Green Maids Canada

We hired Green Maids to do a move out cleaning on a 3-​bdrm apartment that we had already vacated. I’ll start with the good things: I was very impressed, throughout the whole process, by how professional and courteous their service was to deal with: from the initial booking, to the reminder phone calls, to the fact that they arrived early (and finished early) for the cleaning appointment. I called 3 companies in total for estimates on this kind of cleaning: Green Maids was not the cheapest nor the most expensive, but they were far and away the most pleasant and professional to deal with.
As for the cleaning itself, though, I have some complaints. I got a phone call when the cleaners were finished, so went over to meet them at the house. They were all loaded in the car with their gear, and only the man who does the talking was still in the apartment to settle up the invoice. He let me know they were on their way to another bigger job, so I didn’t want to keep them. I should have been more thorough in my initial inspection. I did notice some issues, but they were minor (lines of dust on the living room floor where the mop had clearly not been rinsed regularly while cleaning, etc.)
But last night I returned to the apartment to make sure everything was in good shape before handing over keys to the landlord, and there’s where I saw the real problems. First, I had done quite a bit of cleaning myself before the cleaners arrived (I had done all walls, the fridge and freezer, all kitchen cupboards, etc.) So I asked them to focus on the floors and baseboards, the kitchen counters, cleaning the stove, and the 1.5 bathrooms. Last night, I could see that the floors had obviously been done, but quickly and poorly. I had to remop every single floor in the house to pick up all the dirt their mop had left behind. The kitchen floor had had a superficial mop, but there were bits of food still stuck all over it, and under the counters hadn’t even been vacuumed. I had to rewash the floor on my hands and knees. The outside of the stove was lovely and shiny, but when I opened it, I discovered it hadn’t been cleaned at all, which was shocking. I had to run out to Shoppers Drug Mart to buy oven cleaner – thank heavens they’re open late! The bathrooms were more or less clean, though not «shiny” – there were water spots on all the mirrors still, the counters were streaky and one of the toilet seats hadn’t been cleaned. All in all, I thought I was saving time by hiring cleaners for our move, but I think I wasted both time and money doing it this way.
It’s too bad though, because they are such a lovely company to deal with: other cleaning companies should contract them to do their customer service and Green Maids should get out of the cleaning end of things altogether!

I did not have any problems with booking an appointment with these guys and the guy even showed up on time.
But when the guy started to clean the carpets he was moving so fast that he wasn’t waiting for me to move the big pieces of furniture to make sure all areas of the carpets got cleaned. When I would ask him to make sure a missed area was cleaned, he would seem annoyed and it made the situation very uncomfortable.
I asked him what kind of «green» chemicals they use but he was not quite sure. And when I pointed out a couple of still stained areas he said that it’s because their «green» chemicals are not harsh enough and that’s why. He was literally done cleaning 1100 sqf of carpet in under 15 minutes! He did not listen to my request to try going over the stained areas again claiming that it wouldn’t make a difference because the «green» chemicals they used were not harsh enough! Well, then they should not claim on their website that they can take out all stains!
Although, I could have probably complained to the company to ask them to re-​do the service, it is a complete waste of my time because such a simple service, *should* & can easily be done right the first time around.
I wasted two days for this clean up: 1 day to setup for the cleanup (moving furniture, etc) and 1 day to wait for the carpet to dry before moving furniture back on the carpet.
Unfortunately, I now have to budget again to buy the same service from hopefully a more reliable company.

Green Maids is OK — not bad, not great, but I have experienced better.
I used to use them regularly a couple years ago, then again recently for the first time in a long time, at my new apartment. The pros and cons here are pretty even, and weak, so I can’t say whether or not I’ll hire them again.
The best thing about Green Maids is that they’re super nice. Nothing but smiles, very polite and professional, very much «at your service». The cleaners don’t speak much English, so they send a guy to translate your wishes. The customer service is all around excellent — they were going to be 15 minutes late, and made sure to call me three hours in advance to let me know. No big deal, but much appreciated.
What I didn’t like as much about this service was the quality and the marketing. As you can tell by their name and their website, they are targeting the ‘green’ demographic, which includes me. I was disappointed to notice Windex being used, and when I asked about it, they said that they use it because it’s a greener option than most chemical cleaners, albeit not as eco-​friendly as, say, local household cleaning products from Sapadilla Soap Co. That explanation doesn’t really fly with me… if you tell me it’s green, I wan’t it to be green, not sorta kinda a little bit green.
The quality of the cleaning? mehhh. I can do a much better job myself. And they did a really basic tour of the apartment — kitchen, bathroom, a bit of mopping, some vacuuming, but not thorough at all. The blinds were still dusty, and the kitchen and bathroom surfaces weren’t complete — there was still visible residue after they left. When I pay someone else to clean for me, I want a ‘wow’ factor, but I was left without it.
At $ 70/​hr, I can’t complain about the price, but I’d be willing to pay more to get more. Like I said, there was nothing really bad about this experience, but nothing really great either.
With some focused game-​upping, Green Maids could rack up the stars right quick.