Quite honestly, when it comes to cleaning products, I have nothing but distain for the people at the end of a 1-800 number called "Customer Service". My hunch is that companies hire these people straight off the street, teach them what's on their product labels and sit them down in front of a telephone. That same man/woman could have been selling used cars or insurance last week.
And, I say that because I've never had one of them tell me something that would require an in-depth knowledge of the product or substantial experience using the product to know.
And, of course, the fact that they get annoyed if you ask them a question that's not already answered on the directions label is a dead give-away.
What I would do instead is to open your Yellow Pages phone book to "Janitorial Equipment & Supplies" and phone around to the places there to find a family owned company that caters primarily to the carpet cleaning contractors in your area. All Janitorial Supply companies will try to cater to everyone, but some carry lines that are better respected by those who clean carpets than by those who clean hard surface floors. For example, I would never buy an S. C. Johnson Wax (now called "Johnson Professional") product to clean a carpet with, but they'd be the first choice in my books for cleaning and finishing a vinyl composition tile floor.
Anyhow, your local carpet cleaning contractors will have faced exactly the same problems you're facing, and the only ones they would have had available to turn to for help would have been the people they buy their cleaning chemicals from. In fact, it's the chemical companies that make all these different kinds of cleaners, but they make consumer brands with lots of fragrances and dyes in them and packaged in very attractive containers to make them look and smell good, and they make the same stuff without the dye and fragrance and packaged in simply labeled gallon jugs for the professional cleaning contractors.
By going to a family owned janitorial supply company to buy your cleaning supplies, not only do you get a better price on the same active ingredient you're buying from a grocery store, you also get all the tech support you need or want tossed in for free from someone who's spent a carreer in the cleaning business. And, being a distributor of his company's products, he has unfettered access to the company's sales rep, who in turn has unfettered access to the company's chemists (if they have any chemists).
(Truth be known, most companies that produce any sort of "chemicals" , like paint, floor maintenance products and detergents, buy those chemicals from major manufacturers and simply dilute and repackage them with their own name slapped onto it. They keep a chemist on staff merely to continually test the products they buy and sell and call him or her their "quality control" department, and of course they need someone who can speak chemistry-ese to the other company's chemists if there's a problem to be resolved and who can understand what's being said. The vast majority of company chemists don't do any chemistry; they spend their day testing the products their company buys and sells for quality control to identify problems in order to avoid class action law suits. It's very much like the pharmacist who goes to university for 5 years only to end up spending his day counting from 1 to 30 to fill prescriptions.)
So, get to know the nice man at the local family owned Janitorial Equipment and Supply company in your area. You'll get quality products and all of the technical support on what to use on what and how tossed in free. Those Janitorial Supply companies will sell to the general public because there's no such thing as a "cleaning products retailer" that buys from them and resells to you who's going to bark at them for stealing their business. (The closest thing would be hardware and grocery stores, and they only market the consumer brands with the dyes and fragrances, and they buy from different suppliers anyhow so it won't matter to the local janitorial store if the hardware or grocery store gets all twisted out of shape cuz they're selling to the general public.)
Non-family owned companies have knowledgeable people on staff too, but family owned business make a greater effort to better satisfy their customers because they benefit more directly from the growth of the company. People who get paid the same whether they do a good job or a great one will do a good job for you. And, doing a great job means learning as much about the products they're selling as possible, even if it means doing it on their own time.
Within the cleaning industry, the people that work in the Janitorial Supply stores are really the troubadores of the 21st century. Back in the middle ages, troubadores would travel (at great personal risk) across countries and spread news to people who couldn't read before there were such things as newspapers. It's much the same thing nowadays in the cleaning industry. Cleaning contractors don't have anyone to turn to for advice on a difficult problem except the people they buy their supplies from. Those suppliers, in turn, learn from other contractors what worked well in a similar situation, and they remember those things cuz that info can come in useful in the future in helping out a different cleaning contractor. And, they in turn will contact the company's sales rep who in turn has his own experience to go on and can always contact the company chemist who is there to help if he can. By regular contact with cleaning contractors and their problems, the people working in Janitorial Equipment & Supply stores soon learn a great deal about the product they sell, how best to use them, how to best use them and where they shouldn't be used.
And, all of that knowledge is available to everyone free of charge if they only buy their cleaning products at a Janitorial Supply store instead of a grocery store or a hardware store where all you get is a 1-800 number to turn to for help. In fact, I expect just about anyone in a janitorial supply store would be more than happy to share his knowledge with you, but they would appreciate your business as well.
I own a 21 unit apartment block, and the vast majority of the work I do is cleaning. Not painting, not carpentry or drywall or plumbing or wiring, or, Thank God, exterminating pests. Most of what I do is cleaning up after other people. I can assure you that I know more about cleaning than just about any home owner, and the people that taught me much of what I know all worked in Janitorial Equipment & Supply stores or worked for companies who's products those stores sold. And, I can assure you that I didn't spend my time typing this post in the hope of misleading you.
you can see pictures of my building at:
http://users.usinternet.com/nkelebay