Oh, Empress Maids. You used to be my maid service of choice, but after our last two encounters it's…read moretime for me to move on.
The second-to-last time I used this service the maid broke a small makeup mirror in my bathroom (in two places!) and didn't scrub out the bottom of the bathtub. Annoying, but the manager offered me a discount to make up for my trouble, so I figured the lackluster service was just a fluke. When it was time to utilize a maid service again (the weekend before Thanksgiving) I booked them without hesitation. I even scheduled a few weeks in advance since I knew that would be a popular weekend, and scored their first appointment of the day, at 8 am.
Ten minutes before their scheduled time I received a call from one of the maids; she couldn't find parking near my building. While I was sympathetic (who among us hasn't had to deal with the scourge that is LA street parking?), there wasn't anything I could do to rectify the situation. I didn't have a spare spot she could take, so she told me that she'd look around and get back to me. (Also, there was construction happening on my street, which I'm sure was annoying for the maids to deal with, but as employees of a traveling business in a major city I can't imagine that this was the first time they've had to contend with parking issues.)
Over the next FIFTY MINUTES (yes, 50) the maids claimed to be looking for parking, which is insane. While the area in front of my building might have been unavailable, I live near numerous side streets, as well as being directly south of Sunset, and all of its metered parking would have been readily available that early on a Saturday. (In fact, I think the meters even open up at 8am, exactly when the maids were supposed to arrive.) I understand not wanting to have to park far away when you're carrying a ton of cleaning supplies, but there were two maids present. One should have gotten out of the car with the stuff in front of my building while the other parked the car a block or two away.
During all of this nonsense I called the Empress Maids office, only to be greeted by their voicemail. I left a message, explaining what was going on and urging them to call me back ASAP. Apparently one of the maids had also tried to reach her boss, but he wasn't picking up the phone. Not a good sign.
Eventually the maids (who still hadn't left their vehicle) told me that they had other appointments to keep, and no longer had enough time to clean my place. As you can imagine, I was pissed. Not only was my business clearly not a priority, but now my entire morning had to be rescheduled as I frantically searched for another maid service who could clean my place last-minute the weekend before a major holiday. Luckily I found someone, but it completely screwed up my day. Also, if parking issues are an acceptable reason for maids to no show, you need to clearly outline that in your terms of service. Never once in any of the times that I've used Empress have they ever said to me, "By the way, if you don't provide parking we're totally going to bounce."
The following Monday (two days later) I finally heard back from the MIA manager via text message, even though I had never communicated with him via text before. (Dude, your company screwed up royally. That warrants a proper phone call.) He was apologetic and offered me a discount (hence two stars), but it was too little too late, as my place had already been cleaned by another company. You snooze, you lose, Empress Maids, and unfortunately you've lost this customer for good.