Regardless of whether you just want to hire a professional cleaning service for one major job or if you want it to clean your home or office on a regular basis, you should be careful with your selection.
You’re inviting someone into your personal space and basically allowing them access to your possessions and you property.
It would be pretty disastrous to hire some business to clean your house and then come home to find the job half done or not what you expected at all.
We are all pretty fussy about our homes and how we want them cleaned, and assigning the task to someone else could backfire on us.
So if you do want to hire a cleaning service, don’t waste money on one that isn’t going to give you what you want.
Here’s five things that you should think about before you hire the service: Â
1. Reputation
In 2019, it’s an awful lot easier for you to find out about the reputation of pretty much any company that’s worth your money.
First thing’s first, you should take a look at the company’s website and see how presentable it is and what kind of information is up there.
Having a website is a great way for companies to advertise their service and advertise their success and if they aren’t taking advantage of that there might be a problem.
If they have no online presence at all they might very well be hiding something. Why wouldn’t a company want to show-off positive testimonials?
So the lack of an online presence would be a red flag. Look at the website for the Australian company Intrepid Cleaning.
This is what the website for a Cleaning House Maids cleaning services should look like. It’s nicely designed and packed with information about their services.
And if the company you’re eyeing doesn’t have this, try and look at some review sites. Yelp is always a good place to get an indication of quality.
2. Licence & Insurance
What kind of licences a cleaning company needs will depend on where you are. In some places they will be required to be a limited liability company before they can clean houses.
They will almost certainly need a vendor’s licence too and I wouldn’t hire a company that doesn’t have one of these.
The important thing for you, is to make sure that the company you hire has insurance. There’s a number of things that could go wrong which you need to be covered for.
Someone could be injured in your home, some of your possessions could be broken and I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of stolen property either.
If a cleaning company has the right insurance policies, you won’t have to worry about any of these things because you’ll definitely be covered.
General Liability Insurance, Worker’s Compensation Insurance and Property Insurance are all things they should have.
And there might be a few more essentials depending on where you are. Do some research on that and ask to see copies of the policies before you hire the cleaners.
3. Equipment
You might not believe it, but a lot of companies actually don’t have their own equipment. They could very well show up expecting you to provide them with the cleaning supplies.
The best cleaning companies won’t be like this, and it’s information that should be available to you when you’re researching.
In addition to ensuring that they have their own supplies, you should keep an eye on the quality of said supplies yourself.
I would suggest that whoever you choose to hire, just hire them for one cleaning and stick around while they do it.
Look at their equipment and make sure that it’s all in good condition and that it’s all clean too. That’s another thing that some companies will be lazy about.
They just may not be making it a priority to clean the equipment between houses. If they are using unclean, shabby equipment then they probably don’t care all that much about the work.
It’s also less likely that the work will be done to your specifics and your standards if the supplies aren’t up to scratch.
4. Price
You’re always going to be thinking about the cost of a service that you’re purchasing and you probably are aware that going for the cheapest option isn’t always the best route.
In the case of the cleaning company, there’s several price related things that you are going to have to consider beforehand.
Some companies will offer a variety of packages, some of which might seem like great deals, but may not actually be suited to you.
If you want a regular service and the company offers a rate for a month’s worth of cleanings, consider whether it’s something you need.
It might be cheaper for you to actually just hire the company when you need them instead of having it paid in advance.
You could have ended up paying for cleanings that you don’t actually need. Also check and see whether they charge an hourly rate or if they charge by house.
Set a budget for yourself in advance and see which company is the best choice and which sort of service from that company is the most economically feasible for you.
5. Terms of Service
Even if the company provides a very high-quality service, you could get messed up a little bit by the terms of service.
I know none of us want to read through the terms and conditions of anything, but you need to know if there is extra fees potentially coming your way.
If they have a cancellation policy that will end up charging you the same price even if you cancel, then you should avoid the company.
Or if they have some kind of added charge that’s based on some circumstance that can be manipulated, then you should also avoid that.
You just never know what sort of shady fine print could be squeezed into the terms and of service, so give them a thorough read despite the tediousness of it.
Conclusion
It can be a bit of a tricky business to find a cleaning service that is worth your money and also to find the one that’s right for you.
With some research and patience however you should be able to weed out the disreputable ones and find one that’s right for you.
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