Haunting Customer Tales

Fear The Crawling Dead

In August this year, our environmental cleaning team were called to perform a standard deep cleaning service on a property for one of our customers. Upon arrival, nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary, however it soon became apparent that there were multiple dead spiders littered around the apartment. Now you might be thinking, wait what? Dead spiders aren’t exactly a nightmare.. but check out these ones!

Luckily, one of our female operatives felt brave enough to dispose of these giant creatures, much to the relief of her male colleague who was certainly feeling quite squeamish. When we showed the pictures to the customer, she certainly felt a shudder down her spine, as did our team back at the office..

Hostel – The Return

This year, one of our customers found themselves in a nightmare situation where their local hostel was being poorly managed by a private charity. Over the years, there had become daily instances of anti-social behaviour stemming from poor living conditions including excessive alcohol, violence and drug abuse within the premises. This was causing huge headaches with local authorities, tenants and community partners.

We were asked to perform an emergency on-site property inspection, where upon our visit, the premises was immediately deemed unhabitable and emergency actions were taken to rehome all tenants within the hostel, which needed to be done very quickly due to multiple H&S hazards. While this was all happening, our customer then had the added stress of an empty grade-listed building that was now completely vulnerable to trespassers and squatters.

To help turn this nightmare around, with very short notice we managed to provide security solutions including boarding, perma screens, Videofied and Verifeyed alarm systems including anti-vandal paint as part of a combination to offer the best protection for the vacant building. This quick series of solutions helped our customer to breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that everything was now secure and insurance compliant.

The Ghastly Toilet

In July this year, during a particularly hot summer heatwave, our customer was alerted by a neighbour that there was a particularly terrible smell emitting from one of the properties that our customer managed. Our environmental cleaning team was called to investigate and upon arrival was met with a particularly challenging situation, to say the least. The toilet pan was completely filled to the point of overflowing with human waste that must have been gathering for some months, it was clear that the flush system had broken and rather than fixing this, the tenant had decided to ignore it..

Our team worked tirelessly through the heat and in full PPE equipment to remove this waste and get the toilet back into working order, much to our customers satisfaction. We were proud to be able to turn this sinister situation into a dream ending. Here’s a follow up email from the customer to our account manager –

“Hi Nicola

I wanted to thank you and in particular your team that attended this address and worked so hard, particularly in the heat for the tremendous effort that they put in to cleaning this property. I know it was particularly challenging and I know that the neighbours will also be relieved!”

Invasion of the Giant Rats

Although we haven’t seen a physical case of this yet, there has been many reports of ‘giant rats’ invading homes and businesses by climbing through their toilets. In one case a pest controller was called out to a job in Norwich and the customer could barely speak, she was in so much shock. She’d been using the bathroom and heard a noise. She looked down and a rat was sat in the toilet bowl!

According to this particular article, the water in the toilets U-bend could evaporate, making it easy for rats to access. It also stated that rats were excellent swimmers and could hold their breath for three minutes and tread water for three days. If they wanted to get into your toilet, they would, it added. Chilling stuff indeed..