A Ceres commercial janitorial firm owner claims a subcontractor of a subcontractor hired by the builder of the new Woodspring Inn & Suites in Ceres has defrauded him out of $6,000 and will be taking them to court for payment.

The claim comes a week before the new hotel is slated to open in the Ceres Gateway Center at Mitchell and Service roads.

Garrett Johnson claims that the company Build Clean America hired his firm, Protorial Janitorial Services, for post construction cleanup of the rooms. After three days on the job, he said he was told not to return and they weren’t paid for their labor.

“Wherever they’ve been at they’re hiring people, getting contracts signed and then two to three days in the work, without reason, they’re firing you and not paying you,” said Johnson. “They did this to two people before I got hired by them, and then they laughed about breach of contract.”

Johnson said as he returned to get his equipment, another company came in and told him that they gave them the same treatment to somebody before.

“So they’re just scamming all these local businesses for free labor.”

Johnson claims a company named Maria’s Cleaning was treated the same way.

“People need to be aware. I’m going up take them to court. It’s over 120 rooms. The place was a mess.”

Did Build Clean America give Johnson any explanation as to why his company was cut loose? According to him, “what it sounded like was they were expecting me to have a crew of like 10 Hispanic women. They were mad that I didn’t have a bunch of Hispanic workers. We’re not that kind of business. We’re commercial/industrial, not residential. We use machines. We can go up and down the halls with machines quicker than 10 Hispanic women.”

Johnson said when he told the company to read the contract, they laughed, saying, “I’m sorry we breached the contract. What are you going to do?”

Johnson said he had four workers on the job from April 18 to April 21 and cleaned 70 percent of the rooms on all four floors.

Johnson asked the company to pay him $1,000 so he could pay the employees for their wages and said he was told no. Even though his company wasn’t paid for the job, Johnson said he paid them out of his own pocket.

He has sent invoices and is getting no response.

“They won’t respond to calls, emails, so our next step is we’re gonna go with the Better Business Bureau and the court.”

Johnson referred the Courier to Trustpilot, a business accountability website which has two negative reviews of Build Clean America. Always Clean Cleaning Service posted on April 29: “This company is a scam, got hired to do a cleaning service. After the job is complete they disappear, THEY DO NOT PAY!” On Oct. 29, 2024 Danny L. Meyers wrote: “I would never hire this company they do not pay when you do work for them.”

Johnson said that if he had read those reviews he “would have never contracted with them.”

The Courier attempted to contact Leigh Guffey, the person who “fired” his company unexpectedly but there was no answer and the voicemail box was full and not accepting messages.

On Monday the Courier made contact with WS California Developer, LLC of Overland Park, Kansas, the company which owns the hotel as a franchise. Company representative Chad Cook emailed: “We are just now being made aware of this situation. We appreciate you bringing this to our attention. Please understand that we’ll be investigating this issue and will work with our general contractor on the appropriate resolution.”

Cook went on to explain that” “It appears that the local cleaning company with whom you are speaking is a sub-sub-contractor of our general contractor, Interstate Construction Corp. The GC is the one who hired Build Clean America who, in turn, hired the local cleaning company. Our ownership group would not have been involved in hiring either Build Clean America or its subcontractor, the local cleaning company. Any payments that may be due to the local cleaning company would be paid by Build Clean America after it receives payment from Interstate Construction Corp. Typically, payments are processed through a construction draw which takes 30 days or so to process.”