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?

Why are you trying to claim off her insurance? It's not her fault that your lock failed in the property, it's YOUR property that was the issue, nothing to do with her work/job/insurance. You are the one who asked the neighbour to force the door, the fact she had medical issues is irrelevant, she shouldn't have been in the position to be trapped in there in the first place. Claim off your home insurance.

to clairfy a few points. she was stuck for 35 minutes. the porch is double glazed and whilst it would have been chilly, where we live is not cold compared to the rest of the UK (no snow here today!) . it was midday and she was leaving the house so had her coat on.

I 100% should have waited for the locksmith. I panicked. I was so outwardly calm to keep her calm (she is a panicker, shes a bit all over the place generally) that inside i was freaking out! I am also a catastrophiser so I all I could think of was she was going to die. (maybe dramatic but maybe not)

Update!

Me and her talked last night like adults, it did get a bit heated, but we took time away from responding to each other, I cried a lot and I expect she did too. I feel guilty, i feel stupid and i have lots of hindsight. We really got on and she is a lovely person, I felt hurt at some things she text to me and really started to doubt myself generally. in one breath she was telling me it was an emergency situation and she was at high risk of a seizure but then in another told me she was quite comfortable and happy to wait for the fire service with no need to break down the door. regardless, we are where we are and I made decisions I regret.

Anyway, I was never about "hurting" anyone financially. It is a mess of unfortunate events which i have taken responsibility for. She has sent me some money for the locksmith and we have parted on good terms. Im just really sad it all happened and that I've caused her distress.

Thank you for your (mostly) helpful comments.

I wont be replying anymore as I really need to get a grip on my feelings and move on.

Because she took the wrong keys (having not followed very simple and clear instructions) and locked herself in the porch...none of this is rocket science! 😂

if she hadnt had a medical issue, i wouldnt have got the door forced. just waited for the locksmith. my lock didnt fail. all doors work as they should do.
if she had followed the instructions, she wouldnt have locked herself in,
if i had stuck to my guts and not agreed to the clean in the first place none of this would have happened.

I still don't understand why the cleaner couldn't have passed her back door key out through the front letterbox to the neighbour?

An expensive lesson for you, OP. Be careful who you let access your house unattended. If someone is unreliable don’t hesitate to let them go whether it’s before Christmas or not and certainly don’t leave a key for them.She would have had other clients, it’s not like you’re the only one so she wouldn’t necessarily be unemployed if you had let her go when you wanted to.

I’d probably have told her wait for the locksmith and said she should call emergency services if she thought there was a real risk of seizure. I think her willingness to do this would show how serious she really was about “needing” to get out sooner.

And I’d check on her regularly by text until the locksmith came.

The benefit of hindsight is 20/20 though -you acted with good intentions and kindness and unfortunately paid a hefty price for it.

i think you’re getting an unfairly hard time on here about how simple or complicated you made it for the cleaner.

if you had been insistent she clean when you were away that would be one thing but you weren’t at all. She was the one pushing to clean while you were abroad presumably to still get paid.

Most cleaners would appreciate that doing the job while you were on holiday would mean it’s less simple than usual. She would need to follow instructions to let herself in and out and make sure she locked up securely. You were already away so couldn’t show her in person.

If she had any doubts she could do that she shouldn’t have been pushing to clean with you not at home.

And she shouldn’t have been doing it at all without insurance.

Imagine if she had locked up incorrectly from not following your instructions and you’d been burgled. You could have been a lot worse than £1600 off.

Well yes we’d need to imagine it as it’s not something that would happen is it?

If she had any doubts she could do that she shouldn’t have been pushing to clean with you not at home.

I agree with this. I’m ND and I have issues with keys etc tbh so I feel this could’ve been me but I’m more self-aware so I wouldn’t have put myself in that situation to begin with. I’d also have been so embarrassed to create a fuss that I’d have waited for the locksmith.

I suspect she’s going to continue creating calamity for others but just seeing herself as the victim.

