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!

yanbu, raise and if it’s a problem for them replace them, as you’re full etc hopefully it won’t be too much work, advertise on fb groups etc that you have openings. I’m in north Scotland, it’s £20 an hour here.

My cleaner told me she was putting her prices up on Friday. I’ve been expecting it since Christmas as she hadn’t put her prices up for at least twelve months and we all know prices are soaring. She has always put her prices up by £1 each time, possibly, like you, for ease but this means that it’s been over 5% each time. My pay rises have been nothing like that so she is now costing a greater amount of my income than she did when I first had her. This time, it may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back but, if it is, it will be because I can no longer afford a cleaner. I don’t expect her to charge me less when I am sure there are others who would be prepared to pay her increased rates.

@HoldinguphalftheskyYou’re wilfully misunderstanding me.

Thats what people will be thinking, not she’s doing. HENCE regardless of whether it’s true.

But hey, don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

SEE OP?!

Understanding, sensible and conscientious clients like as this do exist and you deserve to be paid by one!

In other news; I’d happily pay a cleaner £20 / hour.

My cleaner has just find this and tbh it’s annoying. Every year she seems to go up about £2 an hour which doesn’t sound much but that’s £10 a week and it mounts up.

I’m afraid I don’t agree that she needs to be affordable. Cleaning is not an essential service. And affordable for who exactly? She will be affordable for many people at the new rate and hopefully they will value her worth and pay the price she now needs to charge in order to have a profitable business.

Charge her petrol travel cost too!! A
good cleaner is like gold dust and if you advertised at £20ph you’d be inundated with people wanting to be taken on!

My cleaner put her price up to £17.50 (and I provided the products). I had to stop employing her, not because she wasn't doing a good job, not because I didn't think she deserved to earn that much, but it was way more than I earn per hour and I just couldn't afford it.

Goodness no. The going rate is £20/ph around here.

Do you get wage increases At work? Notice the price of food petrol electricity rent etc has all gone up?

Both the rate and the increase are entirely reasonable, OP.

However, a lot of people are having to tighten their belts right now, so you may find that some of your clients decide that they can no longer afford it. And if they do, that's ok because it's highly likely that you will be able to find new clients who are willing and able to pay a fair price for your services.

I get that you've been working with these clients for a long time, but you're running a business here. If they can't afford to pay for the service that you're offering at what you deem to be a fair rate, then they will need to make alternative arrangements.

Obviously, if you were charging way more than the market rate, there would be a danger that you might just make yourself unaffordable and put yourself out of business. But at £17.50 an hour, I would very much doubt that you're in that territory.

Lol. Cleaners are a luxury. Clean your own bog if you're that bothered

@Chattychoo I think your problem is increasing the cost this much in one go.
It's a 17% hike when many are feeling the pinch from COL. £1.50 or 10% might have gone down better but is still a chunk if they have quite a few hours.
If £15 hrs is low in your area then a hike may well be justified and you will probably keep your clients. But if it's fairly standard you do risk them leaving or dropping hours.

NMW is £12.71. I'm on zero hours, so get holiday calculated for every hour I work, it's about 13% on top of my NMW. You've presumably got insurance to pay. Potentially covering sick leave, products and travel/petrol and £17.50 isn't really making you much (if anything) above NMW.

I think that still sounds like a bargain - the rate for "above board" cleaners where I live is 26€ an hour and I can't find a cleaner willing to work legally even if I offer to pay their travel time each way as an extra work hour! A few cash in hand, no receipt offers, but that means they aren't paying tax and probably aren't insured (here anyway, it might not mean that everywhere).

If she won’t pay the extra, you e already said you get most of your clients through word of mouth so I’m supposing your reputation is good, you should be able to fill her slot relatively easily with someone who lives closer and is less hassle to get to. Don’t let it worry you.

I pay £20 and hour to my cleaner and she deserves every penny.
Put your prices up, you'll find new work of you task your existing clients to recomend you. Sack the agency off as well, they are probably paying you peanuts and skimming off the top!

Yes, it can be the worst of both worlds being a cleaner, really: you have all the responsibility, costs and uncertainty of running your own business; but when it comes to what they pay you, many just think "Oh, cleaning is minimum wage work, so that's all I should really have to pay them".

I really don't think you can win, though. If you keep putting your prices up by 50p every six months, people complain that you're always trying to rinse them more and hoping to sneak it in gradually so they don't realise the full extent of it; but if you absorb rising costs as long as you can before the cost you charge inevitably has to rise to a realistic amount, people will say "Goodness, 17%?! I didn't get a 17% increase this year; don't you know there's a cost of living crisis on?!"

Indeed. One problem of the skyrocketing CoL is that people think that others are trying to cash in on it by raising their prices and aren't showing any consideration of how people are meant to cope with it... without quite getting it that it's affecting them just as much!

I don’t think I’ve wilfully misinterpreted anyone to be honest. I think it’s reasonable to OP to put her prices up. Just because you may think it will price some people out, should she absorb the extra costs and see her own real income falling so that some other people don’t have to clean their own homes? She isn’t a charity. If you can’t afford a cleaner you can’t have one, simple as that. And someone who’s self employed, who has to pay their tax, national insurance, holiday, sick, travel time, and breaks on one hour’s wage isn’t going to be making NMW if she is taking £15 for an hour’s actual work, for two hours of her working day when you factor in travelling time to that job. So then she’ll have to get another job and the clients will lose out anyway.

I think that’s fair. My cleaner did similar, asked first and I said of course. And make sure any new clients are on the higher rate from the start too.

No, I work for myself and so I have to pay my cleaner out of my taxed income which means that if she’s £25 an hour I have to earn much
more than that.

But, does that mean she shouldn’t earn that much?