A week ago tomorrow was our regularly scheduled cleaning ladies day. Every other Tuesday evening, we get a text from the company owner with the time the ladies will be arriving. Last week's expected arrival time on Wednesday was 10AM. At 10:30AM, they hadn't arrived yet so I texted the owner asking for an update.
Her reply was 'they made a mistake and went to a different house'. Huh? She said they can be there by 12:30 and asked 'is that OK'? I replied 'No, it is not OK. How is that even possible? We have been the 2nd house on their schedule every other Wednesday for some time'. She was apologetic and said they made a mistake. The only thing was - this wasn't the first time we've had crazy scheduling issues with them. I thought about saying 'OK, see them later' but I've made that concession before. More than once. And that doesn't count the time they totally no-showed - having told their boss they were done working for the day. I told her we would see them in two weeks - and she offered for them to clean on Friday. She had offered Fridays before when there was a screw up on their end - so this time, I let her know that suggesting Friday just made it worse. I had asked for Fridays when we first hired them and was told Friday wasn't possible.
It appears to be available if they have to fix a screw up.
I had taken a picture of another cleaning company's car so I phoned them. They arrived Wednesday evening and sent us an estimate later that evening. It was more than we've been paying so I mulled it over and replied to them on Thursday. I countered with the mid-point between what they were asking and what we had been paying - and also agreed to pay the higher amount (their ask) for the initial cleaning which I knew would be more time for them. I also suggested that they have a business opportunity - husband and wife team - and the husband could do window washing, power washing of garage floors, exterior, sheds, patios, etc. and charge 'extra' for those things - and also suggested that seeing their company vehicle at another house in the neighborhood could be good for their business.
They accepted our counter and will be here one week from today. I texted the company owner of our soon-to-be-ex cleaning company to let her know to take us off their schedule. She replied 'OK and I'm sorry'.
Our new company promised we would have an impeccable clean. I like the sound of that.
It will be an adjustment - I think it's possibly mostly going to be the wife doing the cleaning so it will take her longer than the two (sometimes three) ladies we've had - but it's OK. We're confident they will do a great job - and we were very impressed with them. They are both attending classes in the afternoons to improve their English. They were very easy to understand (something that has been hard with previous company - few of the ladies speak English) and I think getting to know what we like and what we want them to do will be much easier with better communication. Trust me, I'm not picky. I'm grateful to have the help. This is a lot of house for two older people. We keep up pretty well but it's very nice to have help with floors, window shutters, etc. .
Two posts in one day. Woot woot! I'm on a roll!
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