I’d like a cheap house.

[thatsthatsaidthemayor]

I’d like to buy a cheap house that is big but not too big with a large garden and a swimming pool. Also, preferable if it comes with a good reliable cleaner from the lowest rung of the pay grade. Get my drift? Am I being unreasonable for people to give an idea of what their budget it before looking for recommendations? Be it a dress, meal out, holiday or house? And to be realistic about what they are looking for. The cleaner q is a regular on my local facebook page.🤦🏻‍♀️

I think asking for advice about eg where to buy a house without explaining your budget is U because it’s so critical.

As for asking for advice on hiring eg a cleaner.. I don’t set their rates, they do, so I’d expect them to be telling me.

What ?!? You’re asking about modern slavery aren’t you? Common unfortunately in countries across the globe, a reportable CRIME in UK

Weird flex.

Surely everyone wants a cheap house.

After all, you spend less money on housing, more money to spend on holidays, cars, clothes, restaurants, hobbies, kids etc.

At some point people will realise high house prices are not something to be celebrated. I am not holding my breath though.

Cheap cleaner is a bit more difficult. Everyone should be paid enough to have a decent life. Of course if their housing is expensive, their wages will need to be higher to compensate for that.

i think OP is complaining that people are not very specific when they post things

a cheap house can be 40k or several million depending on context - of course no one wants to spend more than they have to

it’s like when people ask for a recommendation for a “nice” something - I mean recommending something horrible would be mean and hardly a real recommendation

edit to say - is the word tautological?

YABU

I’m sick to death of companies/self-employed people insisting on harvesting my contact details so they can harass me before they’ll tell me their prices.

Cleaners, childminders, driving instructors, beauticians are the worst for this. If you charge £20 for cleaning then say that on your page/website. You don’t need my name, number, email address to tell me you charge £20ph… unless you charge different people different amounts? Which is shitty. And I don’t want to have contact a dozen people and wait for responses at your convenience and then review and come back to people - and generally spend far longer on admin than I should.

I just don’t use those people. If you can’t be upfront and want to waste my time by playing games (because someone has convinced you that game playing is “marketing”), I’ll go elsewhere.

I don’t have a cleaner but, if I were to get one, this would completely rule out cleaners. Just publish how much you charge. No reason not to and there’s an obvious reason I’d want you to.

Some posters have understood your post @thatsthatsaidthemayorothers not so much 😆

I don’t have a cleaner but, if I were to get one, this would completely rule out cleaners. Just publish how much you charge. No reason not to and there’s an obvious reason I’d want you to.

Do you really, really think there isn't a good reason for cleaners not giving prices? Well there is, and it is very much because before we tell you and have you ringing off in disgust because you think it's too expensive you don't want to pay that much, we want to get to know a bit about you first, and have a look at the state of the home that we'll be expected to work miracles on.

In over 20 years of doing this job, there isn't a single time I have not been out to meet the would-be client and their home first. You are not simply purchasing a service like when you order a pizza, you are investing in a long-term process with a person or people who will come into your most intimate space and be trusted to do a good job & take nothing away with them but dirt.

I am in great demand, and rarely have a gap. However, clients do move out the area and, sadly, die, so I'm always happy to interview potential new clients to see if it would be worth me putting them on my waiting list.

That would make sense if they wanted to see the house instead of just contact details before giving a quote. My phone number shouldn’t dictate your price.

If you interview clients and provide a bespoke price then good for you but that’s not what the vast majority do. That’s different from “I’ll tell you my price if you PM me on FB and then, when I’m higher than everyone else, I’ll send you messages every two days asking if you’ve changed your mind, or get annoyed with you, and will take three days to reply in the first place”.

But also, an hour of cleaning is an hour of cleaning. If the place is dirtier, it’ll take more hours. That doesn’t mean the hourly rate should be higher.

Learning to drive was a nightmare to organise with instructors refusing to publish prices. There’s no difference between how much that should cost from person to person.

