Just like window cleaning or gutter cleaning companies, carpet cleaning companies face risks every day during their operations. Cleaning agents might spill on a client's carpet, leaving permanent stains. You might also damage their belongings, not to mention your client or employee might sustain injuries from slip-and-fall incidents. No one expects such occurrences, but they can affect your finances significantly if a claim is filed against your business. Getting comprehensive carpet cleaning insurance cushions you from incurring losses
Many companies provide carpet and upholstery cleaning solutions. If you run any of the following cleaning businesses, you need business coverage.
Commercial carpet cleaners
Residential upholstery and carpet cleaners
Sofa and furniture cleaning businesses
Curtain cleaning
Auto detailing involving interior-upholstery cleaning
Professional carpet cleaning business requires scientific knowledge and skill. There are over 300 types of fabrics used in the manufacture of carpets and upholstery, yet only a few are common in American households and commercial properties. The following are exposures related to the provision of services:
Damage to the carpet being cleaned or any other nearby item
Unintentional color disturbances or weakening of the fabric
Mold or mildew damage on carpets because of insufficient drying time
Slip-and-fall injuries sustained by clients
The chances are that you and your team of cleaners have handled many carpet cleaning projects. You're familiar with how cleaning agents and chemicals react with most carpet fabrics you clean. Still, there's always a risk of the unexpected. For example, you might use a safe cleaning product on a previously untested fabric. If it ruins the workpiece, you're liable for the damage and required to replace it.
When purchasing business insurance, carpet cleaners begin by securing general liability coverage. The policy protects your business against exposure to basic third-party risks, such as:
Third-party bodily injuries
Unintentional property damage
Advertising damages
Having carpet cleaner liability insurance protects you against claims by clients due to property damage and injuries resulting from cleaning projects. Otherwise, you'll have to pay for the replacements and medical costs from your pocket.
The insurance coverage protects you from incurring costs of settling lawsuits. Let's now dig deeper into the above risks that carpet cleaning liability insurance covers.
A client in your office might slip and fall or trip over your cleaning equipment. Your business is liable for their injuries, and they have the right to file a lawsuit against you. General liability insurance protects you by covering defense costs and compensation to the aggrieved party for their pain and suffering.
This coverage pays for repair or replacement costs if one of your cleaning professionals damages a client's property. For example, suppose a cleaner accidentally damages the carpet or uses a cleaning agent that permanently stains it. In that case, the third-party property coverage included in your liability insurance pays the replacement costs.
If you advertise or promote your carpet cleaning business online, in print, or through broadcast media (radio and TV), you need to ensure your carpet cleaning liability policy covers advertising injuries. Using another company's logo or slogan can be a cause for an advertising injury lawsuit. If you have this coverage, you're protected against:
Defamation (libel and slander)
Trademark/copyright infringement
Public liability coverage is a type of carpet cleaner insurance policy that protects your carpet or upholstery cleaning business from claims filed by clients, contractors, or members of the public because of bodily injuries or property damage caused by your business activities.
For instance, someone might trip on your commercial property because of an uneven surface, or dislocate a wrist after tripping over a piece of your cleaning equipment.
Public liability insurance for carpet cleaners protects you in such situations by taking care of lawyer fees, other legal costs, and settlements.
A Business Owner's Policy (BOP) is a cost-effective means for carpet cleaning professionals to protect themselves against risks because it bundles general liability and commercial property insurance. It costs less than purchasing the policies separately.
Your carpet cleaning business has its own commercial building. Of course, you need to have that insured too. Building a commercial building takes a lot of fortune and time. Ironically, fire, extreme weather, theft, vandalism, and other perils can destroy or damage it in the blink of an eye.
Spending for building reconstruction or repair means you’ll incur losses. But if you have commercial property insurance, everything will be a walk in the park.
Commercial property insurance shoulders reconstruction costs if your carpet cleaning business’s building is burned to ashes or destroyed by extreme weather. It also covers repair costs if thieves, arsonists, or vandals damage the building.
Remember one thing though; Commercial property insurance doesn’t cover floods or earthquakes. There’s tailored flood insurance that pays if a flood destroys your carpet cleaning business’s building. In the same sense, earthquake insurance covers costs if an earthquake destroyed or damaged a commercial building.
