You do not have to be family to call

People hesitate over this more than anything else. They are not related to the person, so they assume the call is not theirs to make, and a week goes past while everybody waits for somebody with a better claim.

Who actually calls us

• Landlords, whose unit it is and who have to do something about it.
• Property agents, acting for an owner who is not in the country or not able to deal with it.
• Executors and administrators, settling an estate that includes a property.
• Employers and building management, after something at a workplace or in a common area.
• Neighbours, who are often the ones who raised it in the first place.
• Friends acting for a family who cannot face making arrangements themselves.

None of that requires you to be related to anybody.

What we do need to know

Who has the say. That is the only part that matters, and on a property it is often not the person standing in it.

Tell us on the first call whether you are the decision maker or acting for one. It changes who we speak to about scope and what leaves the property. It does not change whether we come and look.

If you are not sure whether it is your call to make, make it anyway. Asking us to come and look commits nobody to anything.

If it is somebody else’s property

We can only work on a property with the permission of whoever is responsible for it, and we would not want a company that behaved otherwise. If the source of a problem is a unit that is not yours, the route runs through whoever has standing there.

There is more on that in the smell is coming from the unit next door.

Why waiting costs something

Not in fees, in outcome. Absorbent material keeps absorbing, odour keeps moving into materials further from the source, and warm weather brings out what has been quiet. A property left longer is a larger job than the same property dealt with sooner.

You do not need the right words

If you have never had to describe something like this to a stranger, there is nothing to prepare. Tell us what is there in whatever words you have, and we will ask the rest.

The sequence of a job is on What happens now.

If you are a neighbour

Neighbours are often the first to know and the last to act, because it feels like interfering. It generally is not.

If your concern is that somebody inside may be unwell or worse, that is not a cleaning question and it should not wait on one. Raise it with the people who can actually go and look.

If the property is already being dealt with and you are simply affected by it, the route runs through whoever is responsible for that unit, not through us. There is more on that in the smell is coming from the unit next door.

If you are an employer or a building

Then there are other people to think about as well as the premises, and the first hour matters more than the rest of the day. Close the area, keep staff out of it, and decide who speaks.

The specifics are in cleaning an office or shop after an incident and condo management: an incident in a common area. If it is a rented home, see when a tenant dies in your unit.