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

It does when it comes to hoovering. You absolutely can't pick up the same amount of dust hoovering fast vs hoovering slow - the hoover just doesn't work that way.

One way I measure how well a cleaner cleans is how much dust is collected in the hoover vs when I do it myself. I had a cleaner who collected barely any dust. I asked her to hoover a bit more slowly but she didn't so I replaced her with someone who did hoover slowly and collected a lot more dust.

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.

It's pretty hard to clean really slowly without doing a decent job, unless by slowly you mean taking regular breaks, constantly stopping to scroll through your phone or going out for a vape every 20 minutes. If you are present when your cleaner is there you will get a good feel for exactly how long it takes to do a particular job well without deliberately dragging your feet over it. Also don't forget that cleaners can generally do something quicker than we can do it ourselves because they don't get distracted by doing things like re-arranging the inside of the bathroom cabinets, or putting a load of clean washing away while you clean the bedroom or whatever.

@redskyAtNigh we’ll have agree to disagree, but in OPs case there’s no way a fortnightly clean in a 4 bed house would take one hour.

I did cleaning until COVID and cleaned for two hours a week, a four bedroom house, took two hours and I charged £20. I can't believe what cleaners charge these days, work is hard to get. Find someone else, her attitude is rude. She knows roughly how long it takes. I was booked, paid for two hours, the lady would give me a list of occasional jobs to do if I had time. Your cleaner is having a laugh.

I wouldn't use her again if she only stayed an hour. That's just ridiculous.

Exactly! This is the problem with accepting that it's 'as long as it takes to get the job done' rather than an agreed number of hours that you pay for.

They'll soon find they manage just fine whizzing through in 2 hours when they know they quoted you on the basis it would probably take four, even if they didn't expressly say that.

After a few months of letting the skirting boards and the lightswitches get grubbier and grubbier, and ignoring the ever thicker layer of dust under the sofas and the cobwebs in high corners etc, the place won't actually be very clean at all. Then when you dare to say 'could you just....this week please?' You'll get 'Ah, well that will have to be extra I'm afraid. That's a deep clean you need.'

We pay the same for our cleaner fortnightly. When she started it was 3.5hours ish, she generously takes about 2 hours now.
5 bed house but she doesn't do the bedrooms.
I swing between feeling ripped off and sucking it up because she is very good. She is extremely reliable, very flexible will always do extra weeks in December which helps us out. Changes her schedule to fit ours, will do additional things if I ask her to.
So essentially we are paying for that not just her actual cleaning.
However, an hour for £75 I would not be ok with!

I'd expect her to be there for 3.5 hours for £75. You usually pay per hour, if they are done earlier there is usually stuff to be cleaned that doesn't need to be done every visit, I know my in-laws would leave instructions for what they wanted doing if she was done early, she never left before their 3 hours was up.

£75 for an hour is eye watering(I put it in a calculator it's the equivalent of 146k before tax working 37 hours a week 🤣), I have 3 degrees and a professional job and don't earn that 🤣, if cleaning pays £75 an hour I might just chuck it in and start my own business!

We've got a fairly large 4 bed detached, and our cleaner does 3 hours on a friday. She uses her own cleaning materials, is very thorough and charges us £18 an hour that I'm more than happy to pay.

I pay £75 for a 4 hour clean of a four bed house (tho currently only two of us and dog live there). You can't clean a house that big in an hour! Dusting, hoovering, mopping, bathrooms, skirting boards. And the occasional clean of window frames and much else.
Our cleaner also brings her own materials and Henry

Find someone else op, £75 for one hour isn’t working for you or anyone really.

I would expect 3 hours for £75.

Op tell her now you don’t owe her anything she’s ripped you off a tradesman would charge you this for 1 hour don’t be a mug. 1 text then its done.

I pay £60 for 3 hours fortnightly , she cleans the whole of downstairs including down stairs wc, landing , both up stairs bathrooms and main bedroom .

