Cleaner Price! AIBU?

[Wyntersdiary]

So i was looking for quote for a cleaner and most of them came back at what i thought it would be, between 10 - 15 PH except one... £25 PER HOUR for just 1 person! i couldnt believe it , i wish i could get paid £25 an hour to clean someones house.

End of tenancy clean ... £95 for 2 hours!!!

This is all for just cleaning a bathroom, lounge and kitchen .. in a small flat as i said bedrooms didnt need doing... im shocked.

@SmileyClare

Agreed

Plus this cleaner has just started. Hasn’t even built up a solid reputation. Instead gone into the industry charging £10 - £15 more than many others.

At its most extreme, that’s over 100% higher than someone more experienced in their field!

Well the skill to cleaning is to do it properly ! I am self employed and employed and before lockdown I was cleaning 7.5 hours a day and it was exhausting ! 5 hours with my clients and 2.5 hours with my contracted job and no where near the £50,000 per year ! Think the £14,000 mark ! If I had time for tenancy cleans I would do them but you cannot rely on them every day of the week , well you couldn’t where I live ! Since lockdown I’ve just been doing my contracted job and will when able go back to my self employed jobs but cut them down considerably and my hourly rate will increase for £12 an hour to £15! What ripples seems to be saying is that should cleaning become £25 ( highly unlikely) an hour more people would go into that line of work as well basically you don’t have to be skilled and it so much easier. Well guess what as other people have said it’s not easy, your not just wafting around a feather duster and spraying air freshener around and drinking countless cups of tea . Your getting to your clients house timing yourself in order to complete your job in order to get to the next client ! Oh and if I could have afforded to go to university I would have and incidentally one of my children has been to university and is not even considering In giving up her career to become a cleaner debt or no debt !

[quote Northernsoullover]@chubbyhotchoc there is absolutely no way that she could have cleaned a house that size in 6 hours by herself. Its just impossible. A kitchen will often take us 3 hours by itself if we do the white goods. You dodged a bullet there.
snowballer just stop talking! No stress? I cleaned a flat to the best I could given its age and condition. The tenant rang me saying the agency were going to deduct from his bond because it wasn't clean.. it turned out they were trying to charge him for worn enamel, a burn mark on the worktop etc.
Luckily I had photos of the cleaned property so he was able to take the dispute to the TDS (he won) but not before his original tirade at me. That was stressful.
Cleaners not turning up to assist on big jobs that have a deadline because new tenants are moving in. Also pretty stressful. Painters leaving fag ash in the sink and skid marks in the loo leaving agents to say it wasn't cleaned properly.. (this is why I take photos). Invoices not being paid in a timely fashion? Stressful. I might not have the stress of say a heart surgeon but you know NOTHING about the industry so just stop!!
Cleaners that pho[/quote]
Actually I have cleaned for work. Holiday villas, week in week out for months and some people on holiday really don't give a shit about being tidy or clean. I still say it's not one of the hardest jobs in the world. Yes it's tiring, yes it's unpleasant at times, but "one of the hardest jobs" out there? Get real.

I do not begrudge cleaners earning a decent wage, but lots of people doing valuable work earn shit money. As a nursery worker and safeguarding lead I earn £9

Presumably you get paid holidays, sick pay, employers NIC, workplace pension, paid for your entire work day inc business travel, no need to pay your own insurance, no need to pay your own accountancy fees, etc etc?

No; the OP says 25 sponds an hour - the end-of-tenancy clean is 95 quid for two hours, so that's £47.50. Presumably you get two cleaners for that, though, and it represents a small discount.

Cleaning is no different to any other service; you get what you pay for. Good, reliable cleaners are thin on the ground and if you want one of them then expect to pay above bottom dollar. Cleaners get no sick pay, paid holidays or pension contributions so this all has to be factored into their pay. I would be ashamed to pay £10.00 an hour for such a physically demanding job.

Lots of people earn shit money, but it shouldn't be a culling of tall poppies every time someone in a "working class" professional manages to find a marketplace for their work, and be able to charge more than just minimum wage.

Just because someone manages to escape £10-an-hour doesn't mean we all have to drag them back just to make ourselves feel better. I earn six or seven times that an hour, does it mean I feel i work "harder" than the cleaner? Absolutely not! I'd argue the fact I can sit on Mumsnet sometimes while I'm waiting for a meeting is evidence that I don't know I'm born compared to people who are properly hustling for clients, doing long arduous days cleaning. More than happy for those entrepreneurial folk to get their £25, more power to them. If you're complaining, you could always give it a go yourself!

I pay £12.50 an hour. She does 5 hours a week because she also does the garden. When it is wet she does 3 hours.

If someone starting out in your field GinDaddy requested over 100% more than what you are earning, despite your many years of experience, and they got it, How would that make you feel? Would you be knocking on your managers door requesting a pay increase? Or would you say fair play to them?

It’s other cleaners who should be questioning this new person starting out in their industry asking for over and above 100% more than they are charging.

They may react by putting their own fees up. Everybody may react that way. In which case, their clients may start to drop off, resulting them in losing a lot of business.

I am self employed. If I increased my fees by 100%, I’d lose a lot of clients. So I’m forced to keep them in line with the market rate, otherwise I go under.

£25 per hour, for a cleaner isn’t market rate clearly. Yet someone new to that industry has come along and doing just that.

Only complete dickheads complain about what a cleaner would earn. Do it yourself then!

Market rate is exactly that, what the 'market' as an average is willing to pay but depending on personal circumstance and broader economics (like basic supply and demand) there are always people either side of that.

Luxury brands would not exist otherwise - as a bag is just a bag right, a car is just a car. Maybe they think there's a shortage of cleaners and someone will pay.

The price of something is purely what someone is willing to pay for it.

