A Step Above Cleaning Services
About us
A Step Above Cleaning Service is a Family owned & operated Business, with 5 family members working full time within the business. Cleaning is tailored to your individual needs and budget. All specifics pertaining to your home will be discussed at your Free, no obligation estimate. And unlike most other house cleaning companies, EVERYONE at A Step Above House Cleaning speaks English. So, there will never be a communication issue between you and your house cleaners. And you will have the same cleaners every time we clean your home. Our Mission Statement is "To provide you superior cleaning, each and every cleaning, at a Great price."
Business highlights
Services we offer
HouseCleaning, Move-in cleaning, Move-out Cleaning, Spring Cleaning
Amenities
Free Estimates
Yes
Number of Stars | Image of Distribution | Number of Ratings |
---|---|---|
13% | ||
19% | ||
13% | ||
19% | ||
38% |
detachment to do the stairs, they use the vac. which of course did do a decent job. Downstairs the dusted the furniture(I came in
to the dinning room as one was dusting and the swifter was not touching the table). They did not dry dust the hardwood floors,
because their was dust in the corner, (which you can see entering the room, the corner is very visible). In the sun room all they
were to do was dry mope around the carpets, clean glass tops, and vacuum. I did expect them to wipe the window sills. I had to do the glass tops on the Backers rack, and clean under it which is tile, and I ask them to dry dust that part of the porch. All in all,
I was very disappointed. I would not have wanted any one to come into my house after they left. I felt as if I should have had a
house clean enough not to be ashamed of it condition. I knew that they did not move everything to dust, but how do you dust
in front of a picture and not behind it. I used to help a friend clean houses a while ago, so I know what we did. So I guess I expected them to at least come close. But they did not.
We were "cleaned out " of a lot of family jewelry
There is a difference between petty stealing and this systematic theft from many houses
This is a career criminal who should be cleaning toilets in a prison
If we had used Angie this would have never happened
The next cleaning was still a big disappointment. I decided to give them one more chance, even though my husband said to stop the service. I called the office and said that I would leave out my cleaning supplies, along with stickies on the surfaces that continued to be overlooked. When I came home some stickies were gone, and one was still left on the outside of the shower, but the dirt was still present where I placed the stickies. Later that evening, I noticed that some makeup was missing. I called the office the next day to discontinue the service, and I mentioned the missing makeup. The following day, I realized that my headphones were gone. I decided to chalk it up to bad judgment on my part. The following Friday my son went to play a hockey game on his XBOX, and the game was gone. I called the office, and the secretary said she would look into it and get back to me. She never returned my call. In fact, after numerous calls to the office, I finally blocked my number and she answered the phone immediately. Ultimately, she discounted my account of missing items.
I wish I had read other reviews of this company on the internet. I never would have hired "A Step Above House Cleaning" if I had done my due diligence.
The cleaning service is horrible and the workers that the owner hires are questionable. Google the reviews of this company and you will be totally dissuaded to hire it.
Bottom line: the people were nice. The price was amazing. But 2-3 people rushed in here and tried to get done in 45 minutes. The quality of the job seemed less important than getting out of here in 45 minutes. I don't have a huge house, but it can't be properly cleaned in 45 minutes.
Also to note: I was told that the same crew would come in each time, but there were never the same people here twice (or one would be the same and the other 1 or 2 would be different). That didn't bother me in the least, but if it bothers some people I thought I'd mention it.
The worst part is: Once we let them go -- 7 cleanings later -- they never returned our key. I placed 12-15 phone calls requesting it. I got hung up on numerous times. I pleaded for honesty if they lost the key. I begged for return phone calls to let me know the status of returning my key. Nothing. Jen, Stacey and Elise all blamed one another and said they had no control over it and Jen was extremely rude. Stacey (who apparently was in charge of my key) just didn't show up or return phone calls. My husband spoke with the police who volunteered to call over to their office inquiring as to the status of our key. Even they did not receive a return call. My husband even drove over to their office in the area which appears on the surface to be abandoned (wish I knew that before hiring them; speaks volumes to their professionalism). No one would provide their last names and no one would tell me anything more than "Jennifer" owes the company. When I asked for her to call me I was told "she's doesn't handle complaints and they she can't be contacted". The amount of frustration and time spent on my part is unbelievable.