I pay £60 for 3 hours cleaning. Large 4 bed / 2 bathrooms, older detached house. She does downstairs, hall, stairs and landing and our bedroom and 1 bathroom.

Is your house clean? As in properly clean after shes been?
Do you leave her a list of things to concentrate on? Like inside windows/skirting/high dusting.
Theres no way you can clean a 4 bed house in 1 hour! It takes 30 mins to clean a bathroom/shower room.
It takes me an hour to hoover mine (I do have 3 sets of stairs).
I'd be tempted to buy 3 hours cleaning a fortnight from another provider.

You're paying far too much. I pay £13 per hour. Better to have given her a set time she has to work otherwise she could take advantage if it's open ended.

When I had a cleaner I was just happy my house was clean. Monitoring the hoover, Jesus wept.

Mind the living wage has gone up this month.

I’m a cleaner. I charge by the hour (£16, London, products not provided) and make sure I work for the entire time. That means that if an area doesn’t need so much attention I will look for something else to do. I know that some cleaners choose to charge by house but 1. Surely the size of your house can’t be cleaned well in one hour and 2. I’d feel I were ripping someone off to take £75 for one hour. I would talk with her and say I didn’t realise that “takes as long as it takes” would be one hour. I’d suggest looking for a good cleaner who charges by the hour x

I had one who charged £80 for two hours!
She then asked me for petrol money!

I understand the ' as long as it takes' approach to some extent. Our current cleaners come as a team of 3. They've been us with for 3 years and because they know the house, the layout etc they can whizz round in 45 minutes (so 2 hours 15 minutes, rather than the 3 hours I pay them for). But they haven't raised their price in those 3 years, and their reliability and thoroughness makes them well worth hanging on to. I'm not going to quibble over 45 minutes when they do exactly what I wanted them to do.

To be honest they are a powerhouse, wiping down kitchen door fronts etc, always looking out (and upwards) for cobwebs or fingermarks. They arrive, get to work and don't stop until they leave. They have their blind spots (don't we all) but it's no skin off my nose to spend 5 minutes dusting an overlooked corner.

Our previous cleaner (with us for 6 years) was a lovely guy - came for the whole 3 hours but when he chatted to me his hands stopped. So I probably only got 2.5 hrs anyway.

I also think cleaners are more efficient in their work than I am. Before our cleaners come dh and I have a tidy up, so all surfaces are clear, clothes are put away, clean bedsheets are set out ready for them to change etc. When dh and I do the cleaning we are simultaneously cleaning and tidying (so it takes much longer), plus we get distracted by various odd but unnecessary tasks.

That said, @BoldAmberCat your cleaner is taking the piss charging £75 for 1 hour.

Were you clear about what tasks you expected her to do? Wipe down the skirting boards, mop the kitchen / bathroom floors, change the bed sheets, hoover under furniture, not just around it...

That's not what i was saying though -I was saying that you should pay for cleaning based on an agreed standard, not on time.

Let's say it takes your 15 minutes to hoover your lounge to the standard you expect.

If I am your cleaner, it's high unlikely that I can complete this to the required standard in 2 minutes. However, maybe I am a better hooverer than you are or I have a more efficient hoover, and perhaps I can do it in 12 minutes. Or maybe I'm a bit slower than you are and it actually takes me 18. In both these cases you're not particularly bothered about how long it took me but how much dust I got up and how clean the carpet is.

However, if I spend 2 hours hoovering your lounge because I'm very slow and I take my time (my story, perhaps I'm really just looking at my phone when you're not checking on me), are you happy to pay for 2 hours as that's what it took (maybe the carpet is the cleanest it has ever been)? Or do you feel that you should really only be paying for getting the ?

8 hours a week?!?! Bloody hell do you live in an actual castle!? 🏰 Having cleaners in my house, all day one day out of every 7 would drive me up the wall, even if it was free!

At least Dick Turpin wore a mask!