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 agree OP. £25p/h is the equivalent of £50k pa before tax. If they pay tax. Some will and some won’t.

I don’t view cleaners as “beneath” me at all. It is a service, it’s a part of life that I have chosen to outsource. Part of the reason I outsource it is because it makes sense to me to spend an extra 4 hours a week working and outsource cleaning as I could earn more than a cleaner. That makes sense to me. I work 7 days a week with my various business interests and even if I didn’t, it makes life more manageable. I don’t agree the sky is the limit though and that travelling 15mi up the road justifies a 33% uplift.

You can bleat on about your amazing expertise and “courses” (which unlike other professionals are totally voluntary) but you can’t convince me that’s a reasonable sum. If you can make a living charging that then more power to you.

I have since, met someone suitable who charges £20 p/h so we’ll see how she gets on. Finding someone is half the battle, had numerous cleaners who haven’t come back for a second clean because they’re incompetent.

and re my job not being “physical” I do carry a lot more risk - I deal with large 7 figure sums and an error from me could result in a huge financial loss and the collapse of a business. It’s not as simple as physical or non physical. There are other differences between different professions beyond being physical or not and it’s ingenious to suggest otherwise.

Given several cannot provide invoices I doubt they are.

We manage fine with daily robot hoovers and a weekly clean with the corded miele. I am really good at cleaning and can no longer justifying paying so much per hour to people who clean worse than i do. They don't even clean the loo properly they just pour bleach in it & don't scrub or use limescale cleaners. There's a lot of making it look good rather than real thorough cleaning.

. In the past year I have now completely moved from standard cleaning to biohazard cleaning.

Thats great and im pleased you've upskilled and qualified to do that but my home doesn't require biohazard cleaning. When i was a teenager lots of us were paid as domestic cleaners, precisely because its easy to learn quickly. Its not a skilled job.

Me too I used to clean pubs at 14.

My opinion, is that £25 per hour doesn’t represent good value for money in the context of a cleaner

Then don't have a cleaner, and clean your own house. Simple.

It's surely just supply and demand? If no-one employs the cleaner at £25 p/h, then prices will reduce, or there will be less cleaners if it's not worth their while.

I buy what I think is good value. Personally, I don't often buy coffee from a coffee shop at £4 a cup, because to me it's not good value. But plenty of other people will pay that without batting an eyelid, because it's worth it to them. I have employed a cleaner in the past, at around £20 p/h at the time, because I was working full time, and didn't want to spend my weekends cleaning - so it was money well spent in my opinion. Now that I'm semi-retired, and have more time, it's no longer seems good value to me to get a cleaner, I'd rather do it myself.

Horses for courses, isn't it? Cleaners will presumably charge what the market will bear.

I’ve always found that good reliable cleaners can pretty much name their price and definitely should price at the top end because a higher price serves as a natural filter for the clients that are shopping for the cheapest and would then try to take the pee

@SuzyFandangoi agree with you. However, I still pay my cleanrer to do even a half job as I cannot be bothered to do it myself

I’ve not generally found there’s a correlation between a high rate and reliability. In peak season for Airbnb I usually get around 3 cleaners lined up because it’s adhoc and sporadic. Usually varying rates and the most expensive isn’t usually the best. It’s work ethic that dictates that.

Lets forget that he would have had to study a lot for a few years, take exams etc, he also has to top up his learning, CPD etc, but we will conveniently forget that and compare with someone who doesn't even need a fucking GCSE, nor qualification or anything really!
If you are going to compare do it properly, a cleaner is a cleaner literally anyone can do it!

Feisty reply. Cleaners don’t earn £100 for less than an hours work. In fact most professionals don’t. Heating engineers probably don’t have a first class degree, and top A levels, yet can earn huge amounts of money. And not everyone can clean a house either. It’s physical work.

