Lady’s Claims On FB That SG Cleaning Company Cheated Her Cuz She’s A Foreigner Backfires After Company Responds

A genuine but severe case of idiocy, self-entitlement and victim mentality or just a convincing cheapskate?

You can decide for yourself after we give you the facts but really there isn’t much in the way of choice, is there?

Both are almost equally as bad.

The Case As Presented by the Customer 

(Read: Half the story)

There are 2 stakeholders in this scenario: an anonymous foreign lady with a dirty couch who we shall refer to as “the Customer”, and Ocean Cleaning Services, a company who cleans dirty couches (and other things bah).

The story goes like this: The Customer had a dirty couch which she wanted to be cleaned. She contacted Ocean Cleaning Services and they did the job, but the Customer still wasn’t happy.

Here’s the why according to what she posted on her social media page:

Basically, the picture shows that the payment due was $100, and according to Ocean Cleaning Services, it goes to paying for the one-time cleaning of the sofa.

The customer insists that since the “Singapore cleaning hour(ly) rate” was “a few dollars”, and if she set the rate at a generous $12 an hour, a payment of $100 means she was entitled to 4 hours of cleaning by 2 workers, so the workers have to clean until exactly 6:30 p.m.

Unable to come to an agreement, the Customer refused to pay up and instead took to social media to “expose” the company for their “discrimination” towards foreigners.

The Case As Presented by the Ocean Cleaning Services

(Read: the other half)

Well, Ocean Cleaning Services apparently found the post, and then went on Facebook themselves to do a little explaining.

Starting from the first conversation between the company and the Customer,

Here’s the picture of the dirty sofa on its own and annotated by Ocean Cleaning Services (makes you wonder how the heck did it get so dirty in the first place: were people playing “spill the coffee” there?).

So the fees were clearly specified, cleaning 1 item is $100 regardless of how many hours it takes or how filthy the item is (and in this case it’s filthier than usual).

But Things Happened

But here’s a guess.

Somewhere between when she decided to get her sofa cleaned and after the cleaning, she had taken it upon herself to find out the “Singapore cleaning hour(ly) rate”.

She then decided entirely on her own that the company wasn’t charging her fairly.

Instead of bringing it up before the session and negotiating with the company or finding an alternative cleaning service that actually features her rates, she proceeded to completely ignore the rates clearly defined by Ocean Cleaning Services, in favour of imposing her preferred rates after the cleaning is done.

Which, as we know, didn’t go down so well.

Photo Proof

The exchange between the Customer and Ocean Cleaning Services on the day of the cleaning was posted in full on the company’s Facebook page.

And even though the sofa looks clean, she insisted that the cleaners stay there.

The cleaning service attempted to be reasonable.

But eventually decided to cut their losses.

Here’s the picture of the cleaned sofa as posted by Ocean Cleaning Services.

There are a few issues here.

Firstly, she tried to use “the customer is always right” rule to pay whatever rates she wanted, literally rejecting the company’s rates with a simple “no no i the customer you listen to me”.

Secondly, there is this very irrational order to “Just clean until 6.30pm” even though there was nothing left to clean.

What are they going to do? Lick the sofa to super white?

All just so that she could feel like she was paying the rates she deserves in Singapore, and probably also to get back at them for “cheater company” in the first place.

Thirdly, she assumed herself the victim from the start (and was very certain about it) just because she’s a foreigner instead of ever considering that the company just consistently charges different rates from the “Singapore cleaning hour(ly) rate”.

Which by the way what the hell is this homogeneous hourly cleaning fee for all Singaporean cleaning services? When was it ever a few dollars?

This website even stated that the market rate was $15 to $19 per hour, which was about appropriate given that the workers from Ocean Cleaning Services cleaned the extra dirty sofa for 3 hours already.

Not The Only Problem

Ocean Cleaning Services opted to forgo the cash and leave instead so that they could be punctual for their other appointments.

And by the way that’s not all the trouble the Customer gave them. As they pointed out on their Facebook page:

“You gave us the wrong address and make us go round and round and you change the timing 30min before the appointment from 12 pm to 2.30 pm to make me reschedule my other appointment the whole day”.

Ocean Cleaning Services also suggested that the Customer was trying to get her couch cleaned for free all along (hence the question if she’s a conniving cheapskate).

So really, it’s hard to say that the Customer was ever completely in the right (if not completely in the wrong).