Do you pay your cleaner if you cancel?

[SomethingNastyInTheBallPool]

I’m interested in what the consensus is. If we cancel our cleaner’s visit and can’t reschedule, we pay her for her lost time.

She’s upset because a client has told her they won’t pay her after cancelling at short notice because their kids were sick. The client says they can’t afford to pay her for days when she hasn’t worked for them.

This feels completely unfair to me. It’s not the cleaner’s fault - she’s already on a low income, why should she lose out?

What do you normally do in this situation?
(And yes, the cleaner did lay out her T&Cs when she took on the client.)

No I don't. We only cancel with lots of notice generally (except covid infections). And it's important to keep the arrangement as clearly self employment. PPs paying for sick leave and holiday need to be very careful that they aren't establishing an "employee" relationship with everything that entails. A cleaner won a case at an employment tribunal on this type of basis and the family concerned had to pay thousands in redundancy.

My cleaner also works via an agency and can usually fill the slot anyway.

@TooHotToRamble - This has nothing to do with self employed vs employed. Most self employed people charge a cancellation fee up to 100% of the booked service. I don’t know what the case is you refer to but there will be a lot more to it than a domestic cleaner who cleaned for a number of different clients once a week for a few hours. You can happily pay your cleaner if you cancel, free from worry that you will be making them an employee 🙃

We do in most circumstances. If we are Ill we absolutely would. Generally if we go on holiday we still have him come in and do deep cleaning. We don’t always pay though, if they have had lots of notice (and therefore can pick up other work through the agency we use).

I didn’t say charging a cancellation fee if that’s set out in terms of the contract would make a cleaner employed but along with other factors it might do I prefer to keep the lines very clear.

Employment status is established by the type of arrangement that’s in place. So if you are paying your cleaner when you cancel and the cleaner hasn’t set a cancellation fee, plus paying them for holidays and when they are off sick or when you are sick or on holiday, and there may be other factors in play such as the cleaner always comes at set times and doesn’t send a replacement when they can’t provide cleaning. The status then starts to look more like employment than self employment and you are potentially opening yourself up to redundancy claims, having to pay maternity leave etc etc etc.

Absolutely. If I cancel I still pay. If she cancels I don't

It's a terms and conditions issue.

Most services cite a cancellation fee based on a period of notice.

For example if you don't need your cleaner because you are going on holiday and give one months notice that would not invoke a charge because it's enough time for the cleaner to schedule other work.

If you cancel a week before it might incur a 50% cancellation fee to reflect the fact the cleaner might not find other work and the effort of finding it at relatively short notice.

If you cancel 2 days before then you pay in full because realistically the cleaner has a very low probability of making other income generating appointments.

The notion that you can't afford to pay for work not done is irrelevant (as the client claims in this case).

You can afford the service or not. The fact you can afford it when delivered has no bearing on your ability to afford it when (even through no fault of your own) you elected not to receive that service.

Yes we pay if we cancel our cleaner. It's not her fault and she can't replace the work or the income. Our cleaner is amazing i wouldnt want her to be out of pocket if it was my fault

Come on, if you have a 'one person band' doing your cleaning, that's a pretty unrealistic and unachievable ask of them to magic someone up potentially at short notice. If they are normally reliable then the times that is likely to happen are as rare as hen's teeth, so it's time to say this is a first world problem and let it go.

if they aren't reliable and let you down on numerous occasions, then fix the root cause of the problem and get someone who's reliable.

In fact, it would be a no to having a completely new person in my house anyway. It takes me time to build up trust with a cleaner, I'd sooner skip a week and have just one person who I know and trust. I know people on here give their cleaner a key, but I wouldn't do that either!

I rarely cancel but I’d always pay, I paid her all through COVID because I was working and getting paid even if she couldn’t.

I don’t have a cleaner but in my view if someone cancels they should pay.

People work out their budgets by taking into account what they expect to bring in.

The status then starts to look more like employment than self employment and you are potentially opening yourself up to redundancy claims, having to pay maternity leave etc etc etc.

in theory yes, but in practice it is highly doubtful that having someone doing your cleaning for 3 hrs a week, possible getting cash, is going to put themselves through the legal expense and stress of a tribunal claim when they've still got to earn a living. They'll soon get a reality check when the costs of a solicitor mount up and they understand the potential of losing all their customers because they have to do all the tribunal submission work themselves. It's a very time consuming and draining process. It's the MN equivalent of the miracle chicken, the free solicitor's advice, "The MN Tribunal Case"