Cleaner has cost me £1600

[Bootsybugs22]

I was out of the country for two days and my regular ckeaner (for 5 months) went in to clean whilst I was away. She letnherself in via a back door key left in a safe place. Our decking is really slippy so I said if she needed to go in and out she coulds use the front door once she was in. I text her to say the front door keys were square yale , labelled and in a key pot in the hall.

We have a front modern door to the porch and an older wooden self locking door from porch to house.

She called me whilst away to say she was locked in the porch because the keys i left didn't fit the door. She had picked up some other keys out the fruit bowl in the kitchen.

I called a locksmith. In the meantime she called back and said that stressful situations increase her risk of a seizure (she's epileptic) and I needed to get her out now. So I called my neighbour and asked them to force the rear back paito door. This is because the cleaner had passed the keys she had through the letterbox and one of them was for the rear patio door but not the main opener. So the neighbour tried to force the secondary door open as it could be unlocked. Anyway door got broken in the process.

Locksmith arrived. Drilled the lock, got her out, fitted a new lock. But before he'd arrived the door had been damaged by the neighbour (I gave them permission to force the door)

Today I paid the locksmith £85. Had a man round to quote on repair of the door (£1500 for new set of doors.... not repairable).

I messaged the cleaner and asked if she had insurance. She's now blocked me on WhatsApp but messaged me separately on normal text messaging to say she cancelled her insurance last year when she got her epilepsy diagnosis (why?!).

I'm at a total loss. AIBU that I want SOME recompense even if uts £85?

Oh I think I'd attempt to get her to cover some of the costs.

She lied and said she had insurance, she also pushed you to instruct people to force doors because of her health issue...

She failed to follow pretty simple instructions, and that is unarguably a large part of being a bloody cleaner.

So yes, whilst I don't think the full costs should be hers to bear I do think she should contribute something.

Tell her you'd like her to contribute, and you'll have to claim on your insurance and they will want to know what happened, so if she doesn't contribute directly they may chase her for the money.

Assuming you have some means of sending her a letter before action anyway!

OP - someone told you they were in distress and at real risk of a serious health crisis. You did what you had to do. Sorry that it cost you so much financially and I know that is no small sum of money but please try not to dwell on any coulda, woulda, shoulda thoughts. You know now that a key safe in the porch would be a wise idea but the most important thing to take away from this is, you did the right thing by someone in distress.

What a nightmare situation -and as others have said unfortunately I think you’re not going to get any money back.
Going forwards get a keysafe

I think your cleaner probably panicked because she had another job to get to, hence the pressure to get her out ASAP. OP I know others have mentioned it too, but please check with your home insurance cover (especially if you have cover for accidental damage to buildings). They may even try and pursue a recovery from the cleaner.

What a nightmare

You couldn't have foreseen your cleaner is so hopeless as to lock herself in the porch with the wrong keys. You tried your best to help and caused yourself a big bill.

I hope you can claim on your home insurance.

I am sorry you had all this to deal with and end up with such a bill. It must be maddening. However I don't agree with blaming yourself for panicking and getting the neighbour and all that followed. You reacted proportionately given the circumstances that she may have had a seizure and / or panicked and been frightened etc. Your instinct to act quickly and think of a solution and call upon the neighbour is admirable.

Also I don't agree that the key and lock arrangement wasn't complicated and that it was clear. To you it is but not to someone who is unfamiliar with the workings and the regular habit of operating that exit or entrance. Incidentally I have inadvertently locked myself out of a single uncomplicated door and had to climb in through the the window, fortunately open at the time. Call me stupid. I often am. As are people in general. Things happen. Hope you end the arrangement with this cleaner and reconsider whether you want another one.

Do you have home insurance OP?

Not great but better think this from a positive perspective. What if she gets a seizure there alone? What if she could not call you; you may have been in trouble and investigated by the police not to mention the tragedy that that could be.

As you were employing her; shouldn’t you check she has insurance or provide one?

Do you have home insurance? Hopefully you can claim

It wasn't a real risk though. If she truly thought she was at risk of a seizure she should have calmly laid down on the floor on her side. The neighbour could have then kept an eye in case a seizure did happen.

She had been working on her own unsupervised in the house the whole time so she can't have been at that much risk.

I have epilepsy and think she was being melodramatic. She's taking advantage of people's conflation of epilepsy with cataplexy, which is triggered by emotions.

I don't see why the cleaner would be liable for any of this.
She clearly was never left alone before which suggests there is no contract for her to be a keyholder- evidenced by the fact she had no keys of her own. This means she has not been taught the key system. OP did not warn her that the outer door cannot be opened from inside unless you have a key and that it's possible to get locked in the middle.
The householder had a system that allows someone to be trapped in a space so obviously no risk assessment done.

The cleaner was experiencing a medical event that required a door to be broken open. If emergency services had needed to be called they would have broken the door also.

The cleaner also did not break the door herself.
It is OPs responsibility to ensure her home is safe.
The old yale lock on the inner needs to be removed or the outer door needs to have a similar lock that can be opened from the inside.

Most importantly, this door sounds like a fire hazard. You shouldn't have anything that would obstruct your exit in the event of a fire. Time to remove the uPVC monstrosity, and save money, and possibly your lives down the line in the process? One door is enough.

Agreed. Cleaner can't follow very simple instructions and has zero common sense by the sounds of it.

I think it's on you really because locking yourself into a porch is a pickle that you could have forseen! It sounds like a really dangerous set up. What if you or someone else had just let the door slam behind them in some situation? It's not great.

That’s not correct. As a self-employed individual she is not legally required to have any insurance to work in other people’s homes.

This is really good advice - most of my friends (and I) have these key boxes now. With Ring cameras everywhere as well, it's not much of a risk. And has been used several times when one of us has been out without a key!

I'd also recommend having a neighbour with a spare key - really useful.

I doubt if this will be covered by home insurance to be honest, horrible situation, so sorry OP.

Ugh this all sounds really painful so sending you sympathy. I dream of having a cleaner but these kinds of stories make me realise what a pain in the arse it can actually be. I hope you get some of your money back

You instructed the neighbour to force the door and now you are upset that he did. I don't really see how this is the cleaner's fault.

The woman isn't "stupid", "thick" etc just because she got confused by an unfamiliar door system ffs

I don't know if this will be of any use to you, but when we needed new patio doors recently, we trawled through ebay, and found some the exact size, and DH fitted them. It actually took a few weeks for ones to come up locally, but it was an absolute bargain. Might be worth a try, even though it's a long shot.

Imagine if she hadn't had her phone.

Actually I think this is completely the cleaners fault. Not much help though.

These kind of porch set ups are really common round here. Usually because the porch is an add on after the house is built I think. I haven't heard of anyone locking themselves in the porch, I suppose probably because they're usually coming in the front door so that will be unlocked if they don't have the yale. What a pain, OP, I know that regretful feeling but I don't think you did anything wrong. I also don't think home insurance will pay but its worth a try, perhaps.

She picked up a wrong key from a totally different room.

As employer its your responsibility to do health and safety risk assessments and provide training, neither of which you rid and both of which directly contributed to the costs.