Cleaner’s rates - charging more if you skip a week

[Arewerrallydoingthisnow]

genuinely not sure if iabu.
we have a cleaner every 2 weeks.
she already charges quite a lot in my opinion (£18/hr) but she’s good enough and they’re hard to find where we are.
she has a new policy that if you have to skip a clean for whatever reason and it’s been more than 2 weeks since last clean, her rate for the next clean increases to £21/hr. Her justification is that it will be dirtier so it will be harder for her to clean.
My issue with this is:
a) it makes it sound like she wants an easy life so although she does 3 hours work usually, even though she’ll still only do 3 hours work, because it could be a bit harder she wants more for it. Either you work he’d and clean in your time or you don’t surely?!
b) it insinuates we won’t clean at all in between.
c) I could understand a rule of saying if it’s been longer than 2 weeks she’ll need an extra hour - I would like it, but I would understand the reasoning.

I’ve never had a cleaner propose this before and is this a thing?

Good for her!

Like @lastminutewednesday I'm a dog walker and I charge in full for last minute cancellations. I can't fill spots when people message me with half an hour to spare (yes, really) to say they don't need me.

She's doing it to stop people pissing her about.

I think it's fair. Our cleaner has a key as we're often out of the house anyway. I'd offer to pay if we had to miss a week but we do have her round weekly anyway.

To be clear she’s paid at least 2 weeks in advance so anything less than that I obvs understand she’ll keep the money! I don’t count that as last minute.

But anyway I fully accept IABU and need to get back off my break now!!

This would annoy me. But maybe because I always pay her when I cancel on her. If my cleaner did this, despite me paying her when I cancelled on her, I’d get rid of her.

It will be partly because she wants regular work and partly because the job is more difficult if it hasn't been done for a while.

I cleaned the bathroom this morning, something I usually do religiously on a weekly basis, but I've got lazy in the heat and it's been 2.5 weeks.

It wasn't filthy, people generally clean up after themselves as they go, but there was noticeably more dust and hair to deal with. Things that usually need a quick wipe, needed "cleaning" iyswim.

But she has to have one policy for everyone or people will mess her around. She can then choose whether she applies it or not depending on the circumstances.

As a dog walker, I wouldn't actually charge someone who cancelled last minute because their dog was sick or injured, or someone who paid monthly in advance, but I don't advertise that because otherwise people take the piss.

I wouldn’t be happy with this personally. Our last cleaners were 12.50/15 per hour. £15 is my max!! Also any weeks we didn’t want them to come they were fine with a just accepted a week off (perhaps 3 weeks off a year?)

theres TONS of cleaners out there, you don’t need to stick to one if you’re not happy

OP, I think you should pay in full for the cancelled weeks to be honest. She can’t possibly make a living if people cancel.

NameChangedforthis2244 probably has the right idea, with a contract similar to a child minders, or at least her cleaner does

I have no cleaner, but do have a dirty house 🏠

We have a rule that if we cancel, we pay her anyway and if she cancels then we don't pay. A bit simpler I think...

It implies she's not working as hard as she could do during her regular cleans.

If she had a policy of adding an hour on because there's more work then that would be fair enough.

Off topic and I suppose a little "brag" of some sort, but my dear Mother paid her cleaner every single week during COVID lockdowns, and now she's not very well the cleaner pops round often to do little things like put the bins out or with extra food when batch cooked for her own family. It makes my heart glow.

I was a little burnt by my cleaner (different one) in lockdown maybe that’s why I’m sensitive. I paid mine every single week the whole way through - even when both our salaries went to 50%. Then when she returned she told us as she hadn’t cleaned so long she might have to charge us more but she’d see. I was gutted having given £100s and £100s over the months when things were so terrifyingly tight to ensure she wasn’t hard done by. and she then wanted to charge us extra for the privilege and wouldn’t help us out in return. (She didn’t in the end as we’d obv cleaned on those months…!)

Then the real punch in the gut was when she dropped into convo the great help she’d got from government so I think she’d claimed whatever allowance she could and taken our money also at full rate. I was really upset by that. And I know it’s a diff cleaner so totally irrelevant but I think I’m overly sensitive people are taking advantage!

@Isittimeformynapyet That’s really lovely. Hope you mum is ok.

We’ve had our cleaner since our children were little, she has become a very good friend to us and is just someone we can really trust and rely on. There’s good people out there!

I think she's right. I'm a hairdresser(Nc for this) and I work alone in a small salon that I rent.
I have a few, thankfully not too many, but a few clients who regularly cancel on me with little or no notice, the day of an appt/ten minutes before or after they were due in. I charge them more for my services than I do the decent ones who don't let me down.

I have absolutely no qualms about doing it. They don't go to work for free so why should I? And why should your cleaner suffer the loss if someone cancels a clean on her? To be fair if she has to miss a week there will likely be more work involved for her too. She's 100% right.

I wouldn't be happy with that either OP. I agree. And the reasoning would bother me also. I had a similar bollocks reason from my chiropractor the other day for increasing rates. I don't mind the increase but the reason given was BS and it just is a bit insulting tbh. Do you think I'm an idiot? If you want to raise rates because you haven't done so for a while and cost of everything has gone up just say that!

Anyhow I'd probably cancel if I were you and those are her terms. She is obviously free to set whatever terms she likes. And you are free to choose to continue with her or not.

That's because you're a cheapo.

A self employed cleaner on 12.50 an hour Is probably taking home less than min wage, gets no holiday pay, sick pay or pension contributions, and doesn't get paid to travel to and from their work, which lets be honest is probably 3-4 clients a day.

£15 bare minimum in my opinion.

I didn’t set their prices, they set their prices :)

But what do you mean by "skipping a week"? Surely you can see that's entirely unreasonable? You can't just skip a week for your cleaner because it's a bit inconvenient for you. If you have holidays and your cleaner has holidays then you can negotiate about that.

I’m a cleaner, she will have to work harder and much faster to get through additional build up in the time to bring it back to the standard you are used to. She cannot add on an additional 30 mins to an hour to cover this as it would mess up her schedule and would actually cost you more. If you have a 3 hour clean and cancelled her next clean would only cost you £9 more. A small price to pay considering she would lose £54 from the clean missed with you x

I used to be a cleaner and it doesn't make sense to go full pelt at every house all the time, bearing in mind that most cleaners do at least 2 houses per day. You'd knacker yourself and there's much more chance of injury and breakages. Steady, careful, and thorough is the way to go.