Shuttered B.C. company owes cleaners, customers more than $100,000: former worker

It’s been more than a month since B.C.-based cleaning company Scrubbi shut down, and a former worker who says the company still owes cleaners and customers more than $100,000.

Dani Flinn tells CityNews she’s been keeping a tally of the money countless cleaners and customers across the country say Scrubbi owes them. She says the amount is close to $150,000 dollars. That includes the $1,000 she says she’s owed for work she did for the company in September.

“There’s people that are owed like $3,000 for the work they’ve done, that’s a lot of money,” she said.

“My mental health has taken an extreme toll … I’m gonna cry … it’s been really hard … because of Scrubbi everything has just fallen apart … I wasn’t able to pay my car payments or my loan payments, and now everything is so backed up.”

CityNews first reported on Scrubbi in April, when several workers said they hadn’t been paid. At the time, the company apologized, blaming it on a new third-party vendor, and paid the workers CityNews had spoken to. But in the last month, more people came forward to say they haven’t been paid for their work or haven’t received the services they paid for.

Scrubbi’s Google listing now says it is permanently closed.

Tosheena Takkhar is one of the dozens of workers on Flinn’s list. She says she started cleaning for Scrubbi in late June. The first few weeks went fine, but then suddenly she stopped getting paid. She says the company now owes her more than $1,100.

“We spent our own money on supplies, we spent our own money on travelling between clients’ homes,” she said.

“Just devastating to think, ‘okay, now I really have to backtrack and start from ground zero because I now have no avenue of employment, no money coming in, and I still have to survive.'”

CityNews reached out to Scrubbi multiple times for comment on the matter but did not hear back. The company’s website is still up, but it doesn’t accept bookings. The company’s social media accounts are also still up, but they haven’t posted anything since late September.

“There’s a reason Scrubbi went down to an F rating with us and now it says NR, which basically means Not Rated,” B.C. Better Business Bureau Director of Marketing and Communications Neesha Hothi explained.

“That’s because they’re no longer in business, but for us, it is concerning, because when we see an influx of complaints coming from a singular company we know something has changed, something is amiss.”

B.C.’s Labour Ministry says, since 2016, the Employment Standards Branch has received 121 complaints about Scrubbi — 64 of them from April to October alone. Flinn says she and others are planning to file a class action lawsuit against the company.

“It’s heartbreaking that somebody could be so heartless and have absolutely no care that what they’re doing is impacting so many people,” she added.