To pay less?

[WWYDwiththisone]

I did another thread some days ago about how our cleaner that we booked to do a deep clean of our new house and they did not do a satisfactory job. Doing a new thread as it’s a different question and not many will come back for the update I’ve just done

She said they work in pairs and would stay for as long as it took to do the job. £23 an hour each. I requested they prioritised the kitchen and the bathroom, particularly the toilet and the bath.

They arrived an hour late after running over from another job. She stayed for just under 1.5hrs before going home because they were ‘hungry’ and hadn’t eaten since breakfast. This was despite telling me they’d stay however late because they’d sorted childcare and so weren’t in a rush.

Now have a bill for nearly £70 for 1.5hrs of the two of them ‘cleaning’ my house. Our bathroom is small, 2mx2.5m max. They cleaned the bathroom walls (apparently there was loads of limescale), bath, sink and half of an IKEA wardrobe. The other half of it was dirty and covered in pet hair. They didn’t clean the toilet or the bathroom floor. There were two of them. Before they left, they said ‘we’ll come back tomorrow’ to DH. DH hadn’t booked them so just agreed, he was decorating and I was at work so nobody directly watching over them. I text her in the evening to thank her for what she’d done (before I saw how little they’d done) but please not to come back as we needed it that day, so I was going to have to tackle it myself in the morning instead

I’ve reasonably approached her and said we are dissatisfied with the service and she is refusing to budge on price saying they’d be working for less than the minimum wage. She has also said I’m lucky she hasn’t charged a late payment fee as we haven’t cleared the invoice 24hrs after the work was done.

Is it reasonable to pay them for 1hr each instead, or even just minimum wage for the time they were there?

I don’t know where I stand on it legally and don’t want to invite trouble given that they know my address- maybe overthinking here

WWYD?

YABU - you’ve got to pay the £70 and chalk it up to experience

YANBU - pay less / will comment

I don’t want to pay them for 3 hours / 1.5hrs each. I don’t think what they did was £70

Maybe if you post before and after pictures we could actually advise, it’s impossible to say they weren’t worth what they are asking if it was encrusted. How much limescale was actually on the walls?
I had to clean an aunts bathroom of limescale and I can tell you it took me forever, I’m talking a couple of hours each day for a week!

you said The other half of it was dirty and covered in pet hair
so the half they haven’t cleaned is that dirty? Or are you saying the half they cleaned is dirtier than when they started?

I think the point is, the very small amount of work they completed in that time, should not have taken more than a fraction of that time.
How can 2 people spend an hour in a bathroom and not even clean the toilet ?

My cleaner manages to properly clean 2 bathrooms, a downstairs toilet, a kitchen, hallway and 2 landings, 2 sets of stairs, and a living room in under an hour. She is one person and doesn't charge anything like £23ph.

One half clean and the other half untouched.

OP has said there was limescale etc....we have no idea what could have been completed in that time as we didn't see a before and after photo.

I guess the first thing that comes to mind would be keying your car. I'm not a scary aggressive type though so I don't know what else they would come up with.

That’s my point.
So the whole thing was dirty and covered in pet hair, in which case, if the place was that dirty, it really could have taken them that long to clean. I don’t think I could ever describe my wardrobes as dirty, in need of a dust -maybe, but dirty and covered in pet hair sounds quite a lot of work tbh so if the bathroom was as bad as they say it’s possible it did take them that long and they had no chance to do as much as you expected.

When was the bathroom last cleaned if it was so bad they would have had to scrub it for hours ?.Also why would a wardrobe be filthy in the first place with pet hair.Maybe the house is never cleaned / hoarder so was hard work ?

So you think they worked 1 hr 20 each. They've charged you 1 hr 30 mins each.

I can't see why you are not paying them? You pay for the time they were there.

@Sosorryliver to be expected to be paid travelling time is absolutely ridiculous.
If it was the same employer then yes I agree, but to travel from client to client and you are self employed then absolutely not.

She’s told me I need to pay by 9pm tonight otherwise there will be a late payment fee….

I’d pay and chalk it up to experience. You’ve agreed an amount in advance and they are asking for payment of that amount. Just don’t rebook.

Well you don’t say it to the client you include it in your hourly rate. I charged £20-25 ph depending on travel time/ mileage/ length of job. Rural so it could be a trek. It sounds high but I’m much better off working for LA at £12.70ph these days! When your self employed you have to consider all your costs/ travel time/ what you want to earn per hour/ holiday pay/ sick pay/ pension.

Tell her and if she does that you will
Be going to trading standards. They are absolute chancers. I'm sure when u mention the tax office being contacted you will
Get a barrage of abuse and then not hear again. Offer the 1.5 hours and say that will be all you're getting or take you to court. And also make sure they know you have cameras inside and outside the home. Any threats of violence or that phone the police.

Minimum wage only applies to employees. I assume she's self-employed (that she could bring a substitute to double up confirms that).

@Sosorryliver I have to be honest and say I think that’s a very high hourly rate of pay. If it’s something that you can achieve then fantastic.

Im in London and cleaners average £15-20 and hour.

Im LA and earn roughly what you mention. My partner works partly self employed. Some days he may average £10 an hour and others £30 depending on the time of year, but his outgoings before tax average £1.4k a month, sometimes more.

