I would like to get an opinion about a situation I have with my Cleaner. I have being using her services for nearly 9 years and in two different houses and I have always trusted her. I did not have problems for years when she was doing only three hours service on a weekly basis. Two years ago when I bought the house I live now which is a 5 bed I asked her to do more hours including the ironing, for a total of 5 per week ( 12 £ per hour ). After a while I started to notice that she was leaving 45 minutes, sometimes one hour earlier. We have an alarm system which notifies exactly when she arrives and leaves so we knew for sure she was doing this. After I realised that this had became the normality I spoke with her and she said that she has now a new method of working and she does not charge per hours but per house so that would be the minimum time for my house. She said that all her Clients pay her in this way. I have explained that this does not work for me as I would be happy to top up to arrive to an extra hour if she finishes 15 or even 30 minutes earlier, but I could not accept and not even afford her to do one hour less than I pay on a regular basis. I explained that being my house very messy and big there are other things to do on top of the regular cleaning and I would be happy if she finishes earlier to pay her up to 5 hours if she would add extra bits to work for all this time. She agreed but again after some months she started to do the same thing. I explained once again that I am not happy with this and she said again that all her Clients pay her a fixed fee based on the size of the house. I said again this does not work for me and if she thinks she can do the general cleaning in a shorter time she could either get paid for that time or add extra work to arrive to 5 hours or leave. She said she would stay 5 hours, but after another bit of te, we found out that when we were on holiday she only stayed for three hours.
Some months ago we've got a kitten and I had recommended her to check before she left that all the windows were shut before she left because the cat could fall. She was quite satirical about and said ok. Few weeks after she left one of the second floor window open with the result of the cat falling and breaking his hips and us paying 1500£ of vet expenses.
On top of all that this Cleaner started to turn to the wall one of the camera of the alarm every time she starts working she said for privacy reasons. I said I don't mind when I am in but recently she has done while we were on holiday abroad and the camera was left inactive for one night and a day. And very important I had left her a message asking her to please not touch the cameras when we were away. Now I am very sorry as I have being knowing this lady for long time and I trusted her but the things happened in the last two years have made me completely loose trust in her. Can I get an opinion on this? Are these situations acceptable even if you know your cleaners for 9 years? I have the feeling she is taking advantage of this...