Window Cleaning News & Videos

New Zealand - Fake cleaners fooled restaurant owners: Beware of dodgy window washers. This is the warning issued by Palmerston North restaurant owner Barbara Taniyama, who was duped out of $120 by a pair of phoney window cleaners. Mrs Taniyama, who owns Japanese restaurant Yatai with husband Atsushi, was called by a man offering to clean the Featherston St restaurant's windows on Monday. After coming to see the building, he quoted her $120 for the interior and exterior ground floor windows. "I thought that was quite a reasonable fee because it's quite a big job," Mrs Taniyama said. "They said `we are on the dole and we are trying to do some work to get off the dole'." Mrs Taniyama hired them and was told they would return to do the job yesterday afternoon. But the men, who claimed to be from a business called "Smith's Window Cleaning" turned up at 10am yesterday, just as Mrs Taniyama was leaving. "One had a small brush and a scraper and a small triangular trough of what looked like dirty water." When she returned about 40 minutes later they were gone and the windows were not clean. The men collected the money from Mr Taniyama, after about 30 minutes of substandard work.
"One hundred and twenty dollars is not a huge amount but you feel pissed off," she said. "My husband is furious with me for hiring them and I'm furious with him for paying them." There is no Smith's Window Cleaning business in the Yellow Pages and a phone number left by the men did not work. Detective Sergeant Tim Moffatt said a similar scam involving dodgy tree trimmers cropped up in Palmerston North last year. "The warning is don't do business with people who don't appear bona fide, simple as that," he said.

Twyford man sentenced for blackmail: Terence ‘Terry’ Burton was jailed at Reading Crown Court on Monday after admitting attempting to extract £20,000 from Berkshire-based ‘Dr X’, who cannot be named for legal reasons. Sentencing Burton, Recorder John Darling said blackmail was “the attempted murder of the soul”. He slammed 51-year-old Burton for threatening to pass on sexually explicit footage of the doctor and “his missus” to the General Medical Council. Ex-window cleaner Burton also attempted to sell the footage – filmed secretly during a doctor’s appointment by his wife Marion who hid a camera in her clutch handbag – to a Sunday tabloid newspaper. Burton, of Wargrave Road, admitted a count of blackmail in January this year. However, legal restrictions meant the plea could not be reported until his wife’s trial earlier this month at which she admitted being a dominatrix.

It was the day the sky disappeared. One might have assumed the end was nigh as the most severe dust storm in 70 years blew across southeast Queensland, bringing chaos to airports, cutting power, fanning bushfires and causing thousands of asthmatics to retreat indoors. Amateur photographers emerged from office blocks to point their cameras skyward. The tallest city towers vanished in the haze; giant cranes were blanketed in an ominous orange hue and window cleaners across the state were salivating. The weather bureau said the suffocating storm pushed out of western NSW, propelled by a change from northerly to southerly winds.

Kids have fun thinking inside the box: It was reassuring to see that kids' imaginations are surviving despite the best efforts of toy designers and busy parents to make creativity obsolete. Who needs an imagination when video games create the adventure for you, when organized sports leave no time for just goofing around? Even Legos, once the stem cells of building blocks that left everything to the imagination, now come in specialized kits. The last time I visited the Children's Discovery Museum was four years ago, for the opening of its special area for toddlers and preschoolers, called the Wonder Cabinet. That creation took months to build and cost $1 million. Ah, those were the days. So, rather than see 1,200 square feet of prime exhibit space sit empty for a month, Bogle grabbed the big boxes that the museum's new recycling bins had been shipped in and put them out to see what the young visitors would do. In no time, kids were climbing around and having a ball. Before long, new creations began to take shape. Creatures, skyscrapers with lots of windows, a fort with a "no girls allowed" sign. "The kids really love our high-tech exhibits," she said. "But then the window washer comes along, and they are just as excited by that."

The Valley of the Sun’s tourism industry came out in force Tuesday morning to celebrate the findings of two studies on travel and emphasize the importance of tourism dollars to the state’s economy. Elected officials and others spoke of the negative media attention over high-profile corporate meetings during the past year, called the “AIG effect” in reference to the fallout from a meeting of insurance executives from that firm here in the Valley. Phoenix leaders said that negative portrayal has translated into lost business and lost opportunities.A restaurant owner and a hotel worker also spoke of the importance of tourism to their livelihoods. Vincent Guerithault, owner of Vincent’s on Camelback, talked about the recession’s impact on his business. From the elimination of valet service and window washing, to the reduction in phone lines at his business and an overall reduction in staff, he has tried to cut costs in response to the recession.

Reach Higher Ground waterfed poles have a brand new blog - go here to see it. Shawn Gavin shows us the merits of the backpack below. Next demo' date in Arizona in November.The second video shows Shawn fitting an Xtel pole tip.

The next 3 videos from Simpole. A little shaky the second one, but its the only video where the new clamps can be seen pulled out & worked closed.