Old World Window Cleaning

I highly recommend Lee! He is on time, very professional and my windows have never been so clean! I will definitely have him back next season!

Huge disappointment. My motivation for hiring Old World Window Cleaning was its vinyl siding cleaning service. Mr. Slater posts/comments heavily on NextDoor, and thereby advertised his soft-wash exterior home cleaning service, and stated that he does not use bleach. Those two features were important to me, and not easy to find. So I used the online request form on his website to get a cost estimate and hire him. To complement the sparkling clean siding that I expected, I requested that the windows be washed (“exterior window service” with complementary “screen cleaning”). I also selected his gutter cleaning service (“inspection of gutters and removal of all debris”) and requested that he clean the outside of a single chimney, as a recent inspection had noted moss growing on it. Mr. Slater declined my invitation to visit my home to assess the job, and instead relied on available online photos (as well as the information that I entered in his form, such as selecting “25-35” for the number of windows). I asked him what solution he used to clean with, and if I needed to protect my plants, and he said it was a vinegar-based cleaner; no need to protect plants.
The fact that he started work at 10 AM was the first red flag. (There was a lot of work to be done!) 1) His cleaning of the vinyl siding is best described as “spot cleaning”. Plenty of dirt and even webs with debris trapped in them remained; my fingers were dirty after rubbing them on the “cleaned siding”. [pic 1] He used bleach to clean some areas (e.g. the algae on the north side), but usually just 'washed' with water; no sign or smell of vinegar (or any other cleaning solution). At the end I asked him to clean a section of the house that he missed, but in actuality the entire exterior needed revisiting. 2) As for the windows, one would expect a stellar job given the name of the business. Hardly. In fact, he didn’t even try to clean many of them. For two windows, it wasn’t simply an oversight, since the screens were removed and had to be reinserted (on the dirty windows). [pic 2] He cleaned at least 16 - max of 20. Some looked good but others had brush marks and cloudy areas. Although difficult to get a photograph of a window surface, I can post one that illustrates an example (vertical brush marks on lower third of window pane). [pic 3] P.S. Half of the window screens were put in backwards. 3) When I asked him about the gutters, he claimed that they were all clean (i.e. didn’t need cleaning). I requested that he look again, as he was still working on the roof, since I expected there to be granules from the shingles. He later confirmed that the gutters were clean. 4) I questioned him about cleaning the side of the chimney with the moss, and only got him to address the issue after some discussion and providing him with a brush to use. He packed up and left mid-afternoon. I contacted him later to share a photo of a first-floor gutter that I was able to reach, which showed lots of granules, and asked him about returning to clean the dirty windows he missed. He refunded the cost of the gutter cleaning, and stated that his service is only to remove organic debris. With regard to returning to finish the windows, he stated that his “schedule is slammed”.