There has been a flurry of e-mails lately about the CRI and especially their testing program. I don't know what prompted it but I 've been saving some of them to publish at the same time. Here are a few of them:
"The franchises would not have anything to do with the original Seal Of Approval program but they sure have jumped on the new SOA and totally dominate it. Look at the Service Provider list. It is Stanley Steemer®, Millicare®, ChemDry®, Cintas®, Duraclean®, Rainbow, etc, etc, etc. I wonder why ServiceMaster® and SERVPRO® are not supporting it. But that list has fallen from just over a thousand to about 800 in the past two years. They can't handle warranty work without the help of thousands of professional independent cleaning contractors."
"Someone could win a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism if they were to dig deep into the pile of $#&$ at CRI and the conflicts in interest of some of its associates."
"As a distributor I want to point out that centrifugal vacuum motors lose air velocity after minimal usage. Rental machines, even though they may have passed CRI tests, wouldn't pass those same tests after 40 or 50 hours of use. We use big # 45 Roots vacuum blowers in our truck mounts and they get stronger as they get broken in. CRI testing is a farce."
"All you have to do is follow the money. CRI is hurting for money and even had to move out of their fancy building. The mills want to dump the rent, staff and light bill at their new rented headquarters on carpet cleaners. You can tell how successful the SOA program is by the numbers. It took almost 10 years to get 1,000 certified service providers. That number has dropped now to about 800 and they are mostly franchises. That ought to tell independent cleaners something if we're smart enough to see it."
"CRI teamed up with IICRC and attendance at trade shows dropped. Connections is history and a new show called Experience is replacing it. I was in Clearwater and nearly all of the people were selling something. There are a couple of new international associations trying to get off the ground. RIA® attendance is at an all time high at their conventions. Do you think there is a message in here someplace?"
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