If someone starting out in your field GinDaddy requested over 100% more than what you are earning, despite your many years of experience, and they got it, How would that make you feel? Would you be knocking on your managers door requesting a pay increase? Or would you say fair play to them?

I wouldn't just say fair play to them. I'd ask them for a coffee and find out how they did it, and congratulate them on opening up a new marketplace.

I spent a lot of time in the US and this is the mentality - find out who's winning, emulate them, understand their behaviours.

Came back here to the UK, and it's always "it's not fair...that person must be crooked in some way...I demand more for myself even though I haven't justified it".

So no, I wouldn't be knocking on the door of my MD, a commercially minded person who would know the marketplace today post COVID, and would just think i was acting entitled.

As a nursery worker and safeguarding lead I earn £9

That is a national disgrace.

Why would you want to find out how they did it? So that you could then do it yourself? So you would then go knocking on your manager’s door, either for a pay increase or to hand in your resignation so you could earn that amount elsewhere!!

I’m self employed (not a cleaner) and my hourly rate is £25 ph - before I was SE I would’ve considered this to be high too however we pay tax out of this, it covers pension contributions and holiday time and sick leave.
People obviously consider my services to be worth this as I am always busy!
If they didn’t they wouldn’t use me and I would drop my prices accordingly.
I remember once looking at an obscure bit of artwork and laughing at the price, looking back now I’m SE I understand it was completely reasonable

If someone starting out in your field GinDaddy requested over 100% more than what you are earning, despite your many years of experience, and they got it, How would that make you feel? Would you be knocking on your managers door requesting a pay increase? Or would you say fair play to them?

It's definitely true that people with full time in-house roles can look at contractors and say, "why are they earning so much more than me?" and as a contractor I find it so annoying. I am a highly experienced professional with specific expertise and my clients are large corporates.I've also been running my own business for a while now. As a result, I can and do charge a fairly decent daily rate. But it's weird how many people therefore think I make that amount every day and that therefore that my earnings must be Day Rate x 5 x 52 and are confused that I am not extremely rich and/or are jealous.

BUT... for the first four years of being self employed, I only invoiced the equivalent of about 5-6 days of that rate per month. I have expenses - office, insurance, subscriptions, IT/internet/email, computers and other office equipment etc. plus for some of my work I have to outsource it as deadlines mean it simply can't be done by me. I am now busy enough that I don't have time to do all the admin, so I have to hire in for that and pay a virtual assistant a generous hourly rate to help on this.

I don't get holiday or sick pay, nor pension.

A cleaner can charge what she likes based on her skill/affordability/reputation. But please don't think that whether she earns £10/hour or £50 that she's getting 40+ hours a week at that to simply take home.

If my cleaner started asking for £25 I would say goodbye to her because she is average at best, not excellent. Even £15 would be a big push as my apartment is easy (her words), she frequently leaves 20-30 mins early, asks if there is anything else to do, but then misses lots of things. Hoovering in particular is not very thorough. For me it would not be worth it, but for other people it is and then why not? It's a shit job with shit money and for some having a cleaner is more important than to others. I could easily do it myself but cba.

No one gets to keep 100% of their hourly rate/salary. Irrespective of whether they are employed or self-employed.

I’m not thinking that @BlingLoving.

I’m comparing this particular cleaner’s rate to what other cleaners earn. This cleaner, new to the profession, is charging a rate that ranges from 60% to 150% more than other, more experienced cleaners in the same area.

If this cleaner is able to do that successfully, then should the other cleaners take note and do the same?

If they do, what do you think will happen? Will all their clients agree to a massive price hike?

Indeed, will someone down the line come along and undercut them all? Thus driving the cost of cleaning back down again?

Hand on heart, I think this particular cleaner may well find that she/he has to reduce their hourly rate.

Hand on heart, I think this particular cleaner may well find that she/he has to reduce their hourly rate.

If she charges twice as much, she only needs to find half the number of clients to get the same income. That's the choice/risks she takes when setting prices. If she can differentiate from the others, i.e. more reliable, better quality of work, etc etc., then she may find enough people willing to pay.

But it's weird how many people therefore think I make that amount every day and that therefore that my earnings must be Day Rate x 5 x 52 and are confused that I am not extremely rich and/or are jealous.

I think all self employed get that kind of numpty customer/client who just can't think beyond their own employed experience of the 9-5 culture, protection/benefits, and no overheads.

So if it becomes the norm that cleaners become so well paid, then it will become an attractive career option for many, which could then take away many potential employees from other essential areas of work, such as nurses and teachers.

To train for a profession, you need to be in a position of privilege.

For many people, the only options for employment are to be either self employed, on a zero hours contract, working unsociable hours in warehouses etc.

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Clean the place yourself you lazy cow

I literally just paid £240 for an end of tenancy clean... 1 bedroom flat. All of it was in pretty good state. She was done in under three hours and my cleaning would have been better! Literally didn't even bother mopping the kitchen floor.

It included carpet cleaning for two small rooms and let's not talk about the state the carpet is in now...

I wish I'd done it myself, so yes I feel very bitter towards cleaners right now.

So if it becomes the norm that cleaners become so well paid, then it will become an attractive career option for many, which could then take away many potential employees from other essential areas of work, such as nurses and teachers

No, because not all cleaners would be well paid. It's the same with any other trade/profession. When I get quotes for decorating, a new porch, a roof replacement, new guttering, or whatever, the range of quotes received is quite staggering - usually the cheapest is around a third of the price of the most expensive, and we usually go for a middling one from whom we get the best "vibes", ease of contact, turning up and quoting on time, etc.

We've not seen the rush to the bottom or everyone charging the top dollar in other trades/professions, so why should we see it in cleaning?