Basic commercial property insurance doesn’t cover work equipment and tools. It won’t also take care of substances and other business supplies. But still, you can solve such loopholes by adding business equipment coverage and stocks and contents coverage to commercial property insurance.
The first optional policy - business equipment coverage - provides money if your carpet cleaning business’s tools and equipment got damaged or lost because of fire, vandalism, theft, and other named perils. Examples of common tools and equipment covered are:
Carpet cleaners
Vacuum cleaners
Air scrubbers
Carpet rakes
Carpet steamers
Carpet dryers
If carpet shampoo, defoamer, stain remover, or any other related substance becomes lost or damaged, stocks and contents coverage will reimburse your losses.
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Buying general liability only doesn’t offer absolute protection. If you feel that it can’t fully protect you from different exposures, carriers won’t stop you from getting other policies. A custom insurance plan is the final resort if a business owner’s policy isn’t enough. The policies we mentioned above can be bundled to a custom carpet cleaner’s insurance plan together with:
Professional liability insurance
Commercial auto insurance
Crime insurance
Employer’s liability
Workers compensation insurance
Professional liability insurance kicks in if you caused economic or financial loss for the client by committing errors and omissions. Perils covered are:
Negligence - A new employee of your cleaning business washed an expensive carpet with bleach. The employee in question should’ve remembered not to do so as there’s a manual. The client had to spend money to replace the damaged carpet. To get reimbursement, she sued your business for property damage caused by grave negligence
Misrepresentation - An employee handed the wrong quote to a customer. Upon asking for payment, it turned out that the service provided was more expensive. The customer then sued for misrepresentation and accused your business of making the price look cheap on paper to attract leads
Violation of good faith - A hotel asked you to clean the carpets in their storehouse. In the contract, it was stated that cleaning should be done by Friday. However, delays happened and your business failed to follow the end of the deal. As a result, the hotel incurred losses since the carpets were supposed to be used for a grand event. To recover, the hotel filed a lawsuit and accused your carpet cleaning business of committing a breach of contract
Ideally, professional liability and general liability must go hand in hand. This is because general liability can’t cover negligence claims. On the other hand, professional liability can’t cover personal injury and property damage claims. In other words, by having both policies, you’ll get protection from the different types of third-party liabilities.
Your cleaning business certainly owns one or two vehicles. Vehicles are useful for taking employees to different projects. Moreover, they’re handy for transporting different kinds of work equipment too.
Consider covering your business’s vehicle with commercial auto insurance. Commercial auto insurance offers auto liability coverage, personal accident coverage, personal accident coverage, physical damage coverage, and emergency roadside assistance. Let’s discuss how these help.
Auto liability coverage in commercial auto insurance covers costs if your carpet cleaning business’s vehicle caused an accident and injured third parties or caused property damage. You can use the insurance money from auto liability coverage to pay for defense costs and settlements to aggrieved parties. Remember one thing though, auto liability insurance might not help if the vehicle’s driver is driving under influence.
Auto liability insurance only covers the injuries of third parties. It won’t provide money to take care of the injuries of your business vehicle’s passengers. To solve this drawback, consider getting personal accident coverage too.
Personal accident coverage provides money you can use to pay for emergency treatment of injured passengers. But note that, in case the injured passengers decide to sue, the coverage won’t take care of defense costs and settlements.
Commercial property insurance’s physical damage coverage can be classified into two types - collision and comprehensive. Collision physical damage coverage shoulders repair or replacement costs if your business’s vehicle collided with an object or another vehicle.
On the other hand, comprehensive physical damage coverage takes care of repair or replacement costs if fire, theft, vandalism, and extreme weather damages your commercial vehicle. But understand that there are exclusions too, which vary from carrier to carrier.
Think about scenarios where your carpet cleaning business’s vehicle suddenly stalls during the trip because of issues. Of course, you’ll have to spend to get it running once again or haul it back to the office.
Emergency roadside assistance sees to it that you can recover losses if such things happen. In a nutshell, this optional coverage in commercial auto insurance reimburses what you spent for battery jump start service, tire repair or replacement service, towing service, and more.
Crimes can happen to any business. That’s why carriers underwrite special protection called crime insurance.
