To think £85 a week is extortionate

[Pollypanda]

For a cleaner.

My house is not large, it’s a new build 4 bed with 2 bathrooms and a downstairs loo. We would only need 2 of the bedrooms cleaned as the others are largely unused.

I have been quoted £85 a week for a basic house clean (2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, kitchen, living room and stairs)

AIBU to think this is obscenely high? I was expecting about 40-50.

For context I live in the south, but not London or the south east.

I have not read the entire thread and I wish now I had not deleted the photos after Molly Maid ‘cleaned’ my house. It wasn’t that bad so they probably didn’t think I would notice. All they did was rearrange items on surfaces, ‘forgot’ a bathroom and were finished in half an hour or so at a cost of ca £65 or so for a team of two cleaners. I was working from home and in a call - I saw them run out of the house and get into their cars, but nothing I could do about it. When I phoned the supervisor to complain they said they could not hear me and hung up. I do think I got a refund in the end. I put it down to experience - doing my own cleaning again.

I had similar when we were lookinng for a cleaner... I didn't want a "deep clean" every week, I just wanted the basics kept on top of so I could do the rest... but they wouldn't do that. Had 2 ridiculous quotes from companies, then got our great (independent) cleaner, who actually did what we wanted!

I live in London zone 2, 3 bed 2 bath, I am a single working mother during the week and my life has changed since I got a cleaner....she does three hours three times a week for £90.
I simply ADORE her...going back to a clean house is priceless...cooking from scratch every night is bad enough ( I have allergies) and not having to clean is a bliss....

I'm in Midlands and our cleaner charges £10 ph. She does 1 1/2 hours one day and 1 hour another day. Both days she cleans work surfaces and top of cooker, bleached sinks, vax and steam mops kitchen floor, cleans downstairs cloakroom, mops floor, vax and mops wooden floors in lounge, polishes dining table and coffee table and unit. Dusts, vax hall and stairs, cleans bathroom and a Childs bedroom. On day she does longer she does extra job clean inside of one window, cleans silver or mirrored robes on child room wipes down paint work on doors and stair rail etc. She self employed, no idea if she pays tax or Ni and don't care as she does a good job. She will do extra hour if I want any other jobs done. £85 is too high.

@PooBearnow I agree with you on paying properly. I disagree with you on the superiority of companies over self-employed cleaners. They offer a different product. Companies can send someone in every week, regardless of holidays, but you will never have the same personal relationship.

My old cleaner walked to our house. She did more hours in term time when I was working and her kids were at school, but cut back in the holidays to be with her kids. She also did a mix of housework and a dog walk. If we went away at the weekend she would dog sit. She didn't have insurance - I have house insurance and would never dream of burdening her with worry about litigation. I paid slightly above the market rate at the time and I gave her a cash gift at Christmas and in the Summer holidays . It worked for both of us.

I had a similar ridiculous quote from molly maid years ago so just found a different agency who quotes by the hour. Much more sensible. I set the hours and scale up or down if necessary

The best I had - the ladies would put out any washing in the machine, fold up dry washing and change bedding. Ace!

MM quoted me £60 for 3 hours but I found a lady for £12 (also SE) who in 2 hours does a good but surface only clean on our spacious 3 bed 1 bath house. She doesn't do windows, oven etc but all my floors are vacuumed and mopped, wipe down of surfaces, full bathroom & toilet clean and light dust. It's a godsend and allows me time to do the deep cleans or bigger jobs that I was forever neglecting.

Poobearnow I think it's probably best I don't invite you round

London suburbs
£60 for 6 hours.
(3 cleaners for 2 hours each)
They do a fabulous job.
6 bedrooms 3 bathrooms etc.
If I were you op.I would want to know hourly rate.

£10/hr isn't enough to cover full cost of an employee.

DH and I can easily afford to have a cleaner. I had a housekeeper until last month. Another family offered her more money and I didn't want to pay that much so was happy for her to move on and earn more. She has asked to come back because on an hourly basis she earns so much less plus we were nice. We paid her $13/hr, which is £8.50 but we pay full medical costs, 10% pension contribution, 4 weeks vacation and unlimited sick time. Hours are 8-3 and anything over that is 1.5x pay. The cost to us was more than $20/hr. New employer offered her $50k a year but 2wks vacation, no sick, no medical coverage and she was self employed so left to pay for both portions of the Medicare tax, in total it's about 16%.

Here in the Us they have a set minimum wage for employees and self employed. The minimum wage for self employed persons is over $15/hr, it's $8 and change for employees. It makes a lot of sense and I think it would help self employed people earn a proper minimum wage.

Genevieva you sound like a lovely client. The superiority of a company was only over £10 an hour cleaners- you paid over market rate so you got a great service.

I’m not dissing £10 per hour cleaners either - I think they are amazing for doing the job they do for lower than minimum wage. X

*Glasgowbound best not 🤪

Want2bSupermum You were so knowledgable I thought you were a cleaner. The self employed minimum rate is a fantastic idea! It would be great if we adopted that over here x

PooBear I am a cleaner...I clean my own home!!!!!

