Hello to everyone on the internet. My name is Jalil and I am now six years in the United States. Please forgive any mistakes in my writings as english is second language.
I would like to inform the people about Kiwi Services. When I first came to the United States I could not find work because I did not have my papers. I made good money with Kiwi and they did not check my papers. I learned they do not check anyones papers and many of the other workers have criminal history, probation, parole or past record.
When I found out this I asked the manager why and he told me because they are good people who if messed up they would go back to prison. But very regularly people would get caught stealing from the company and the customers. Some other workers would even brag about what they stole and noone cared until they were caught. I told the manager about one person and the next day the person wanted to fist fight with me because of this. I can only think the manager told the person I told him so I did not tell anything about anyone again. Once I finally recieved my citizenship papers I left for this and other reasons.
I would like to write about how the company works. To begin, the workers are hired and fired daily. They are hired with no skill and trained very poorly.
All of the workers are contractors so Kiwi does not have any liability if a workers steals or breaks anything that belongs to a customer. They are taught to make up their own prices and get whatever they can from the customer and leave. Some workers even make up fake treatments and charge the customer for this.
I did not like it in the field because my english wasn't very good so I came into the shop to work with the chemicals. They would buy chemicals and water them down for the technicians who were told to water them down even more. Many workers would complain about the chemicals not working and customers also complained about bad service. The carpet protector was watered down to the point that it did not work and many times it would run out. The workers were told to spray water on the carpets instead of protectant until they got more. It would be three and four weeks at a time without chemicals.
When a worker gets a complaint he pays for it out of his check. All of his commission is taken away and given to the second worker who goes to the home. Even if the complaint was because of chemicals not working, Kiwi did not care, the worker would lose his money. It was very unfair to the workers who are made to work from 6am until as late as 10pm, five days a week. The workers also pay for their own gas, car, uniform and everything. This was one of the reasons why I went into the office instead of in the field. But when I got to the office I became an employee instead of contractor but was not allowed to work overtime.instead I was told to clock out, then stay two or three more hours to complete the work. I did this until I got my citizenship papers then left.
Another policy that bothered me was that sometimes it is indeed necessary to do some extra work on the carpet for an extra price. But Kiwi tells it's people to not mention anything about this until after the cleaning. This way the customer is still forced to pay for the original price. They have a "do not walk" policy meaning that even if the carpets are so bad they still "attempt" to clean and then charge the customer for bad results.
The technicians are paid 20% on the work that is sent to them and 30% on the sales or 40% if the sale is more than 65% of the original price. So you can see why a technician would try to sell you $250 worth of services? It is $100 in his pocket. I was never good at this but some of the top technicians made $120,000 this way. With the smaller technicians like me most of the sales would be taken away for one reason or another. I began to think that because of my lack of papers the company was taking money from me.
My check would come weeks late sometimes and not for the full amount. One time the check was $250 short so I wrote many letters to the accounting but never recieved my money. I know many technicians complained about similar things because I was in charge of handing out chemicals to the workers and they would tell me about all of this.
When they fire the people they do not give them their last check. Another thing they would do is say the people damaged something and start deducting money from the checks without telling the worker what was damaged or letting them see or try to fix the damage. Many of it was fake damage but some real damage the company would fix for $50 (like a scratch in the wood floor) and they would charge the technician $5000 for replacing the floor. It is very dirty games they play. I saw all of this because I was in the office.
The manager was very dishonest himself and got caught stealing money from the company while I was there. The owners do not care about their company and I suspect they have a gambling problem because they are always in Las Vegas and let the offices run crazy. They check on the office about three times a year for maybe two days. During that time everything is crazy, meetings are called, memos sent out but a couple of weeks later everything always goes back to normal.
I saw this many times in the time I was there. I am sure they intend to do good but they immediately go back to Las Vegas or bahamas or cruises and let everything go bad again.
Everyone at Kiwi has a price tag attached to them including customers. Small customers get bad service and smaller technicians are fired without notice to make room for new technicians who can possibily do better in sales. They put many jobs on the board and don't have enough workers so they estimate everyday how many "reschedules" they will have to do. Or they do not have enough jobs and some of the workers cannot work.
One of the people I became close with was fired because his sales was not good. The week before his first son was born. The only reason I was allowed to work so long I believe is because I asked to work inside of the office and I worked harder than most.
It is sad that a company like this can run like it does with a disregard for the workers and the customers. Why people continue to use this company I do not know. I am not an experienced carpet worker so I cannot tell you about the technicial part of the service or compare it to other companies. I did this as most do it, because it is the only work they can get.
I hope that I can save some customers some heart ache and some workers from the same problems I had if they decide to go with this company. I do not think all carpet cleaning companies are like this because I have spoken to other people in other companies who are very good at what they do. There is not a single certified worker at Kiwi Services and they do not follow ICRCC standards.
I do not feel the entire carpet cleaning industry is like this but Kiwi is the rotten fruit in the bunch. Neglect by the owners, poor hiring practices and a total disregard for it's workers and customers are the true foundation of Kiwi Services.
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