The cleaner q is a regular on my local facebook page

Well it will be. People who are on facebook groups asking that have - at least in my experience - already contacted plenty who charge way more than they are willing to pay.

Good cleaners avoid facebook groups like the plague, and on my local group it's the same handful of people scrambling for cleaning jobs time after time. Meanwhile I, like all the other people I know who clean, are fully booked just by word of mouth, and we have no problems getting our price either.

There are some real benefits of a facebook group, and there are times when it is all about scraping the bottom of a very empty barrel.

You might want to have a look at what the common factor is in all of this. You might not like the way people are running their business, but if it wasn't working the way they do it, they wouldn't do it. But the public always knows best. I remember well how put-out my grandmother was (and I know I'm going back a bit) when Fine Fare stopped stocking her favourite ice cream.

"I don't know why they won't sell it, it was ever so popular", which translated to "I used to buy a tub every month without fail, and so did Mrs Perry in the flat underneath".

They do it because it benefits them at the expense of customers… is that not extremely obvious? Not sure why you think that disproves anything I said 😂😂😂

They do it because it benefits them at the expense of customers

Now that I do agree with. When something is a sellers-market you don't bow to all the purchasers whims & fancies.

Beauty and pamper businesses do this.
Ooh Japanese head spa.
Just state. The. Fucking . Price.

Inbox me hun. Fuck off.

I lived in thailand for a bit. All over the ex pat facebook pages were posts from westerners usually looking for a nanny, full time, live in, to look after 3 kids, 80 hours oer sweek, wvery second sunday off, budget equivelant of 100 quid a month.
All were affronted when people replied calling them out as disgraceful.

I see there’s sometimes business sense to it. Just drives me bonkers to use and it puts a lot of people off.

And, where I am, it’s not a sellers’ market for a lot of these (almost always) women but they’ve (incorrectly) learnt that this is a good strategy and then moan when they have no interest.

My NDN is a childminder who won’t state her price. She has barely any interest despite a shortage in childcare and constantly posts on her page saying “PM me for prices” and comments on other mum’s asking about childcare with “PM me”. Like, no!

learnt that this is a good strategy

I'll tell you another example of that, and how it can back-fire spectacularly, and that's with "before & after" photos of any kind, for any service.

I don't think the people posting them realise it's not always possible to recognise which is which, just from some amateur photographs. Added to which, it begs the question as to what they are thinking it says.

I mean, if you take cleaning (see how you brought it up and it's my background), no one in their right mind should be looking at a picture of a dirty bathroom next to it being cleaned and thinking "Oooooh err I could just fancy that". We all know what a clean bathroom looks like, and you should know if you want to pay for help with it. I don't see the need for the idea to be "sold" to someone.

Another example - and this is totally a "me" problem- I am following the facebook page of a man who installs internal doors. He seems ever so professional and I like him. I had made my mind up I would use him when I get around to having all mine replaced, however, he did a before & after the other day and the doors he was ripping out were EXACTLY what I want putting in. I've gone right off him now! I don't like the idea of paying all that money for doors which clearly other people think are shit. 😂

Yeah, a cleaner on my local page does so many “before and after” but because of how Facebook shows the post, the “before” is big on the post and the “after” is a small thumbnail unless you click on it. At first glance, looks like she’s an awful cleaner 😬

And that's the other thing, there are some things which will never become clean ever again. I can look at an "after" picture and feel moved to tears (not literally) knowing how much effort must have gone in to getting to look so much better. Doesn't mean it makes for a good photo, and anyone not in the know might think "Cripes, you missed a bit there love".

One thing I detest about the internet is that it's made everyone an "expert" at writing posts, taking photos, and starring in their own adverts. As so often is said in this life, "just because you can, it doesn't mean you should".

This!

For those that get it, am adding "a nice restaurant for our anniversary, but not too expensive". Pizza express maybe?