How to Choose the Right Cleaning Service in San Antonio: 7 Questions Every Honest Company Answers

Most "how to choose a cleaning service" articles are useless. They tell you to check Google reviews, look at years in business, and see if the company is BBB-accredited. Those signals matter a little. They don't tell you whether the tech who shows up at your door knows the difference between an alkaline pre-conditioner and a solvent spotter, or whether they'll leave your carpet damp for two days and turn a $400 clean into a $2,000 mold job. I'm Steve Perez, owner at AST Cleaning & Restoration in San Antonio. I hold ten IICRC certifications, the Texas TDLR Mold Remediation Contractor license (RCO1739), and I've run crews across Stone Oak, Alamo Heights, Terrell Hills, and Boerne for twenty-plus years. Here are the seven questions I'd ask any cleaning company before they set foot in my house. If a company can't answer three of them clearly on the phone, hang up.

Why most "how to choose" articles are useless

The soft signals — reviews, years, BBB — are lagging indicators. They tell you what past customers said, not what the tech knocking on your door today actually knows. I've watched five-star Google companies run $99 bait pricing that turns into $600 on-site, and newer independents with 20 reviews do work that clears any IICRC audit. Reviews filter out the truly bad. They don't get you to the truly good.

What separates a real crew from a spray-and-pray operator is technical fluency. The seven questions below have specific right answers. A legitimate IICRC-trained crew answers them without hesitation. A bait operator dodges or gets the answer visibly wrong. Ask them.

Question 1: What specific IICRC certifications do the technicians hold?

The right answer names specific categories. Not "we're IICRC certified" — the company can hold a firm-level membership while none of the actual field techs are certified. Ask which technicians are certified in what.

For a residential carpet job, the tech should hold at least the IICRC S100 Carpet Cleaning Technician (CCT) certification. For upholstery, add IICRC S300 Upholstery and Fabric Cleaning Technician (UFT). For water damage, IICRC S500 Water Damage Restoration Technician (WRT) and ideally Applied Structural Drying (ASD). Mold work requires IICRC S520 Applied Microbial Remediation Technician (AMRT) plus, in Texas, the TDLR Mold Remediation Contractor license — not optional, legally required for any project over 25 contiguous square feet.

At AST, our lead techs hold multiple IICRC categories and I hold ten. That's not a brag. That's the answer to Question 1, and every legitimate shop should be able to give you the same specificity.

Question 2: What chemistry are you using, and how do you neutralize it?

This is the fastest tell. Ask what pre-conditioner they use and how they neutralize afterward. A real answer names the product category — alkaline pre-conditioner for traffic soil, solvent-based for grease, enzyme for protein and urine — and describes a rinse or acid-side neutralizer applied before extraction to bring the pH back to neutral.

The reason it matters: alkaline pre-conditioners cut grease and traffic soil beautifully. If you don't neutralize before extraction, the residue that stays in the fiber literally attracts more dirt. That's the IICRC S100 standard, not my opinion, and it's why your last cheap clean re-soiled within a month. Skipping neutralization is the single most common corner cut in this industry.

If the answer you get is "we use hot water" or "we use our special solution" with no chemistry explanation, that's your answer.

Question 3: What's the actual per-room or per-sqft cost — no bait pricing

A legitimate quote lands in a range you can hold them to. In San Antonio in 2026, standard residential carpet cleaning runs $55-$85 per room, $250-$450 for a typical three-bedroom home, $3.50-$5.00 per stair, and $0.25-$0.45 per sqft for larger open-concept spaces. Pet enzyme treatment adds $40-$90 per spot. Protectant reapplication runs $50-$100 per room.

The "$99 whole-house" ads work one of two ways. Version one: the truck shows up, the tech walks the house, and the price is renegotiated on-site to $400-$700 with add-on tiers. Version two: the truck actually does the $99 job — cold water, minimal chemistry, no neutralization, quick extraction — and the carpet re-soils in a month because of the leftover residue. Either way, the customer paid $99 to end up needing a real clean anyway.