Basic crime insurance helps you recover financial losses if third - parties manage to do the following successfully against your carpet cleaning business:
Fraud
Theft of equipment or money
Destruction of equipment or money
Social engineering
Unauthorized credit card transaction
Unauthorized use of cheques
Misrepresentation
Document manipulation
Purchasing crime insurance isn’t common as most businesses decide to self insure. However, this can be very helpful if losses are worth millions of dollars.
Not only third parties but employees can commit a crime against your carpet cleaning business. Employees might do bad things because they’re not paid well enough, feel that the organization lacks opportunities, or are simply dishonest. No matter what the reason might be, understand that basic crime insurance doesn’t cover losses resulting from an employee’s crimes. And so, decide to add employee dishonesty insurance.
Employee dishonesty insurance covers financial losses and PR costs if an employee commits any of the following:
Siphoning customer refunds to his or her own personal bank account or any other platform that stores money
Stages a scene with someone to steal money, valuable equipment, or materials from your carpet cleaning business
Inputs the wrong figures on financial documents to cover theft
Destroys your business’s money, cheques, bonds, or securities
Other kinds of activities constituting fraud or dishonesty
You need to invest in employee welfare - and we don’t mean life insurance. Aside from this, you also need to buy an insurance policy that covers employees immediately in case they become injured or sick while working.
Workers compensation insurance kicks in if an employee gets injured or sick because of work. It helps to pay for the employee’s emergency treatment, hospitalization, after-hospital visits, and medical expenses. If the employee needs to stay at home to continue healing, workers compensation replaces a portion of the income lost. Furthermore, this policy provides benefits to the family if the employee dies.
Employees can sue your carpet cleaning business if they get injured at work. And understand that general liability insurance doesn’t cover employee personal injury claims. So what can protect you in such a situation? Employer’s liability insurance. This policy functions to pay for defense costs. If ever you lose the case, then employer’s liability insurance will pay settlements too.
Carpet and upholstery cleaners must purchase insurance to protect their businesses against risks of injuries and property damage. Depending on your company's size and operations, you might be required to have the following coverage:
General liability insurance – You'll need carpet cleaning liability insurance if you want to bid for work or undertake a cleaning project. It's a requirement that your clients and state officials often ask for.
Workers' compensation – If you run a business with a team of employees, you'll need a workers' compensation scheme to cover your employees' work-related injuries. Failure to get workers comp is punishable. The punishment depends on where your carpet cleaning business is located. For example, if your business is in Alabama, you’ll face a fine three times the premiums you would have paid for workers compensation insurance (e.g. if the premium is $3,000 then the fine you’ll pay will be $9,000).
Commercial auto insurance – You need commercial auto insurance if you own a business vehicle to transport cleaning equipment, tools, and supplies from your location to a job site. The insurance covers financial losses from collisions involving your commercial van or other cars. Every state has its own policies governing commercial auto coverage.
Carpet cleaners pay varied rates when purchasing insurance for carpet cleaning business. Small ones usually pay lesser for insurance premiums than large well-established companies. But aside from this, several factors affect carpet cleaning insurance quotes. They include:
Type of business; is it a residential or commercial carpet cleaning?
Business income
Cleaning equipment's market value
Types of small business insurance you purchase
Policy limits and deductible
To secure general liability insurance for your carpet cleaning services, you'll pay a median premium of $54 per month ($648 per year). To give you a further idea about the cost, here’s a table showing the pricing of the best carpet cleaning insurance companies:
| Cost per Month | Cost per Year | Best for: |
---|---|---|---|
CoverWallet | $52 | $624 | Finding cheap carpet cleaning business insurance carriers online |
Thimble | $57 | $684 | Short-term carpet cleaning insurance |
NEXT | $60.38 | $724.56 | Carpet cleaning insurance with innovative proof of insurance |
Hiscox | $63.78 | $765.36 | Carpet cleaning business insurance with fast claims process |
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Find carpet cleaning business insurance quotes and compare the pricing of different carriers
Get insured online
Live customer support
Stable and cheap rates
Doesn’t offer its own tailored cleaning business insurance
CoverWallet doesn’t have a tailored insurance product for carpet cleaning businesses. However, you might get covered by the company’s cleaning business insurance, which offers four insurance options. General liability only, general liability and commercial property, business owner’s policy with workers compensation insurance, and a custom plan.
