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?

I completely agree with this. She took advantage of OPs kindness.

I have a family member who is also claustrophobic and epileptic. He gets very distressed and acts very panicky if he doesn't have a way out, he has indeed had fits when he's gotten stressed and something that stressed him he first started fitting was having a fit in a place he couldn't easily be reached for medical help, I can't totally understand why the cleaner would find it stressful.

@Lunde because if the cleaner had a) realised that if you pull a door shut behind you you might not be able to open it again, and b) picked up the correct key as instructed, none of this would have happened.

You seemed to send her all around the houses instead of it just being simple. I don’t blame her for being confused and then needing to be rescued. I don’t think it’s fair to cost that much, no - but hopefully you get to make it easier for another cleaner in the future

I find the lack of empathy for the cleaner here quite extraordinary. Imagine if this has happened in your own workplace because you had made a mistake. She messed up but it's not that hard to imagine closing a front door with a set of keys in your hand that you believe would open the porch door and then absolutely panicking when you realise you are trapped. Particularly if you have a serious health condition? Yes it's tough on the OP, but the hate on the cleaner here is really unwarranted.

My cleaner has a key to our house. All my cleaners over the years have had their own key. Sometimes we're here and sometimes we're not. I think it's safer than hiding it somewhere round the back.

I'd be finding another cleaner and making sure the arrangements are foolproof. My cleaner uses my own vacuum and cleaning products. When she runs out, she leaves the bottles out for me to rebuy.

It could have been worse if she slipped on the slippery deck and claimed for a couple of broken legs. I'd be giving the new cleaner a front door key and a porch key in future.

I have had a few weird cleaners over the years. I particularly remember one of them taking to a polished wooden table with a dish brush and detergent. She thought it felt greasy - it had some special heatproof coating on it. She also managed to rip a blind down from a window doing who knows what. Most of them have been great though.

Quite. Being locked in someone else's porch while they are out of the country would make quite a few people panic, however 'irrational' that might seem in hindsight. Lots of people can't cope with being locked in small spaces. The OPs getting posts telling her how dangerous her porch set up is, what if there was a fire etc but also that the cleaner was absolutely fine, no danger at all, and should just benefit from being locked in an enclosed space to use her phone to watch Netflix.

Apologies as I haven't read the whole thread yet, but I don't see why people think the cleaner's insurance (if she had any) would have covered this.

The cleaner didn't break the door - the neighbour did so after the OP had authorised a rescue attempt. (Or the locksmith did it after the OP authorised that a locksmith be called - it's not entirely clear to me).

The cleaner hasn't done anything wrong here - apart from pick up the wrong keys in what was possibly a confusing situation - and the damege was authorised by the OP, whoever actually did it.

OP either absorbs the cost or claims on their own house or contents insurance as applicable.

Is anyone else wondering that the cleaner did it on purpose? She sounds like a wazzock anyway. Tank her reviews and maybe do an anonymous post in your local community group to warn others about her lack of insurance.

Doesn't make her thick though

Agree. I reckon she was embarrassed so has deflected the focus away from her mistake, by playing the victim and inducing a dramatic rescue.

I think yale locks are becoming rarer these days due to upvc doors. If your not used to them it would be easy to lock yourself out.
I grew up with wooden front door and yale lock. When I moved in with dh he was forever telling me off for not locking upvc front door as I was so used to yale lock locking when I closed the door.
She should have insurance.

You are not in the wrong. She is.

My cleaner locked herself out of mine when I was on holiday leaving her bag with her home keys inside. Fortunately I got her through an agency and they arranged and paid for the emergency locksmith to go in via the back door (as we obviously had front door keys with us on holiday so couldn't change that lock).

If she has blocked you I suspect you might not see her again. Do you know her address? If so send her a copy of the bill and state that as she decided she no longer needed her insurance then it is her personal responsibility to pay.

If she had insurance (she doesn't legally have to) then it wouldn't cover her needing to be rescued from your porch! It's for damage she causes while doing the work. She caused none of the damage.

It's very easy to make a mistake, the system wasn't simple and when I think about what could have happened if she left her phone in the car or the battery was low, it terrifies me. If I were you OP I would be shocked and horrified at what might have happened more than the money. I'm sure the woman didn't do it on purpose. I'd try and claim on the home insurance, but there's no way her insurance would cover damage your neighbour made to the door (on your instruction) whether she was insured or not.

A couple of posts have said 'as her employer you should have done xyz'. I don't think you are her employer. My understanding is that you are paying for a service so legally a wholly different scenario. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong!

I can’t understand why she CLOSED the front door in the first place when she was coming straight back in with her hoover and kit - why wouldn’t you prop it open?

But unfortunately I don’t see any way you’d get money from her, even if she had insurance she didn’t cause any of the damage and you gave permission for the neighbour to force the door.

I also can’t understand her blocking you on WhatsApp but engaging via text 🤣

Confused by the system? No.

But she was rather daft to pick up a set of unlabelled keys, from a completely different room than where OP told her the proper labelled keys would be.

This. It sounds a complete faff, caused by you.

Sounds like cleaner is a bloody liability.
@Bootsybugs22 Find a cleaner who isn’t such a drama llama.

It depends. She might or might not be an employee.

Tricky as she ( if real ) obviously has severe illness

I was thinking the same thing. She could have had a seizure in the kitchen (or any other part of the house), and wouldn’t have had help for days either, or at least until you came home.

At least in the porch, someone like the postie might have seen her. So, maybe working without someone else in the house was a bad plan as much as her signalling the porch situation as such an immediate emergency that couldn’t even wait for the locksmith to arrive.

You should not be able yo lock yourself in the porch like that - it's a fire hazard.

No she isn’t.

And she isn’t her employer, presumably the cleaner is self employed.

Thats similar to suggesting homeowners are responsible for completing risk assessments every time they get a tradesperson in.

Well actually unless tradesmen are coming in to fix something dangerous in their particular skill set your house shouldn't be dangerous.

And whether a cleaner is an employee can be a grey area.