Literally anyone can be a carer too but if you find a good one to look after your mum, dad, disabled child etc, you'd pay them in gold coins. Anyone can be a binman but if they didn't come for a month, you'd do anything to have someone come round to clear your waste. Both these jobs are not held in high regard but should be. Not all jobs of value require degrees and years of studying.

@Ebok1990 yes, bin men, carers, etc all essential roles which underpin a civilised society. But it doesn’t make them skilled roles. There’s a distinction between “skilled” and “”professional” jobs - a quick Google will confirm.

As well as overheads the amount charged needs to cover dead time when they are travelling between jobs. It will look like they're earning £25 per hour because that is the cost to you. So for a 7.5 hour day, they may be doing 5 or 6 hours of actual work and the rest travelling between jobs, making their actual hourly pay between £16 and £20 before costs.

It's a conversation I've often had with horse owners who complain about the cost of farriers but don't include the travel time when they are effectively earning nothing.

And of course their pay has to cover any holiday or sick days, clients who cancel at the last minute etc.

@favory - well aware. That’s the same for many professionals. The benefit coming to me is they have 4 hours of work.

Thats also the same in other regions, inc 15 miles down the road, where the hourly rate is less. So whilst that’s true, it doesn’t explain the uplift travelling down the road.

As I said I’ve found someone for £20 so we’ll see.

Coincidentally, the freelance groom I’ve found here charges £15 p/h, but £20 for only one hour to make up for her travel which is a sensible approach IMO. We have loads of freelancers here but I deffo think she undervalues herself.

Some are considering if for a stress/quality of life perspective. I was a cleaner for years at uni and really enjoyed it. I've been a Dr for 11 years now. I'm only on £32/h (then obv then -thousands a year in fees/exams). Working 48-63h a week, flipping backwards and forwards nights and days. Often debate a job with less responsibilities and stress when burnt out

So you moved to a different, probably more affluent area and are upset at paying out an extra £20-40 a month? If your client base are also in the new area then have you put your own prices up?

I live in a commuter town half an hour outside London and my cleaner charges £18/hr so I’m surprised by people saying that £27 is the going rate.

I earn a very good in house salary, am 23 years PQE and it works out about £39 a hour take home after tax and deductions. YANBU. I do my own cleaning but wouldn't pay someone £27 an hour. £20 would be the max but £15 seems more realistic when you compare with what people get paid for other manual work jobs plus adding on the business overheads.

This is why I stopped bothering with cleaners. So often you pay for 2 hours and they arrive 15 mins late and disappear 15 mins early, despite you paying a high hourly rate which should compensate them enough to allow modest gaps between cleans to go from one job to the next.
The job done was often no better than I can do myself, in fact usually worse, so I just stopped. No regrets at all. I often found that by the time I'd tidied up sufficiently for the cleaners to do their thing, it didn't seem much more effort to pop the hoover around myself and clean.

Ordinary household cleaning isn't a skilled task, anyone can do it, it doesn't warrant rates of £25 a hour.

A lot of cleaners work in a neighbourhood where their jobs are just a few minutes apart. Not to mention you'd hope they would schedule their jobs to minimise their travel time - it's not like you get a choice when you hire a cleaner of when they come, you always have to accept what time/day they can give you and I assume thats because they're planning their schedule to minimise the distance travelling between houses.
Certainly for £20-£25 an hour I'd expect them to have the organisational skills to do that!!

£15/hour is not a liveable wage once you account for the equivalent of holiday pay.

It’s not £20-40 a month?
I paid £80 for 4hours.
80x4X52/12 = £346.66

at 25p/h it’s £433.33 pcm
at 27.50 it’s £476.66 pcm

is maths not your strong point?

It’s the same near why I live. We had a brilliant one for years and since we moved I’ve given up because we can’t find a good one and it’s so expensive. With 2 kids and almost working FT hours and lots of kid activities they need to get to at the w/e I basically don’t do it and then the house makes me miserable and cross.

i know i need to keep trying people out but it’s all such a faff - and all on my plate of course

there’s nothing worse than spending £75 only to find there’s still dust everywhere when you get back