On followup, we were told there would be a refund. It didn't come, so we called back. Darlene said she'd check on it. We called back several times, finally talked to the owner [Wendell Comstock], who said we needed to talk to the office manager, [Meda] so we did. She said she'd talk to the owner,. [Can you say "runaround"? ] When we called her back, she said Mr. Comstock said he doesn't ever give refunds, but would reclean it. Meanwhile, in those 2 months, the new tenant was in, the house was now full of furniture and essentially impossible to clean well. Besides, we'd already cleaned it, and had gotten it cleaner than Aqua Steam did. Why should we want a reclean when the first reclean just made it worse ? Obviously, we've reached a dead end. We just wish we had never gotten involved with them.