AIBU to think my cleaner is too expensive?

Way too expensive, sorry but you are being ripped off.

My sister is a cleaner (she has been doing it for 20 years) and charges £15 per hour, I help her out twice a week on bigger houses so £30 per hour for the two of us. Most are fortnightly cleans.

We can clean a 4 bed house from top to bottom in 2 hours. My sister is meticulous.

What part of the country are you in?

This same thing and cost happened to me and can’t believe too many cleaners would do this?

I got rid.

This ^ a fixed price for the clean & to be there ‘as long as it takes’ is deffo promoted on fb cleaners pages. I’ve never understood this really as if you’ve got a 4 bed house to do & you run over how do they manage their diary? Of course they’re not gonna do everything if they’ve got another booking at a specified time. I think it’s a rip off & hourly is better.

That’s very expensive! My cleaner has just upped the price to £65 from £60. She’s here for 3-3.5 hours - for a 5 bed, 4 reception room house, with a bathroom, 2 en-suites and a downstairs toilet.

There are whole Facebook groups where people are mentored on to how to max their cash as a cleaner - applaud this, it’s fair enough! One of the key bits of advice is always charge by job not hour, and also upsell to an extra deep clean etc, charge £20+ etc. I think for the price by the job aspect to work for you, you do need an excellent dedicated cleaner - one hour is really taking the mick

Not ok if that was how long. It is not possible to clean a 4 bedroom house in that time.

Not ok if that was how long. It is not possible to clean a 4 bedroom house in that time.

Fascinated to know how clean the house is in one hour?! If most of that is hoovering, just get a Roomba - it will pay itself off in about a month.

I would ask her not to come again.
I clean a 4bed house, but only 1 of the bedrooms, 2.5 hrs on a good day.

Her price is fine as is 'as long as it takes' - some cleaners are massively efficient and you're paying for the clean, not just the time - but it's not possible to clean a house that size in an hour. It also depends on what you expect her to do fortnightly as you haven't really said that.

Well, quite.

We pay £96 for four hours every fortnight (London). The amount is cheap; but only doing one hour for that is not on.

If your house is cleaned to a good standard in an hour, I'd suggest you don't actually need a cleaner, as you're clearly doing most of it yourself!

Cleaners usually charge per hour. We have a fortnightly clean for 3 hours (3 bed) and it's £45 . There's 2 of them so they are only here for 1.5 hrs but it's 3 hrs work.

She did say she could do with a bit more time but 3 hrs is all we can afford so she just does what she can in that time.

How can anyone clean a 4 bed in 1 hour?

£75 for one hour 😳 total piss take

No her complaint is that she’s charging way too much for an hour’s work.

I pay £20 per hour (London) for 8 hours a week (big house).

I don’t think fortnightly cleans work it would be better to have weekly cleaning so dirt and dust doesn’t build up.

Ive no idea what this woman thinks she’s doing but I’ve had cleaners all my adult life and they’re always paid by the hour.

If you’re in London good cleaners are two a penny.

Is the house clean? In all these comments I can't see anywhere whete you feel it isn't. So, essentially your complaint is "she completes her work too efficiently" which honestly, yes, is a bit unreasonable.

I think £75 for a fortnightly clean of a 4 bedroom house is fine tbh. But you should have been clear about what you expected the clean to cover and the standard required.

I don't think paying per hour is necessarily useful - I'd prefer someone who cleaned efficiently for 2 hours and did a good job and cleaned everything needed over someone who went more slowly for 3 hours but didn't end up with a better result.

I feel a bit of an idiot reading these responses!
I pay £105 for a fortnightly clean. For that I get three cleaners who descend and whirl around for just over one hour, then disappear. I have a four bedroom house but they say they don’t have time to do the whole thing - usually 1 bedroom plus our front room don’t get vacuumed.

She won’t be picking up much dust if she’s wizzing over the carpet fast!

Get someone else and pay an hourly rate. My cleaner takes 4 hours for a 4 bed 2 bath house and she is very thorough, corners are hoovered etc.

I wouldnt pay a cleaner a fixed cost because I know how long it takes to clean my house to the standard I like. Fixed cost cleaners ALWAYS take shortcuts.

Generally I agree with her that it takes as long as it takes and that thinking of it in hourly terms is unhelpful. BUT that's only if all the cleaning you want done is done and she can't possibly be doing that in an hour!

5 bedroom house - 4 hours - depending on cleaner around here its £75-£80
Always takes four hours.

Let her go. I pay £22 per hour and have a 3 hour clean for 3 bedrooms,2 bathrooms, lounge and kitchen. I would expect all that yours is doing plus skirting, dusting of light fitting etc. She taking the piss.

I pay £20 an hour and get a 6 hour deep clean once a month, yes you’re definitely being ripped off. Ask for their hourly rate and then book for say 3 hours every fortnight.