Ask for the range. If the answer is a flat lowball number and no mention of scope variables (room count, fiber, soil level, pet treatment), assume upsell.

Question 4: What's your insurance and TDLR licensing status?

General liability insurance and workers' comp are table stakes. Ask for the current certificate of insurance (COI) and check the limits — $1M general liability is the industry standard for residential work. If a tech is injured on your property without workers' comp coverage, your homeowners policy can end up on the hook.

For any mold or restoration work in Texas, ask specifically for the TDLR Mold Remediation Contractor number. Mine is RCO1739. That license is required by state law for any mold project over 25 contiguous square feet, and it comes with continuing education requirements, insurance minimums, and an actual regulatory body you can complain to if the job goes wrong. Unlicensed operators do mold jobs in Texas every day. They're operating illegally, and if the job fails, you have no recourse.

Ask for the number, then verify it on the TDLR public license search. Takes 30 seconds.

Question 5: Who owns the equipment — truck-mount or portable?

Truck-mounted extraction machines run at 500-1,500 PSI with water heated to 200-230°F. That's the range that removes embedded soil and lifts residue from the fiber base. Portable box units — the kind that plug into a wall outlet inside your house — top out around 150-200 PSI and 120-150°F. They exist because some jobs (high-rise condos, situations where a truck can't park close) need them. For a standard residential job with driveway access, portable is a shortcut.

Ask what unit they run. "Truck-mount" is the right answer for most residential jobs in San Antonio. If the company runs portables for cost reasons — cheaper equipment, cheaper training, cheaper insurance — the clean won't reach truck-mount extraction quality. Not a moral failing; a physics limit.

One exception: legitimate specialty shops (like Master Rug Cleaners for in-plant wool work) don't need truck-mounts because the rug goes to the plant. But for on-site carpet, tile, and upholstery in a standard home, truck-mount is the answer.

Question 6: What's your dry-time target and how do you verify it?

A properly extracted residential carpet dries in 6-12 hours. Upholstery in 4-6 hours. Tile and grout, 2-4 hours. If a company doesn't have a dry-time target, they're not measuring their own extraction quality, and the risk of overwetting falls on you.

Overwetting is how you get mildew in the pad, delamination where the backing separates, and wicking that pulls yellow-brown residue back to the surface a day after the tech leaves. Every one of those failures shows up 24-72 hours after the job — after the check has cleared.

Ask what their dry-time target is and how they verify. A real answer includes moisture meter readings on the pad after extraction, air movers set up in wet zones, and a follow-up call at 24 hours. That's a shop that stands behind the work. If the answer is "it dries when it dries," you're the quality control department.

Question 7: Who is on-site — subcontractor or your own crew?

The last question, and one homeowners rarely ask. Many companies book the job under their brand and dispatch a subcontractor — a separate independent operator — to actually do the work. The subcontractor is paid a fraction of the job total and has zero long-term relationship with the customer. Quality control drops, accountability drops, and if something goes wrong the finger-pointing between company and sub can leave you stuck.

Ask directly: "Are the techs your W-2 employees or 1099 subcontractors?" A real answer names the model. At AST, every tech on a residential job is a trained AST employee. We don't sub out. That's a cost model choice — subcontracting is cheaper per-job — and it's why our per-room pricing is in the honest-middle range, not the bait-basement.

Companies that sub out aren't automatically bad. Companies that hide the fact that they sub out are.

Putting the seven questions together

The pattern: real IICRC-certified crews with truck-mount equipment, licensed appropriately, quoting honest ranges, running their own W-2 techs, and measuring their own dry times. That's maybe 20% of the companies advertising cleaning services in San Antonio. The other 80% miss on at least one, and the misses correlate to failed jobs and re-cleans within weeks.

Ask us all seven questions at (210) 599-9726. Then call the next company on your list and ask them the same seven. The comparison makes the decision for you.