Complaint Review: Oxifresh Of Phoenix - Colorado

In November of 2007 I had my carpets cleaned by Oxi Fresh of Phoenix. They left permanent stains on my carpet and then totally denied any kind of liability. When the reps came to my house, I pointed out the rooms to be cleaned. I also pointed out a stain under one of the beds and was told that it would be addressed. (It never was. The area was untouched)

When they got to the last room, some ink like stains appeared all over the carpet. Terrance Doyle (TJ), the Oxi Fresh of Phoenix rep sent to my house, said I must have had some kind of small ink pellets in my carpet and that the cleaning process brought it to the surface. I never heard of such a lame excuse. The carpet is a light cream color and any ink pellets or not would be very visible. Since I do not have any invisible ink in my home the only logical explanation is the Oxi Fresh cleaning system somehow left the stains. What the stains are comprised of have no bearing on the fact that my carpet was damaged by Oxi Fresh. Plain and simple, my carpet did not have any permanent stains before Oxi Fresh of Phoenix entered my home.

TJ placed a call to Natalie Erhlich, the franchise owner, about the stains appearing during the cleaning process. He asked her if they had insurance. Ms. Ehrlich's voice could be plainly heard from his cell phone and I overheard her say that she was not going to pay for any carpet replacement. They couldn't pack up fast enough and leave my house. When I asked if they were going to come back later to work on the stains, TJ told me that he was only in Phoenix for the day as a trainer. No where in their flyer or during my original phone call to Oxi Fresh of Phoenix was I told that their services would not be performed by an experienced professional. I would never have knowingly allowed my home to be used as a training facility.

After they left, I tried contacting the local Oxi Fresh office. Surprise..there is no local office. All the "local" phone numbers route back to the franchise headquarters in Colorado. Also, the franchise owner, Ms. Ehrlich, lives in Kansas. The only address listed here in Phoenix is to a private home in Awatukee.

I then contacted the corporate owner, Mr. Jonathan Barnett, to explain the situation and ask how this was going to be handled. He brushed me off by saying it was the franchise owner's situation, not his. When I asked what kind of insurance Oxi Fresh had, he kept repeating that it was Natalie Erhlich's franchise. When I pointed out that Oxi Fresh was his company, he got pretty rude. He did not want to talk to me at all and hung up. When I finally talked to Natalie, she didn't believe that Mr. Barnett would act like that, he was a fine businessman and that she had known him a long time. Well, yeah...I guess being his mother she would naturally stick up for him. I found all this out by doing some investigative work on the Internet. Mr. Barnett is a young twenty-something who runs some kind of Christian group called Crossover Ministries with friends and family running his franchises. He certainly needs to learn a thing or two about customer relations.

Natalie finally offered me a "voluntary" payment of $848.00 for all the damage that was done. It will cost me a lot more than that to replace the carpet. To add insult to injury, she would not allow the insurance company, Safeco, to release the check until after I had paid the original cleaning fee. In other words, they ruin my carpet and STILL WANT THEIR MONEY! So my whopping settlement came out to a paltry $724.00. Their simple cleaning is going to end up costing me almost $2,000 in carpet replacement. Beware of this company!!

Wendy phoenix, Arizona

U.S.A.