I need to make a decision tonight really as to what I’m going to do.

I would be worried they’d come and key cars if we don’t pay but maybe overthinking it. They could always do that anyway- anyone could!

@WWYDwiththisone you say in your OP that "I don’t know where I stand on it legally", but that's not quite true as you were given some excellent advice on that thread.

To take your situation stage by stage, you say the cleaners were late arriving. I don't dispute that, and some people might take issue with it, others might not.

However, apart from this being an annoyance to you (and I totally get that), it is not at all relevant to your complaint, in as much as you're complaining about the quantity of work they did in the time they were on site. Had they arrived on time and stayed longer, you could well be now writing your mumsnet post to say "cleaners did five hours but I'm not happy with the work they did".

So for clarity, your complaint is about what you got from them in return for 3 of their man hours, for which you have been invoiced £69.

As I said on the other thread, I have spent two decades in the cleaning industry, mostly running my own domestic cleaning service, but have also worked as a consultant to the industry, freelance, carrying out other services for other organisations, such as training, lecturing, and conflict resolution between clients and cleaning businesses.

When you booked these cleaners, it was agreed that you'd be paying by the hour. You also indicated what you wanted doing, but the fact is you knew you'd be paying for their time and not the outcome. You also said that the time they would be onsite was not capped either.

Similarly, the cleaning company has not showered itself in glory either, and they sound either very new to running a cleaning service, or else are not very efficient at it. They absolutely should have done a site visit and evaluation (either before the day of the clean or at the very, very least before they started any cleaning, and for that I put full responsibility on them.

However, you are not disputing the time spent onsite, you are disputing what you got for your money. And again as said on your other thread, without seeing the condition of the fixtures they cleaned, and knowing what chaos they had to work around, no one who wasn't there can comment accurately.

But still, it all circles back to the same thing - you agreed to pay them for their time and not for the quality of their work. They have sent you the invoice accordingly.

You have told them you don't think it is worth the money they are charging, they have responded by saying yes it is and we'll be charging a late payment fee too if you're not careful.

That last part gives you a massive insight into the type of people you are dealing with (it's incredibly crass IMO), and for the sake of your own sanity and to be able to carry on with the rest of your life, my advice was to pay it and forget all about it. Don't complain, do not review them, and do not antagonise them further. You do not need this negativity in your life.

But it was only advice after all, and you are free to ignore it, which you have. That is your absolute right. You have decided you should pay them less, but you've no idea what to pay them - and if you don't know what it was worth, how can we? You can't say "well a few hundred mumsnet users voted i was not being unreasonable based solely on what I wrote, so clearly I'm right", I mean I feel ridiculous just typing it. The onus is very much on you to prove that they didn't deliver, and once again we're back to the same point, they are charging for their time, not their quality.

They do not sound the least bit professional, but never the less they came and they worked, and now they are asking to be paid for that time.

And all of this because you think that what you got is worth about £15-20 less than they what they are asking for. Fair enough if you are absolutely dependent on that money, but you have to ask yourself if it's worth it for the on-going problems you will be facing from them, because they aren't going to take it quietly - based on all you said about them (right from the start where they told you they'd got their childcare sorted; I mean, like that's any concern of yours, it's just crass) they are not used to being professional when it suits them not to be.

It may only apply to employees, but do you really, really think us self-employed types don't ever charge a lot more? Just because there's no law saying we have to be paid it doesn't mean we work for pennies!

But with respect, it's irrelevent what you think, if that's what @Sosorryliver charges and is getting for it from his / her clients, they that is clearly what it's worth.

London is notorious for having a stash of cheap labour for all sorts of jobs, and cleaning is no exception. As soon as you step into greater London, prices begin to soar. London prices for anything (high and low) are rarely a benchmark for the rest of the UK.

January. The deadline is always 31st January for a business to submit it's tax return for the previous tax year.

Thus, my accountant is currently asking me for my books for the period April 1st 2023 to March 31st 2024. But he has until January 31st 2025 to submit my tax return.

HTH.

Its much easier to find a cleaner in London than rurally. There’s no rental properties where I am, it’s not like you will get much of a mortgage based on self employed cleaning work.

I do think people get hung up on the cost per hour. If you work for the LA then you probably get similar pension contribution to me 27% then plus holiday pay 12% ish the cost to the employer is over £17 per hour before you’ve even looked at employer NI, sick pay, maternity pay, paternity pay, hr costs etc You might take home £12.70 an hour give or take but the average employee taking home £12.70 is probably costing the LA at least £20 per hour probably more.

I think a fairer comparison between employed and self employed rates would be cost to employer rather than take hme pay as you are, essentially, your own employer.

Personally I would just pay her and chalk it up to experience. It's not worth the aggravation that paying the £20-30 less they actually deserve would cause.
I used to have a cleaner, but gave up because of multiple issues. It's easier just to do a half arsed job myself for free.

I have paid her in full. I feel really cross about it but what can I do. Teaches me to be more careful next time

Bloody hell that’s a 3 hour clean! I had a deep end of tenancy clean of a big one bed flat done to a brilliant standard for £120!