My mom and I just had one last load of stuff to move this morning, so I was optimistic that the day was going to be happy and stress-free. It was supposed to be our last day ever seeing our old place. After all we only had to clean the house, and take a couple of last-minute things to the dump. Before today I never thought this would happen to us, I always thought that we were smarter than this. Right now instead of feeling happy and relieved, I feel used and sick to my stomach. Today we were the victims of a scam for the first time, I’m flooded with disbelief along with a ton of other emotions. I’m sad but also I’m very angry towards the people who scammed us, they took advantage of us in a vulnerable time. We’ve been so exhausted from moving our stuff to our new apartment. Plus I’ve been picking up extra shifts the last two weeks, so the last thing I wanted to do was clean our old rental. So we took to Kijiji to find someone to come clean the house, most of the companies that we called were really expensive. They also didn’t include carpet washing in their price, so that would cost extra. So when we came across this lady’s post, we gave her a call and inquired about her prices we were upfront and told her we didn’t plan on spending much. She gave us a deal better than any of the other companies, plus her price included washing the carpets.
When they showed up at our place she had two men with her, they brought their vacuum and a bunch of cleaning supplies. Overall I had no red flags going through my mind. The lady seemed very outgoing and chatty, as we let them into the thankfully empty house. She immediately told the older man to start cleaning the kitchen, while the younger man was sent upstairs to start cleaning the baseboards in the bedrooms. My mom and her talked and she explained to my mom that they would be doing a thorough cleaning. They would cleaning the fridge, pull the fridge, the stove, wash the carpets and even wash the walls. We left to go and drop off the last load of stuff we had at our new place, and did some sorting at home. A couple hours later we headed back to the house and they told us that they were done cleaning the house. When we walked into the house, it smelt clean, and the living room floor was washed. I checked inside the fridge and that was clean as well. They told us that another person (that works for her) would be coming to wash the carpets, and that he was just running behind schedule at the other job. She also told us that they had another job to get to, since everything seemed in order we didn’t think anything of it. All we had to worry about was getting the carpets cleaned, and getting the stuff out to the dump. Since they drive a truck the cleaning lady offered to take the stuff to the dump for us, for an extra $50. That’s about the only thing that worked in our favour, we had more than 50$ worth of stuff to take to the dump. Also it would have cost us even more than that with the cost of gas, and the dumping price that the city charges.
I was so relieved that it was done, I never even thought about it until after we were sitting down for lunch. We were waiting for the guy to come and clean the carpets, and my mom kept calling the cleaning lady. Every call and text she told my mom the guy was coming and he was just running late. After a while I started to get worried and did a google search on the lady’s number, it popped up as a scammer but when I went to click the post it said that the post had been deleted. So we headed back to the house and we went inside, that’s when I remember the lady telling me she was going to wipe down the counters. I ran my hand along the top of the counter my hand was black from the dirt, obviously it hadn’t been washed my 4 year old could wash it better. After further inspection my worst fears were confirmed, the rest of the house hadn’t been touched. We had been scammed, and the only thing they cleaned was the floor in the living room and the fridge. We made sure to ask for a receipt, but we didn’t look at it properly. Looking closer she spelt “carpets” wrong, and she even used a fake name on the receipt it’s easy things we missed until after they were long gone. They tricked us using simple tactics, scent and first impressions. I don’t understand how people can seem so genuine, but actually be such a horrible people. We’ve been in contact with her several times and she’s promised to return a small portion of the money. We are still waiting, and I won’t be holding my breath, I’m just hoping that my bad experience with be helpful to someone else; and hopefully prevent them from being scammed.
Some tips on how to avoid being scammed, by a potential scammer.
1. Ask for a proper receipt, and make sure you read the receipt!
2. BEFORE you pay the person, make sure they did the job they were hired for.
3. Utilize google, (before you hire them) search their name and their phone number who knows maybe someones been scammed by them before.
4. Not always but sometimes people who seem eager to share their stories and be overly friendly to you, are doing it so that you feel like they relate to you and that you can trust them.
5. They say they need to rush off to another job, before the job is completely done. If this is actually the case, tell them they won’t be receiving payment till the jobs complete. Its your right!!
6. Don’t appear desperate for their service, scammers feed off the desperate.
Now that it’s all said and done, I realize how foolish we were. We’ve got to find someone else to come and clean the place, and we lost all that money. I might not be able to change what happened, it’s an unfortunate angering situation. However I know that it’s a costly mistake that we have and will learn from, and we will never repeat it again.
Have you or anyone you know ever been a victim of a scam? How did you deal with the situation?