Decide to work with CoverWallet because it offers surety bond and inland marine insurance. A surety bond will be very useful if your carpet cleaning business wants to get high-profile projects. On the other hand, inland marine insurance will cover equipment damaged or lost during the trip.
But the perks don't end there. With CoverWallet, you can get a free certificate of insurance, get insured, and pay premiums online. You can also file claims via the MyCoverWallet App or website. Additionally, tracking your claims is easy. All you need is to contact a CoverWallet live agent or call customer service by phone.
Best for: Finding cheap carpet cleaning business insurance carriers online
Average cost: $52 per month
Our rating: 10/10
Short-term carpet cleaning business insurance
Short-term insurance has a $2 million limit
Some customers complained that Thimble takes long to process claims
Thimble’s carpet cleaning business insurance includes general liability coverage. However, you can endorse additional policies for more protection, particularly business interruption insurance and commercial property insurance. Just like CoverWallet, Thimble gets you covered online. The same also applies when paying premiums. You can even get free and instant proof of insurance.
Best for: Short-term carpet cleaning insurance
Average cost: $57 per month
Our rating: 9/10
Pay premiums online
Bundle policies and get discounts
Track your claim online
Carpet cleaning businesses with bad claims history experience very expensive premiums with NEXT
NEXT offers a very streamlined insurance process. Aside from getting insured, the company allows you to file a claim and track its status online. For carpet cleaning businesses, NEXT offers general liability with optional tools and equipment coverage, workers compensation insurance, and commercial property insurance. NEXT claims that it can help you save 30% on insurance premiums.
Best for: Carpet cleaning insurance with innovative proof of insurance
Average cost: $60.38 per month
Our rating: 8/10
Different ways to file a claim
Has discount options
Offers generous policy limits
Customer service is not available 24/7
Hiscox offers general liability and professional liability insurance for carpet cleaners. Additional business insurance policies can be endorsed for more protection. This company allows you to file a claim online, by phone, or through an email. Discount options are available too if you’re a new customer or if you decide to bundle different policies in one insurance plan. The best thing is that Hiscox processes claims within 10 - 20 days.
Best for: Carpet cleaning business insurance with fast claims process
Average cost: $63.78 per month
Our rating: 7/10
Many carriers cover carpet cleaning businesses. Since there are many, prices and features differ. Don’t jump into getting insured just because a company seems too good to be true. Always do your own research. Look at the offers of five or more carriers to find the best coverage. Start your search here. Click the “Get Quotes” button on this page to receive the quotes of business insurance for carpet cleaners from the best carriers in the US.
Kasey Arey Insuranker
Policy Type: Business Insurance
Company name: Berkshire Hathaway GUARD Insurance Companies
This company gives you a price that was in place for a year and when you have to use it there is fine print were they can go back and charge you more. Would not recommend them to any one. Crooks
Insuranker
Policy Type: Business Insurance
Company name: Berkshire Hathaway GUARD Insurance Companies
Had general liability and workers comp with amguard. Paid high premiums and yet still got audited every year and had to pay more. Was able to prove less risk the first two audits and disputed price down but none the less had to pay more just so I could renew coverage. Third time the audit ( based on what I paid my premium on ) was ridiculous and tried to prove that there was no increase in risk from what I paid for my premium. However they would not believe it and required I paid full audit amount in order to have redline removed. Basically you do what they say and pay whatever outlandish bill they come up with or they will make sure you can’t run your business anymore. ????
Felicia Broadus Insuranker
Policy Type: Business Insurance
Company name: Berkshire Hathaway GUARD Insurance Companies
Avoid these SCAM ARTISTS! They don’t pay claims!!! Save yourself the trouble and money!
Felicia Broadus Insuranker
Policy Type: Business Insurance
Company name: Berkshire Hathaway GUARD Insurance Companies
They are the worst, my truck was hit in January 23 and the claim adjuster has not been out to this very day! They have every excuse in the book as to why. They have not been to the collision shop. PLEASE AVOID THESE SCAM ARTIST!
Dave Phillips Insuranker
Policy Type: Business Insurance
Company name: CoverWallet Business Insurance
Excellent platform for business insurance quote comparison online