I will be also contacting the Better Business Bureau. So this is your warning -- stay away from this company. It is one thing to provide poor cleaning services. Its another to provide rude customer service. Both deserve an F. They are dishonest.
(Update) Coincidentally (or not), the day after the above review appeared on Angie's List, they suddenly returned the key. Thanks, Angie!
Overall they did a satisfactory job. However, I became suspicious when I realized other services charged sales tax and they did not. Checks were made out to an individual which made me think they were cutting corners. Different teams (2 people per team) had variation in satisfaction of details - i.e. - some did not clean the utility sink in the laundry area. Also, their vacuum cleaner(s) were upright carpet cleaners. I could hear the brushes against the hardwood floor. This was a great concern as it seemed that they were possibly scratching an expensive floor which is less than 3 yrs. old. The cleaner?s response was that they set it high so it would not hurt the floor. Also they did not accept credit cards which my Son?s and Daughter?s family (both with their own family) had made a gift of cleaning for a year. It became very awkward to keep asking for payments from my Son and Daughter.
As I do not want to be party to what may be avoiding taxes or other possible invalid financial shortcuts, I decided to cancel their services. They had been cleaning every 4 weeks. While the cleaning was performed on the same day of the week each time, I had to call that morning to get a time frame. While their cleaning is satisfactory, I would not recommend them until I could verify that they are using ethical financial procedures. Of course I did not feel comfortable asking them about this concern. It would be like asking if they are cheating.
"The customer was a Monthly Customer of ours for a little over 5 months. During that time he had 5 cleanings completed by our company. It is true that he did not have consistency with the 2 cleaners that would come to his home to clean, but the reason for that was that he always rescheduled his cleaning day. He never (not once) had a cleaning on his regularly scheduled day (for rescheduling, the customer said that he was very active in his Church, and that things often came up that required his attention at the Church). I want to note that rescheduling a cleaning for a different day is always OK. It is never a problem. However, the 2 people that would normally clean the customer's home every four weeks on a Friday, have their regular customers to clean on the Tuesday or Wednesday that he would reschedule for. Therefore, we would have no choice but to send a crew of 2 cleaners who had space in their day on that Tuesday or Wednesday. Unfortunately, we can not send the same 2 cleaners for a rescheduled day, since chances are that they already have a relatively full day. In terms of taxes, we pay all necessary taxes. Checks are not written out to an individual. Because so many of our customers have home offices, and would like to use their Cleaning expense as a Business Tax deduction (Janitorial Services), we have actually established an "office cleaning" wing of our business. Now let me note that we only clean homes, not office buildings. That is a D/B/A (Doing Business As) of our company name, A Step Above Cleaning. This way, in the unfortunate event that someone gets audited, their checks were written out to what is technically (in our corporate minutes) an Office Cleaning Company, and not a "House Cleaning Company". this was only done as a convenience to our customers, after several had inquired about us doing something like this. In terms of Sales Tax, we take out the Sales Tax on the back end. What I mean by this is that the customer was paying a Total of $90 to have his whole house cleaned on a Monthly (every 4 weeks) basis. Of that $90 that the customer was paying, $84.91 was for the actual cleaning and $5.09 was for Sales Tax. We found it much easier (for our customers and our book keeping alike) to keep things on nice round numbers. Also, in the past we would break down exactly how much money the cleaning would cost, and how much the Sales Tax was. And we found that a high percentage of our customers were only writing us a check for the Cleaning price price, and not including the Sales Tax. Then we would have to call the customer to inform them of their error, which often times resulted in a disgruntled customer. So, we decided to simply include the sales tax in the Total Cleaning price and just figure it all out on the back end. And doing it this way has made life much easier for our customers and our book keeping, alike. This way there are no "hidden" charges --- the price someone is quoted is all that they will be paying. In terms of not accepting Credit cards, the short answer is that I am cheap. I prefer not to have to pay Visa, MasterCard, or AMEX if I don't have to. The thing is that these companies charge high fees for accepting Credit Cards (about 5% total of the amount charged). And my profit margins are only about 8%. So, if I were to accept credit cards, I would be forced to increase rates. And I have not increased rates at all, in the 8 total years we have been in business. I just feel that rate increases are "Bad Business". I know that accepting Credit Cards would be a major convenience, but I just don't have the room in my margins at our current pricing."
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