Honest pricing
There’s a version of this trade that runs on a cheap ad and an expensive afternoon. It’s decades old, it follows the same script everywhere, and it’s most of the reason carpet cleaners get greeted with folded arms. Here’s how it works, and the questions that protect you from it, whoever you end up booking.
How the cheap ad works
The headline price usually covers rooms up to a set size, and that size lives in the fine print.
Twelve or thirteen square metres is a common cap. An ordinary Townsville lounge room is bigger than that, so the moment the trolley is through your door it counts as two rooms. The ad said three rooms for one price. Your house, apparently, has five. Nothing was ever technically untrue, which is exactly the point.
Five words in the fine print that quietly un-price the whole quote.
If the price can change once someone is standing in your hallway, you never had a price. You had an invitation. A condition clause means the real quote happens on site, after you've taken the morning off and moved the furniture, when saying no is at its most awkward. That timing is not an accident.
Stains excluded. Deodorising extra. Pre-vacuuming extra. High-traffic areas extra.
None of it is in the ad and all of it can be on the bill. Each item sounds small on its own, and they're offered one at a time, mid-job, so each one is a small yes. The cheap headline was never the price of a clean carpet. It was the price of starting the conversation.
A job priced that low only pays if it's finished fast, and fast means skipped steps.
Water down, water up, gone. It can look fine for a fortnight. But rushing usually skips the rinse, and whatever detergent stays in the fibre is tacky, and tacky grabs dirt. That's why a badly cleaned carpet often looks grubby again faster than one that was never cleaned at all. You didn't buy a clean. You bought a delay.
To be fair about it: none of this makes every cheap clean a con. Some jobs are small, some operators run lean and do right by people at a low price. The point isn’t that cheap is always a trick. It’s that this particular script exists, it’s common enough to have a name, and twenty seconds of fine-print reading before you book is the cheapest protection there is.
Before you book anyone
These work on any operator. They work on us. An honest business will have quick, specific answers to all five, and won’t mind being asked.
A straight answer names the cap in square metres, or says there isn't one. “Depends on the rooms” isn't an answer, it's the start of the doorstep re-price. Ask what your actual lounge room counts as, before anyone is standing in it.
Pre-vacuum? Stain treatment? Deodorising? Moving the light furniture? If each of those is extra, the ad price isn't the price, so ask for the all-in number for your actual job and get it before you book, not on the day.
For a standard clean this is a completely reasonable ask, and a written number is the one that can't grow in the hallway. If the answer is “we'll see on the day”, ask what specifically could change it, and by how much. Vague now is expensive later.
A proper clean is mostly time: dry vacuum, pre-spray that needs minutes to dwell, slow extraction passes, a rinse. Three rooms done properly is well over an hour of actual work. If the answer is thirty minutes, you now know which steps aren't happening.
Pay-after means the person doing the job still has a reason to care when it's finished. And a guarantee with a name and a number of days on it beats “we'll look after you”, because you can hold someone to it. While you're at it, read their recent Google reviews like a sceptic: regulators here have fined cleaning businesses for posting fake testimonials, so real names and real job details matter more than the star count.
The difference, line by line
The left column is the coupon model this page describes. The right column is how we run, on every job, at the price you were texted.
The $99 special
Every clean we do
The price
Capped, conditional, and finalised in your hallway.
Texted to you in writing before we book you in. Same number on the invoice.
Your lounge room
Two rooms, according to the fine print.
One room. A room is a room.
What's included
Stains, deodorising, even vacuuming can be extras.
Pre-vacuum, work on common stains and deodorising are part of every clean.
Time on the job
In and out in about thirty minutes.
90 minutes plus. All seven steps, in order, every time.
The rinse
The step that gets dropped when the clock is the boss. Leftover detergent stays tacky, and tacky grabs dirt.
A neutralising rinse on every job, so the clean lasts.
Paying
On the day, for whatever the day became.
After the clean, never before. Pay-After Promise, On-Time Promise, 14-Day Come-Back Guarantee.
Our prices, out loud
Full rooms, however big yours are. Three rooms comes to $275, and the whole home caps at $449.
So a 3-seater comes to $200. A recliner counts as a seat, and two 2-seaters are two lounges, not a 4-seater.
One number to know upfront: there’s a $199 visit minimum. A small job gets quoted at it before you book, never discovered at the door.
Every figure above is read live from the same price list our quote builder and our text quotes use, so the number here, the number by SMS and the number at your door can’t disagree. Mattresses, rugs, stain and pet treatment are priced the same way in the builder.
Then take it. A nearly new carpet that just needs a freshen-up doesn’t owe anyone a premium job, and now you know how to buy the cheap one safely: check the room cap, get the inclusions in writing, and ask the five questions. If instead you want it done once, properly, with the price known before we knock, that’s us.
