Blaming the
IICRC for everything that happens is very popular, but often akin to raging about how buying license tabs didn't renew your insurance. Industry organizations rarely played well together in the past, let alone conspired, and no association controls any of the others. So before calling the new
IICRC staff to rant about something that some other group did, ten years ago, realize that they won't have any idea what you're talking about.
The
IICRC doesn't have any manuals to upload. The schools write and own their manuals. Sharing a manual they've spent the time to write (so all of the other schools could copy it) is something few schools besides
JonDon would do. And no, I wouldn't want the
IICRC to manage a $50mil ad campaign. Advertising in old-school media wouldn't be the best use of the money.
Terj, this is kind of stuff that mixes up other people.
IICRC writes standards and certifies instructors and schools, the CRI is the association that represents carpet and carpet-related mills. They have a working relationship but there no cross-connections in management. The Seal of Approval (SOA) program belongs to the CRI, and the
IICRC has no say in how the program is run. The CRI
is concerned about the credibility of a program that allowed a Rug Doctor equal footing with a truckmount. Thank the trade associations for fighting that fight for everyone.
The
IICRC HQ was purchased at the bottom of the hardest hit real estate market in the country, so was actually a pretty astute move. It will allow the new management company to set up, and run, automated, computerized, and on-line services that people have wanted for years, and give both Institute and Association a base in the heart of the most popular conference city in the country.
The CRI has paid the
IICRC to write the installation standards for the CRI, and the CRI is actually listening to carpet cleaners a little, a big step. Scott Warrington, John Downey (and Rico, if the meetings didn't always happen to be scheduled at siesta) and others are on a task force that is fixing the flaws in the SoA program, at the CRI's request.
Bad information if that came from the
IICRC office recently.
Several years ago the bigger mills attempted to make this a requirement, since they saw the root of customer complaints as being cleaning-related. This was after not getting a tremendous response from cleaners to become SoA certified. (Don't know why cleaners wouldn't sign on. It was cheap and easy. I still have some pencils.) They modified to "recommend"
IICRC certification, as several Attorneys General pointed out that requiring is against the law. By the way, I think we were able to clarify that cleaning was the biggest complaint in the
commercial carpet world, where the majority of the footage is maintained by in-house staff. On the residential side, bad cleaning doesn't even make the complaints top ten.
I share peeves about lost CECs, slow responses and general phone interaction. A real issue that needed to be addressed.