Cleaners - tardiness and fees?

[SpringDreams26]

I have moved house, 15 miles but a different county.

I paid £20 per hour for a cleaner who was with me several years and wonderful. She continued to clean for a few months to help us but couldn’t keep up with the travel so gave me notice. She cried when she left she was genuinely fantastic and we got along so well.

Now everyone is charging £25-27.50 per hour. Even self employed, one woman bands. AIBU to think that’s madness? I come out with about £30 after taxes earning £50 an hour. Cleaning used to be marginally above minimum wage and now it seems the same cost as a professional? Not to say cleaners aren’t professionals, but the start up costs and overheads low.

Then you have to weed out the awful cleaners, I’ve had many in my time who just move dirt around.

Had 4 people quote ALL have been late by atleast 30 minutes. If you want to justify your rate atleast show up.

and yes, I know the answer is to do my own cleaning. But AIBU that the market has changed this much?

I have a degree and a professional job, as well as other skills that have required a lot of training to acquire. You would absolutely not want to hire me to clean your house. If you did, you would change your view about it not being skilled work very quickly.

A self-employed rate of £15/h works out at less than the equivalent of the Real Living Wage + holiday pay - the RLW has been calculated as the minimum amount required for an individual to have a minimally acceptable (far from extravagant!) standard of living.

This is both agencies and the self employed. Had an agency today who refused to give me an indication of costs until they quoted - ok. My previous cleaner priced “the job” which I was happy with and if she left 20 mins early and everything was done that was fine. Anyway she arrived, an hour late, and said her rates were £25 p/h. Why she couldn’t just have told me that over the phone I don’t know as I just sent her away and we both wasted our time.

Ive had four quotes now!

I live in Northamptonshire.

I just have a dry trim for £15 think that’s ok. Don’t visit fancy salons as don’t need the range of services.

You may not be good at cleaning, or cooking family meals, or setting up new tech in the house, or washing the car or gardening or any other task. That doesn’t make them professions or worthy of professional salaries. They are the type of jobs that get easier the more you do. A quick google of how to best clean a bathroom would give you all you need. If you’ve been to uni as you say, you know that it isn’t equal to three full time years of study. No laborious essays or evidence needed. No continuous development. No mandatory training, performance management and all the other headaches you get in professional workplaces.

Im not downplaying the value of good cleaners, it’s a very respectable job. But you, as a professional, not being overly good at cleaning, is totally irrelevant. It doesn’t mean cleaners warrant the same income as professionals.

Ok, if that’s your take, that’s fine. Good luck affording anything on that basis. And good luck finding qualified and skilled doctors when you’re next ill. Why would they bother if they can earn as much doing something low skilled? There’s a reason why professional jobs charge more - else people wouldn’t want to do it.

The lateness would be an issue, but you obviously didn’t pay that proportion.

She will have to do a tax return, pay into a pension and her holidays aren’t paid.

Do the maths!

I can afford things at those prices because I’m a professional. Why would I struggle to find a doctor the next time I’m ill? They’re not going to not be a doctor and not potentially work their way up to earns £100+ an hour because they can be a cleaner for £25!

Except there’s waves of teachers and TA’s, nurses etc turning to stacking shelves at Aldi precisely because it pays similarly and isn’t the same hassle.

This was a quote she was coming to do. So my first impression of her and she arrived an hour late.

I had another person coming who I allowed an half an hour window for, was over half an hour late. I had to turn her away as had other appointments.

Ah, a cleaner bashing thread.

DM has been a cleaner all of her life. Cleaners give silly high quotes when they don't want to work for you, maybe because they can detect your snobbishness about their profession.

I promise you that, in my case, many of these things have not got easier the more I do. Hence us having a robot vacuum and DH doing most of the cooking. (I honestly don't know what you're getting at with the 'going to uni' part of your job, so let's leave that one.) A cleaner would be much, much better at cleaning than me and would get the job done in much less time, which is why people pay for them to come round and clean. Very few people in "professional workplaces" would last a shift in one of these apparently unskilled jobs that we value less than what we do.

Also, you know there are people employed to come round and cook meals for the family, and that those people are very well-paid? Footballers often have them to ensure they stick to the right diet.

Perhaps you should look into becoming a cleaner yourself if your role is that stressful and demanding, and you feel cleaners are being paid a higher proportion of your own salary than you feel they deserve. You might like it more.

Where did I say my role was stressful and demanding? You’re extrapolating.

Have a think about it, you'd save money on your cleaner, free yourself from the yoke of judging the worth of others ,and feel a bit more zen. Win-win, baby!

