When our customers are away on holiday they generally ask their cleaners to do lots of special tasks such as special dusting, cleaning silver and so on.
If you decide not to use the cleaner while you are on holiday, please inform the agency directly so that we can bank your unused hours. You can then use these hours at a future time for catch up cleans.
Please do ensure though that you tell the agency before you go on holiday so we can organise the credits. Also please tell us at least 1 working day before the clean that you will be using these credits for.
Our customers love us because we carefully vet, screen, train and monitor all our cleaners to a very high standard at such a reasonable price. This is because we spend their funds on doing this, rather than on administration.
This does mean that regular customer’s agency fees runs throughout their membership. Before 2001 we used to stop the charge when customers went on holiday, however we find that customers no longer want this old service as it is 25% more and does not come with insurance, this is because:
1. The administration costs of stopping and starting the service when the customer went on holiday. This actually costs more to process than the agency fee paid when the customer was on holiday. As a result the agency fee as a whole is higher if we stop and start the service in this way. We prefer to use customer’s money to find them great cleaners, rather than the administration.
2. Many customers were away for a lot of the year and away almost every month and not using their cleaner during this time. Regular customers were in effect subsidising these other customers which is why the figure in section 1 was so high.
3. It is far more expensive for the agency if a customer does not use the cleaner for a period as we also have to try and find those cleaners other work.
4. The pre 2001 service did not have insurance. We cannot get the insurance money back if customers do not use it when they are on holiday, because as the customer is paying the cleaner we are brokering them insurance. We pay this quarterly and cannot get it back if the customer does not use the cleaner, a bit like how with car insurance one cannot get it back if the one goes on holiday and does not drive the car.
As a result we apologise that your agency fee still runs while you are on holiday, but this does in fact result in a far cheaper total agency fee. We can provide your cleaner with other work during this time so there is no need to have to pay them.