Forgot the grin

Thanks for taking the time to write out that detailed post poobear. I was about to do the same until I saw yours. I was charging £10/hr until a few months ago and I wasn’t coming out with minimum wage after everything came out of it. I increased my rate to £12 which is a higher rate for my area but I don’t justify my rates to anyone. They can take it or leave it. One lady contacted me to enquire about my service (I am full so can’t take on new clients anyway) she said “i’ll Pay you £8/hr and if you’re good i’ll Increase it to £10/hr” (so if I’m not good she’ll keep me on anyway at £8? 😂) I replied “I can assure you, you won’t”

And what if it only takes say an hour and a half, that is a heck of an hourly rate. Seems high to me.

IStandWithPosie well done 👍 but you know you could increase to more and still be full 😊. You must always believe in your own worth. Cleaning well is a skill! X

I pay 25 every 2 weeks for 3 hrs ish. I had the minimum. I have a disablity but work. I am in a flat though. It isnt a tiny tiny flat. It has 2 bedrooms a bathroom , tiny kitchen & a huge living room. She doesnt usually do 3 hrs but she does it well. So i just pay her anyway. 20pcm for agency fees.

Ps : i actually would kiss her feet if she let me x

Poobear
Problem is agency staff often don’t do a better job.

We used Molly Maid 3 times. Highly recommended. Not in my house I assure you! We have a 4 bed 3 bath. But to keep costs down I said 2 beds one bath and an open plan living / kitchen/ dining area downstairs. First time they came it was £150 for the “deep clean”.

The agency sent 3 ladies. They did 2 hours 45 mins. Fair enough. But they worked very slowly. Didn’t do a bunch of jobs I’d agreed with the woman I’d met. When I checked the work they did some things missed and other things I just left it when they looked wide eyed.

The woman at the agency said it may be completely different cleaners coming so I kept them on. Unfortunately it was the same women. The cleaning got sloppier from then on. The woman doing the feather dusting did a cursory flick, cobwebs everywhere, didn’t bend her back to dust the skirting under things and the other woman hovered around my dds cassette player, which had been left on the floor in the kitchen. They missed bits out. The top of a loo. The ledge around dds bed etc etc (normal height bed). £85 for a very sloppy clean. 3 women, less than an hour. They absolutely didn’t exert themselves, which is fair enough as they have other jobs but they didn’t clean either!

I told them after the 3rd clean not to come back. The £150 “deep clean” was about the same standard as the clean I paid £40 for 2 ladies 1.5 - 2 hours - that was a few years ago btw.

I agree with the consensus of finding individual cleaners and paying them a decent amount, which in 2018 should be more than £10 an hour.

I think it is unfair to say the number of bedrooms and bathrooms in a property should take x hours. It is what goes on in those rooms that count.

Do you wear shoes in the house?
Do you have pets?
Do you have children?
Do you only eat at the table?
Do you have a glass or high gloss finish on cupboards/doors?
Do you wash your hands regularly whilst cooking and after using the toilet?
Are you the sort to spill something and immediately wipe it up yourself?
Do you have lots of items in your home that require moving to clean properly - general clutter/bottles on the sides of the bath/kitchen sink?

The number of electric points and flights of stairs will also have an impact on the efficiency of a cleaner.

Some people will have a cleaner to help keep on top of things, others will not lift a finger because they have a cleaner.

Everyone has different standards of what they call clean. Some want to know it has been done others want to be able to see that it is done.

I did a cleaning round when I was at uni. In one house I knew the owner must have been pregnant long before she announced it. It was unbelievable to me that she had finally learnt to wipe up the mess her period made from around the toilet. Another household had the same bar of soap in the bathroom and kitchen for over 2 years. They had friends over a lot and had dinner parties etc.

I would love to know how much a cleaner would have to charge these days to earn enough to actually qualify to pay tax and national insurance and not require tax credits.

I think a self-employed minimum wage is a fantastic idea. The cost of websites, phonelines, marketing, bookkeeping, insurance and professional membership, DBS etc seem to get overlooked. The amount of time I now spend dealing with enquiries, networking and learning the skills that lead to being considered an expert in the field while not actually being paid is quite staggering. Yet when quoting an hourly rate people don't always equate this in.

It depends what you are having done, it is very expensive for a few hours clean, for a more deeper clean, it might be fine.

Hmm. If all the £10 an hour cleaners put the price up to )£15 an hour, would the clients pay up or cancel? If they cancel the cleaner will be worse off. I don’t see how we can state confidently that £10 is under minimum wage when we do not know the tax status of those cleaners, whether they do it part time etc. I can’t afford £10 an hour so all a bit of a moot point for me, but it’s a fantasy!

well done 👍 but you know you could increase to more and still be full 😊. You must always believe in your own worth. Cleaning well is a skill! X

Ah thank you! You should go into motivational speaking!