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

If your house is cleaned to a good standard in an hour, I'd suggest you don't actually need a cleaner, as you're clearly doing most of it yourself!

Well, quite.

Her price is fine as is 'as long as it takes' - some cleaners are massively efficient and you're paying for the clean, not just the time - but it's not possible to clean a house that size in an hour. It also depends on what you expect her to do fortnightly as you haven't really said that.

I would ask her not to come again.
I clean a 4bed house, but only 1 of the bedrooms, 2.5 hrs on a good day.

Fascinated to know how clean the house is in one hour?! If most of that is hoovering, just get a Roomba - it will pay itself off in about a month.

Not ok if that was how long. It is not possible to clean a 4 bedroom house in that time.

Not ok if that was how long. It is not possible to clean a 4 bedroom house in that time.

There are whole Facebook groups where people are mentored on to how to max their cash as a cleaner - applaud this, it’s fair enough! One of the key bits of advice is always charge by job not hour, and also upsell to an extra deep clean etc, charge £20+ etc. I think for the price by the job aspect to work for you, you do need an excellent dedicated cleaner - one hour is really taking the mick

That’s very expensive! My cleaner has just upped the price to £65 from £60. She’s here for 3-3.5 hours - for a 5 bed, 4 reception room house, with a bathroom, 2 en-suites and a downstairs toilet.

This ^ a fixed price for the clean & to be there ‘as long as it takes’ is deffo promoted on fb cleaners pages. I’ve never understood this really as if you’ve got a 4 bed house to do & you run over how do they manage their diary? Of course they’re not gonna do everything if they’ve got another booking at a specified time. I think it’s a rip off & hourly is better.

What part of the country are you in?

This same thing and cost happened to me and can’t believe too many cleaners would do this?

I got rid.

Way too expensive, sorry but you are being ripped off.

My sister is a cleaner (she has been doing it for 20 years) and charges £15 per hour, I help her out twice a week on bigger houses so £30 per hour for the two of us. Most are fortnightly cleans.

We can clean a 4 bed house from top to bottom in 2 hours. My sister is meticulous.

I would assume it’s swings and roundabouts.

£32.50 a week for a 4 bed house seems reasonable.

I would be more concerned about the standard of the cleaning.

It should be more like 4 hours cleaning not one.

I’d expect 4-5 hours for that on our local rates.

Did you not say anything to her the first time? And then just paid 75 quid for the second one? Why on earth didn’t you speak up?

I promise you you wouldn't if you had one. Speaking from bitter experience it would soon start to irritate you if you were regularly paying for 4 hours and the job was only taking two, especially if paintwork wasn't getting wiped down or windows weren't being cleaned, or sofas were being vacuumed around every time, rather than under or behind. Lots of cleaners get complacent and go on automatic pilot, just doing the bits that show and obviously need doing each time, never using the extra time that you are paying for to keep on top of the less obvious jobs too.

When they initially price up, they should be doing it on the basis of how long they think it's going to take them. That's why you should ALWAYS ask for their hourly rate. If they say they don't have one they are lying. Of course they do. Everyone does. Ask them how long they estimate your house will take as a regular maintenance clean, not one-off deep clean. Then when they give you their price, that will give you their hourly rate.

If they say it should take 4 hours or whatever, that is what you will be charging you for, so why would you be happy to see them consistently leaving in 2 or 3 hours? Either it never needed 4 hours in the first place and they over-quoted you, or they are rushing or skipping stuff and not doing it as well as they could be.

When my cleaner first started my house really needed a good deep clean so it took longer for the first couple of sessions. I told her I'd happily pay for as many hours as it took to get the whole house up to scratch over two or three longer sessions and then she could let me know how long she thought about a regular clean after that. We settled on 4 hours a fortnight as a maintenance clean, but she's frequently done in three. When that happens she lets me know and she asks if I'd like something extra done, like some windows done, or a bit of ironing, or the oven or something, or if she prefers to get off early she'll do that. But she only charges for the time she's there. If she's done in 3.5 I still pay her for four because I don't want to be mean over it, she works so hard. But equally there are times when we've been away between cleans and the house has barely been used, so if it only takes her two hours that's all she charges for. We are both happy with this and it works well.

She's fantastic and because she's so fair and transparent and I don't feel she takes the piss, she will get a good Christmas bonus when the time comes. Other cleaners I have had in the past started well but very quickly got lazy and complacent, leaving earlier and earlier each time, even though there was clearly still things they could have found to do with the time they were charging me for. They didn't last long with me. I'm not mean but I won't be taken advantage of.

I think hourly actually lends itself more to the possibility of being ripped off. Cleaning slowly does not mean you are doing a better job.

I can't think of any other service where you would pay for a number of hours rather than specifying the jobs that you wanted completing.

If I had a window cleaner, for example, I wouldn't say I would pay them for an hour's cleaning - I would want all my windows cleaned regardless of how grubby they were. If the window cleaner thought they were extra grubby, they would be free to charge more.

OP's desire is surely that her whole house is cleaned to a good standard, not that the cleaner spends x hours on it.

So either
-the house is not cleaned to a good enough standard (in which case OP should raise this) or
-the house is cleaned to a good enough standard because the cleaner is Super Cleaner (hang onto her) or
-the house is cleaned to a good enough standard because it wasn't that dirty to start with (in which case OP's being overcharged)

I think a problem with hourly is that people's expectations about what can be done in two hours is wildly ridiculous sometimes. They can't do it in two hours but expect a cleaner to it and more.

Ooh no, my house is a similar size and I can’t clean the whole house in one hour. She’s doing the bare minimum in that time. I’d say that you need to agree an hourly rate.

My cleaner charges 16 per hour and assumes 3hrs for a large 2 bedroom appartment. I would say 75 is ok for 4-4.5 hrs clean for a 4-bed fortnightly.
OP, was the house clean up to your standard after 1 hr of her work?

Yep, dust her off.

Cleaners should be paid by the hour and the client needs to work out what needs doing and how long it should take. If you don't manage your cleaner, you will be ripped off!

But you're describing a completely different situation. What i said was that if I agreed to pay someone £75 to end up with a clean house (not defined by hours, as OP said her cleaner never specified a number of hours either way), and i was getting a clean house for that price, I'd be fine with it.

The situation you describe is paying someone for 4 hours and not getting it, and that the house isn't cleaned properly. That's a completely different scenario. I can't even easily see now that the OP isn't happy with how clean the house is, and her cleaner never said how many hours she'd spend there!

I pay £75 fortnightly. But my cleaner is there 1-5