AIBU to think my cleaner is too expensive?

[BoldAmberCat]

I have a new cleaner. She charges £75 for a fortnightly clean. I have a 4 bedroom house. Before she started, I asked her how long she would be at the house for each time. She said it would, “take as long as it takes”. The first week she stayed for two and a quarter hours. When she came for the second time she only stayed one hour. I feel ripped off. Is this ok or not? Thank you

I pay £51 for three hours fortnightly . Surrey.

I would expect 6 hours cleaning work for £75

This is the dream

I pay £60 for 2 cleaners for 2 hours. In the SE. They are exceptionally good!

I’ve had cleaners before but they always came for 2 hours per week and charged an hourly rate.
When this cleaner quoted £75 for a fortnightly clean, I did ask how long she would be there, as I wanted to make sure it was reasonable value. She wasn’t able to give an answer so I thought I would try out the service and see how long roughly she was cleaning for. I was assuming around 3 hours work for £75 but it seems I was wrong.

I think she hoovered the whole house and cleaned the toilets, bath, showers and sinks. It takes me an hour just to hoover the house, to be honest. But perhaps I’m very slow!

I haven’t talked to her about it yet, but I will do so next week.

£15 an hour , I have a 2 hour clean weekly on a 4 bedroom 2 bathroom and extra toilet , sometimes two of them come so they are there for an hour, but still 2 hours worth of cleaning, they are super fast and do not stop for a second . You are being really ripped off !

How can she clean a four bed house in an hour?
A friend of mine was home unexpectedly when his cleaner arrived with her DD (a teenager, she wasn’t part of the deal). He hadn’t told her he’d be WFH that day. They went to the next room and he heard her say: if it looks tidy just spray this room scent around they won’t know the difference!!
£20/hour seems the going rate these days, but no one can do a whole house properly in an hour so she’s just not good at her job irregardless of what she charging.

Cleaner: “It’ll take as long as it takes.”
Me: “No, I will pay you an hourly rate for a set amount of hours. If that isn’t what you’re offering then I thank you for your time, and I will find another service.”

She must be superhuman if she's actually cleaned a 4 bed to a good standard in an hour!!

Rip-off (and you’d think not long enough for one person to do a good job on a 4-bed house). I pay £20ph to a private cleaner for a weekly 2-hour clean, which I don’t think is cheap but is probably about right. This person is charging you £35-75 an hour! As others have said you need to agree an actual hourly rate.

I pay £20 an hour and get a 6 hour deep clean once a month, yes you’re definitely being ripped off. Ask for their hourly rate and then book for say 3 hours every fortnight.

Let her go. I pay £22 per hour and have a 3 hour clean for 3 bedrooms,2 bathrooms, lounge and kitchen. I would expect all that yours is doing plus skirting, dusting of light fitting etc. She taking the piss.

5 bedroom house - 4 hours - depending on cleaner around here its £75-£80
Always takes four hours.

Generally I agree with her that it takes as long as it takes and that thinking of it in hourly terms is unhelpful. BUT that's only if all the cleaning you want done is done and she can't possibly be doing that in an hour!

She won’t be picking up much dust if she’s wizzing over the carpet fast!

Get someone else and pay an hourly rate. My cleaner takes 4 hours for a 4 bed 2 bath house and she is very thorough, corners are hoovered etc.

I wouldnt pay a cleaner a fixed cost because I know how long it takes to clean my house to the standard I like. Fixed cost cleaners ALWAYS take shortcuts.

I feel a bit of an idiot reading these responses!
I pay £105 for a fortnightly clean. For that I get three cleaners who descend and whirl around for just over one hour, then disappear. I have a four bedroom house but they say they don’t have time to do the whole thing - usually 1 bedroom plus our front room don’t get vacuumed.

I think £75 for a fortnightly clean of a 4 bedroom house is fine tbh. But you should have been clear about what you expected the clean to cover and the standard required.

I don't think paying per hour is necessarily useful - I'd prefer someone who cleaned efficiently for 2 hours and did a good job and cleaned everything needed over someone who went more slowly for 3 hours but didn't end up with a better result.

Is the house clean? In all these comments I can't see anywhere whete you feel it isn't. So, essentially your complaint is "she completes her work too efficiently" which honestly, yes, is a bit unreasonable.

I pay £20 per hour (London) for 8 hours a week (big house).

I don’t think fortnightly cleans work it would be better to have weekly cleaning so dirt and dust doesn’t build up.

Ive no idea what this woman thinks she’s doing but I’ve had cleaners all my adult life and they’re always paid by the hour.

If you’re in London good cleaners are two a penny.

No her complaint is that she’s charging way too much for an hour’s work.

£75 for one hour 😳 total piss take

Cleaners usually charge per hour. We have a fortnightly clean for 3 hours (3 bed) and it's £45 . There's 2 of them so they are only here for 1.5 hrs but it's 3 hrs work.

She did say she could do with a bit more time but 3 hrs is all we can afford so she just does what she can in that time.

How can anyone clean a 4 bed in 1 hour?

We pay £96 for four hours every fortnight (London). The amount is cheap; but only doing one hour for that is not on.