We have had our cleaner for the last 6 months. She's lovely, reliable, really good eye for detail (usually, more on this in a minute) and the best cleaner we've had since living in the area. She comes 2 hours a week.
She was in a different career until 6 months ago (although had cleaned in the last), so as one of her first customers we agreed on an hourly rate at what turned out to be the lower end of the scale for cleaners in the area.
Over the last few months she has taken on more clients, including a lot of our neighbours and we know from the grapevine she charges them between £1-5 an hour more.
It might be worth saying it's just me and DH in our house, and we are relatively clean/tidy so there's never really anything that gruesome/taxing to clean, it's very much just maintenance.
Recently, I've noticed standards have slipped by quite a bit. I'm not convinced she's staying the full 2 hours and things that used to be covered are being left or half done (for example not hovering under sofa cushions any more and just wiping the front of surfaces like TV stands rather than removing what's on them and dusting the whole thing).
Before this started happening I was saying to DH that she was doing such a good job I did feel bad we were paying her less than other people so we were considering upping it, but then we started noticing the differences. I'm wondering whether she is taking less care because we are paying her less than other people?
So, after that very long winded post - I want to up her hourly rate, as I'm assuming she's doing a worse job because we are paying her less. DH completely disagrees and says in no other profession would you get a pay rise for doing a worse job.. maybe more of a WWYD than AIBU? Or actually.. is she BU as we are just paying what we agreed?!