The point of a patrol: nobody has to call
The defining feature of a patrol program is that it runs whether or not anyone reports anything. Your property is on a route, visited weekly or every two weeks on a schedule, and graffiti gets found by us — usually before a tenant, a customer or a bylaw officer has noticed it. Owners considering a plan reasonably ask what they're actually buying with the monthly fee, so here is one visit, step by step.
Before the first visit: setup
Every plan starts with a setup pass. We walk the property with you (or your site plan), agree the covered areas — street frontage, laneway walls, fence lines, entries, parkade perimeter — and record the paint codes for every painted surface, matched to the wall as it weathers today. Coverage runs up to 12 feet from the ground; higher work, like upper-storey hits, is quoted separately when it appears. From then on, visits need nothing from you. Access details — gate codes, parkade fobs, preferred hours for noise-sensitive buildings — are recorded once at setup too, so the route never stalls waiting for a key.
Step 1: The scheduled inspection
The crew walks the covered areas on route. This is a trained pass, not a drive-by: slap-tag stickers on utility fixtures, marker on door frames, scratched glass and small etchings get logged alongside the obvious spray work. Because the same crew sees the property repeatedly, anything new stands out immediately — including the early signs of a wall becoming a repeat target, which is worth knowing before it does.
Step 2: Quick marks handled on the spot, free
Anything that takes under 15 minutes to remove is handled during the visit at no charge — it's part of the plan, not an extra. On patrolled properties this covers most of what appears, precisely because the schedule never lets graffiti accumulate or cure for weeks. Painted surfaces are touched up from the colour codes recorded at setup — matched colour, matched sheen, painted to a natural break line, no grey patches. (Why that matters so much: our colour-matching guide.)
Step 3: Larger graffiti removed at member rates
A full wall piece, or a heavily layered hit that can't be cleared in a quick stop, is removed on the spot and billed in 30-minute increments at member rates, labour and materials included — with no re-quoting cycle and no waiting for someone at your end to notice, approve and schedule. You hear about it when it's already handled, in that visit's report.
Step 4: Offensive graffiti — same day
Hate symbols, slurs and offensive content don't wait for anything: they're removed the same day. This is the category that generates tenant complaints, bylaw reports and reputational damage fastest, and the plan treats it accordingly.
Step 5: The photo report
After every visit you receive a photo report: what was found, what was removed, and the after state — dated and filed per property. For strata councils, BIAs and property managers, this is the quiet superpower of the program. Budget questions, insurance claims and bylaw responses all begin with "do you have documentation?" — and the answer is always yes, automatically, without anyone on your side photographing anything.
Why the schedule beats the hotline
It's worth being precise about what a patrol plan is not: it is not "call us when you see graffiti" with a membership card. The schedule is the product. Reactive removal — ours or anyone's — can only ever be as fast as the moment someone notices, decides it's their job, and picks up the phone; on buildings where nobody walks the laneway, that moment can be weeks after the tag went up, with the paint cured hard and the wall already attracting company. A scheduled visit removes all of those human steps. The interval is chosen to match how often your property realistically gets hit — biweekly for most, weekly for commercial strips and known repeat targets — and anything that appears between visits that you do happen to spot is still handled the same way at the next stop, or sooner for offensive content.
And if the City ever serves a notice
Patrolled properties rarely receive graffiti notices — the graffiti is usually gone before anyone reports it. But if one arrives while you're on a plan, forward it within 2 business days and we remove that graffiti free of charge, before the 10-day deadline set by Vancouver's Graffiti By-law 7343. The full notice playbook is in our 10-day guide.
What it costs
Plans start at $135/month plus GST for biweekly visits, or $270/month plus GST weekly, with a 12-month initial term, then month to month — full details on the pricing page. Backed by $5M general liability, WorkSafeBC coverage and a 5.0 rating from 275+ Google reviews.
Call or text (778) 200-8343 · support@flatmateclean.com · or request service at graffitimedic.ca.