I’ve never lived in a house with a porch but my sister does and the porch part they always leave open, so if I was staying at her house I’d have locked her front door without opening the porch - as would assume it was open like it always is - can definitely imagine being neg in that situation and as I said, really shocked by the amount of rude comments - if it was a nurse doing a home visit, who got locked in - would people be saying the same things? Doubt it

Yeah but what would she claim on the insurance - my cleaner locked herself in my porch (causing no damage) but my neighbour broke my door….im sure they’d paid out for that, no questions asked!! 🤣

You claim on your home insurance. This isn't her fault. It's yours ....

Agree, there are a lot of nasty twatful comments on here at someone who mixed up a set of keys with the OP being the poor innocent who can do no wrong party. Disgusting.

Why? The OP was away, so the woman was only able to call for help because she had her phone with her.

It could have been really bad.

Yes, it could have been worse. She could have had a fit whilst in an internal room (and not in any state to be able to call for help), with nobody home for a few days. Goodness knows what dreadful situation the op could have come home to.

Thankfully she didn’t fit (even in the porch). I doubt if it is wise for that cleaner to work in an empty house. Certainly one where a situation could arise where she could fit without warning, be unable to call for help, and nobody would find her for a few days afterwards. She also needs to be honest and alert any potential clients if she let her insurance lapse if she had told them she was covered beforehand.

Yes, she may have fitted whilst lone working and that is something she needs to consider, but the issue with the porch was that the high stress she was under made it MORE likely

I'm not just talking about fits, she could have been in there for 48 hours with no food or water and nowhere to pee.

I think most people with epilepsy are able to recover themselves. But it's obviously not ideal to go without medication and be under stress. So I don't think the cleaner was unreasonable to go to work under those conditions, but I do think that she was more vulnerable to a couple of days in a porch than most. Of course, nobody should be trapped in a porch for that long regardless though.

The cleaner must have driven there if she was going out to bring in her vacuum cleaner. I know there are certain conditions whereby someone suffering from epilepsy can drive. Some of my most stressful moments have been driving on London roads. Well, the way everyone is a little more aggressive than normal because of the heavy traffic.

What point are you making?

Mind you, maybe op and cleaner live in a lovely bucolic country area. Or less intensive driving environment at any rate.

Just two posts up from mine, someone said stress increases the likelihood of someone having a fit.

I have a furnished holiday let - rules for those is that all doors must be able to open using a thumb turn lock becuase anyone unfamiliar with the locks would find it difficult to exit in event of fire. They are really very simple to fit and prevent situations like this ever occuring. All my locks at home are now thumb turn so no one can ever get locked in.

@TheWonderhorse “but I do think that she was more vulnerable to a couple of days in a porch than most.”

The op said that she had called a locksmith (who took 35 minutes to arrive), so it was never going to be a couple of days. Whilst waiting for the locksmith to arrive, the neighbour unsuccessfully tried to free the cleaner but damaged a door in the process. The locksmith then arrived and drilled the lock to release the cleaner from the locked porch.

Of course, it sounds a dangerous situation in case of fire etc. Thankfully nobody got hurt. So, in a way, and despite the cost, it highlighted potential safety issues in the house.

The cleaner wouldn't be allowed to drive if her epilepsy was uncontrolled and she'd had a seizure in the last 12 months.

There's a lot about the cleaner's actions that don't seem to add up so I feel for the OP.

I don't know why everyone is so eager to jump to her defence, she has proven herself to be dishonest by lying about being insured.

Presumably her epilepsy is so well managed and low risk that she can clean in people's houses alone and drive, in which case surely being in the porch for an hour while a locksmith came wasn't as huge an emergency that the door needed to be broken down, as she made out.

And I say this as someone who has two family members with different forms of epilepsy which mean they can't drive currently.

That's absolutely correct. You (general you) should not be leasing a house , permanent or holiday, where it is possible to accidentally lock yourself in.