Am I being unreasonable increasing my cleaning rates to £17.50 an hour?

[Chattychoo]

I am a cleaner , I am half semployed half self employed. I charge £15 an hour(north west) , some I provide cleaning products some they provide.
I last increased my rates 3 years ago but now employ my daughter a few hours a week.
I have a few clients I travel to (20 mile round trip) and due to inflation, fuel and general increased prices thought it was time for a price increase.
i have googled and tried to find what the general prices people charge and I don't want to overcharge anyone.
i have sent a couple of clients that I travel to an email raising to £17.50 an hour but it's not going down well. I haven't heard off one but the other has questioned it . I stated costs have risen and did mention fuel which I probably shouldn't have.
Ive been asked to re consider as it's now coming back down but all my other costs have gone up, insurance , minimum wage even cost of washing my cloths , even my rent so now I don't know how to reply , I feel I'm overcharging and wish I'd never mentioned it!

again I agree!!

I can't keep posting to agree with these sensible posts, I'm beginning to change my mind about MN having a public 👍🏻

That's a good rate. I would not back doen but start doing some marketing, or outreach etc as bacn up in case your clients decide to cancel.

I was charging £20 an hour six years ago and I was turning people away.

I don't charge travel time but I'ts hour round trip so that's ab hour I lose . I get no holiday or sick pay and these are good about giving me notice if they're away(obviously don't get paid) and I'm sure it's only been twice in 3 years. I do have people that ring up and cancel an hour before which is annoying as no work no pay .

Increasing the price of a service is not the same as requesting a pay rise from an employer. By that reasoning there would never be any inflation, we'd be paying the same for haircuts, meals out, concerts that we did years and years ago. If you have a decent employer they'd be automatically giving you annual pay rises anyway to meet the rising costs.

You might not have had a £2.50 pay rise, but OP is very close to minimum wage. The hard, manual labour involved in being a cleaner absolutely deserves £17.50 an hour. More, I think!

Irrelevant & none of your business.

Op fuel might not be there issue but it’s yours by the time you travel to them your losing money just stick with it for those your travelling further to and if there not happy let them go otherwise like you said your going be doing it for 15.00 forever put your others up by a pound or 1.50 you can advertise closer to home on facebook or in your local shops.

We pay our £25 an hour. So I think you’re more than reasonable.

You’re obviously very good at what you do and it’s not unreasonable to increase your prices. I run classes and of three venues I use, one recently put its price up by £2 to £17 per hour; the other two both raised the rate by £25%.

I also struggle with increasing prices and when I did a fairly steep jump, one of my clients said it was better to do a pound a year than £3 every three years, so I took that on board.

I would send an email to all your clients- not just the furthest away ones- and say that due to increasing costs, you are putting up prices for the first time in 3 years. This contextualises it and makes it fair to all your clients. Don’t apologise and don’t explain beyond that.

Going forward, maybe build in a tiered surcharge for clients who live further away but make it clear the rate for cleaning and the travel rate- so for example you might charge £18 ph for cleaning within a 5- or 10- mile drive; £19ph for people living 10-15 miles away; £20ph for those living over 15 miles away (or whatever distance you are prepared to travel). And add 50pph or £1ph on to your rates every year.

I do offer a discount to people who pay for multiple sessions at once, so I suppose you could do that with the cleaning if it made you feel more comfortable and you don’t already bulk-invoice a month at a time.

Yanbu Op. Remind your clients that you havent raised your prices in over three years. In that time, average wage growth was over 15%. And NLW has increased by 21.9% in the last three years for over-21s.

So your customers have had the benefit of you keeping your prices low throughout the worst of the high inflation period, but that’s not sustainable. Tell them you are simply benchmarking your rates to the market rate.

In honesty you might be better to recruit clients closer to home so you can cap your travel costs.

FYI I pay my cleaner £60 for three hours which includes her round trip travel time (30 mins). This was an increase - last year I paid her £50 for the same work. The price of fuel and food is ludicrous. You can’t work for peanuts.

Yes this too.

i think you should get more local jobs & only work for people who appreciate you.

It is a reasonable increase considering the last one was 3 years ago. It is not sustainable for you to be absorbing cost of living increases and not passing these on to your customers. I

I have a cleaner and we work on the rules that if they cancel on me I don’t pay, if I cancel on her, I pay.

Stick to the price rise you have proposed. Perhaps for more local customers you can charge less, but only if you can afford to. Your rates don't seem too high. I'm sure you will get new customers if you lose any current ones - but they probably won't replace you for less.

Well hopefully you'll feel more confident after this thread. 🌷💕

My cleaner in London just increased from £15 to £20. What made it bad was the sob story about some debt she got herself into, her ex husband and other stuff that took about 10 minutes to tell me whilst she was on the clock. Didn't take any cues when I said I accept the increase and to move on.

You increase your prices, cite inflation and business costs and move on. Anyone questioning it doesn't appreciate your work. They can just say they cannot afford it and that's that, but don't make it a negotiation.

OP you need to be more professional about this. Put your prices up and also have a cancellation policy that you need 24 (or what ever you think) hours notice otherwise full cost.

If you don’t value yourself or your work then other won’t either.

That's not something you need to accept either.

Sounds like it's time to get some contracts in place! YOU determine your cancellation policy, not your clients

My cleaner in the north west has just gone up from £17.50 to £18.50. If I were you I would put it up by £1 every year going forward so it’s expected and not such a big increase.

Also don’t apologise when you put them up because it makes it look like you’re uncertain and so people are more likely to question it.

My cleaner just sent me a message after she finished cleaning saying “all done. Just to let you know the rate will be going up by £1/hour from next time”.

I would also say that you will still charge the usual rate if people cancel with less than 24 or 48 hrs notice. That’s just taking the piss. Fair enough if something unexpected comes up and they need to see if you can reschedule but it shouldn’t be a regular occurrence.

They will value you more if you seem in control and confident rather than desperate for the work.

If you are in line with others in your area then I can't see you would lose loyal clients over it, Fuel and cost of living are definitely something to factor into your prices. We are all affected by the cost of living and you have a right to a decent standard of living too. You are a business not a charity, You may enjoy your job but I am guessing you don't go out to work purely out of the goodness of your heart.

Incidentally the national living wage is £12.21 out of your hourly rate you are paying not only your overheads but your own tax, national insurance and pension so I think £17.50 is more than fair

I'd agree with this - if petrol prices are an issue you need to seek clients closer to home, a bit like for employed people whinging about commute costs id say they need to look for work closer to home or consider moving to closer to their workplace.
Personally I think 17.50 a hour is quite a lot for cleaning especially in the north West where wages generally aren't that high.
I used to have cleaners but I'll be honest I stopped because to me it felt too expensive, I'd class cleaning as something thats a minimum wage job, it doesn't take particular skill we are all capable of cleaning our own home.
So I just clean my own home now and to be honest it's not that hard and frankly I do a better job than the cleaners ever used to do.

But some people view having a cleaner as a luxury they are willing to pay that bit more for, so it just depends on your clients. Everyone has a point at which a service becomes more expensive than they think it's worth, you just need to work out where that line is.9

Just to be clear people earning the minimum wage working for an employer will still have to pay tax, NI and pension contributions from it?

All the cleaners in this area charge more and Im just in the Nirth West not a pricey area .

Leave it a few days for them go look around and realise its now the market rate. I'd cough up and pay it rather than risk a new cleaner who might do a poor job. Theres also established trust if they allow you access to their house.