We have a market economy. The cost of services is determined by what people are prepared to pay for them. If sufficient people are prepared to pay £25-29 per hour then that’s what the service is worth, regardless of what the service actually is. It doesn’t make sense that the person providing those services should artificially lower their price because there may be professional jobs that require university study where the pay is the same or less.

I do a professional job that requires university study and earn roughly £50 per hour (although in reality it’s lower because I work far more than my contracted hours). I have a relative who left school at 16 with barely any qualifications but who got into roofing. He now earns more than I do most years, and good luck to him. I’d rather than my office job that be up on roofs in all weathers.

You sum up every purchase you make based on whether it represents value for money to you, as a client or consumer. It is not “judging others” to decide that a particular expenditure is not worth the cost and cannot be justified on that basis anymore.

Im actually about to cancel my cleaner. I moved to a bigger house and now she's raising her hourly rate by 20%. I have bought robot hoovers.

At her new rate I'd have to earn £35 an hour just to afford paying her from my post tax pay! Its not worth it.

1. Many cleaners do complete courses and stuff to keep up to date with techniques, health and safety etc

2. you get paid 50ph before tax. They get 25ph before tax.

3. many of those charging less than 20ph aren't paying tax. They cant afford to. That might matter to you.

4. It's a hazardous job in terms of labour on the body and infections from your filthy clients. Your job is sitting in an office looking through papers and telling people what you think they should do. Isn't very physical. You can drink tea through most of your day's work.

5. @SuzyFandango robot hoovers dont work. You need a CORDED hoover and to hoover daily to keep on top of it. At least once a week a deep hoover where you move furniture, tackle baseboards etc. The amount of people who have a shit but expensive cordless hoover that cant keep max suction for more than ten minutes is unbelievable. You cannot properly hoover a room in that time with a hoover rapidly losing function. You need the attachments too, or you arent getting in corners.

I love how affronted all these middle classers are that believe they're entitled to a cleaner. Cleaners have historically been lower class women trying to earn a crust and they're suddenly finding themselves able to charge a premium price and people really don't like it! How dare cleaning women put their prices up. How dare you price me out of my right to have a cleaner.

The rich can afford it. £30 an hour is literally nothing to them and it's becoming a status symbol in certain enclaves of the country. It's another marker of wealth and the middle class are fuming about it.

To compare. I just paid £100 to a heating engineer to check my boiler. He was at my house for 40 minutes. He is an ex pupil who got 2 GCSEs. He literally took the front of the boiler, ran a few checks and had a coffee. But that’s the going rate. So £25 for a cleaner seems acceptable, especially as it can be hard work.

@SpringDreams26 completely agree with everything you say. I too am a qualified solicitor, no longer working in the City but from home in a public sector role. When I take £50 p/h net, I then baulk to pay out of that for -
some of the hourly quotes I’ve had this week - cleaning (£27), personal training (£52) and interior designer to do a paint colour scheme (£60 + VAT).

I know some PTs and interior designers are tertiary qualified but these ones weren’t - equivalent of polytechnic certificates less than a year’s training. I have passed them all over in favour of, doing own cleaning, going to a group gym class and getting ChatGPT to help with colour scheme.

meanwhile, I’m happy to pay plumber more than my hourly rate as there is no way on god’s green earth that I can fix my boiler no matter how hard I try.

for completeness, I was a cleaner the whole way though university as a part time job. I think the quotes you are getting are ridiculous.

I work as a cleaner god you would hate me. I make anywhere from £22/£60 ph

but I have people like you to be grateful for. I started off doing standard cleans in often very privileged homes to being treated so poorly I preferred doing deep cleans. I can now make thousands a week doing this and yes I am trained to do so. In the past year I have now completely moved from standard cleaning to biohazard cleaning.

I think the issue with cleaning for some people is they see it as a job that’s beneath them and it’s something they can’t get round to doing. They wouldn’t think twice to spending £40 on a takeaway but spending even half that on a cleaner is outrageous to them.

When you are a self employed cleaner you are not being paid inbetween jobs. You have your products, PPE and insurances as well as all the admin. People expecting to pay minuim wage for people in these roles is ridiculous. Then often what you’ll see is cleaners who price that low racing to the bottom to get clients, trying to cram in as may jobs as they can in a day and that’s when you have cleaners that leave 15 mins beforehand or a job that looks rushed. It’s a labour intensive job and often then you will have clients that will expect the earth on 2 hours for minuim wage.

@Doesanyonereallyliketurkey
Its four hours a week, at £25 that’s £100 not £40.