In early July, a physician who lives on the Upper East Side — and who, for reasons that will become clear, will be identified only as “the doctor” — decided that it was time to get his Persian carpet professionally cleaned. After he conducted a cursory web search, a man named Eric Shab, with ABC Rug Cleaning, showed up to provide an estimate. The doctor was not home. Mr. Shab told the doctor’s wife that the rug was in terrible condition.“At first my wife told me that she’d agreed to pay $5,000,” the doctor recalled in a phone conversation with the Haggler in September. “A week or two later, she admitted that it was $20,000. Then she said it was actually $30,000.”As it turns out, $30,000 was just the down payment, secured on an American Express card. The actual cost of the cleaning and repair would be just over $42,000, the doctor learned. Mr. Shab departed from the doctor’s house that July morning with both an agreement and the carpet.At this point, dear reader, you probably have some questions.“

O.K., did you make up this story?” “Is that number, $42,000, a typo?”Is the doctor’s wife insane?”No, but the doctor did acknowledge that decisions she made that morning have led to marital stress. “What did the rug originally cost?”About $38,000 when it was bought in the late 1990s.“What should a rug cleaning in this instance have cost?”About $1,000, said an expert contacted by the Haggler, $1,500 tops.The doctor had questions of his own, which he posed in a call to ABC Carpet & Home, a well-known retailer in the New York area. A representative there had grim news: The company has no connection to ABC Rug Cleaning.Sound a bit confusing? It confused the doctor, who assumed that he had summoned an employee of ABC Carpet & Home.The similarity between the names of these two businesses greatly vexes ABC Carpet & Home, which in August sent a cease-and-desist letter to Eric Shab and ABC Rug Cleaning. Those websites falsely imply “the existence of an affiliation of source or sponsorship,” the letter stated.“

We haven’t heard anything back,” said Thomas Curtin, a lawyer for ABC Carpet & Home. The site looks spiffy, has a 212 phone number and states that the company has been in business since 1973. What’s missing, alarmingly, is a physical address. The company simply claims to have locations all over the “NYC area and Long Island.” (Company motto: “We don’t just clean rugs, we know rugs!”)Other carpet companies in the New York area with similar “ABC”-ish names have sprouted up over the years. In some cases, the companies appear to be little more than websites, run by a person with links to companies that clean carpets. That seems to be the case with Mr. Shab, about whom ABC Carpet & Home first started receiving complaints a few months ago.According to Mr. Curtin, the recent complaints strongly suggest that Mr. Shab is working with one Benjamin Hatooka, who has a long history with ABC Carpet & Home. In 2000, a consent decree was won in New Jersey that prohibited Mr. Hatooka, who runs a rug cleaning company in Kearny, N.J., now called Rug Wash, from using “ABC” in connection with advertising any carpet cleaning services.

(The case was filed by the Rug Renovating Company, which does have an official relationship with ABC Carpet & Home.) Mr. Hatooka now appears to leave the advertising side of the business to Mr. Shab, while Mr. Hatooka handles the cleaning, Mr. Curtin said.After the doctor decided to cancel the $42,000 deal made by his wife, he said he found himself embroiled in a very tense and very odd negotiation with Mr. Shab and Mr. Hatooka. easy way to clean vinyl mini blindsIt’s worth noting that the doctor never spoke to or directly emailed Mr. Hatooka and only inferred that the man was part of this deal because Mr. Shab said that Rug Wash would clean the doctor’s carpet.best way to clean cat pee off couch Mr. Hatooka left a phone message for the Haggler last week stating that he had never heard of the doctor. best steam vacuum cleaner rental

Mr. Shab said in a call with the Haggler — the doctor had the man’s cellphone number — that he couldn’t discuss the doctor’s case because the two had signed a confidentiality agreement. Then he threatened to sue the doctor for breaching that agreement.In a subsequent email, Mr. Shab claimed that the Haggler would be subject to a “very big lawsuit” because “more than half” of the facts in a summary of this column were wrong. best vacuum cleaners suctionMr. Shab specified only one fact: He said he had never heard of Mr. Hatooka.The Haggler was privy to real-time updates of the negotiations over the return of the carpet, which occurred in September. acer laptop fan cleaningThe doctor didn’t have much leverage. clean laptop fan air spray

A legal order to prevent the sale of the rug would cost $25,000, according to lawyers he consulted. And the clock was apparently ticking because his adversaries had said they would soon sell the carpet and keep the first $42,000 it generated.Both sides threatened legal action. Several meetings were proposed and canceled.Ultimately, on Sept. 21, an exchange of carpet and money was arranged in the service entrance of the doctor’s apartment building. The carpet was handed over by two men, neither of whom was Mr. Shab or Mr. Hatooka.As per agreed-upon terms, the doctor gave the carpet deliverers a bank check for $20,000. It’s unclear what he got for that, other than agita. The doctor brought to the Sept. 21 meeting a rug expert, Paul Iskyan, owner of the Rug Renovating Company.“I asked the guy who seemed to be in charge and he said, ‘We repaired these areas,’ ” Mr. Iskyan recalled in a phone call with the Haggler. “I flipped the carpet over. They hadn’t repaired anything.”