Had high hopes for Esther to be our long-term cleaning person. After an in-person interview, where…read moreshe stressed how thorough she was, including an initial 10-hour deep cleaning, we proceeded.
On the day of the deep cleaning, which was supposed to start at 7 (I got up at 6 on a Saturday morning to make sure I was ready to head out with our dogs), she arrived close to 9. I took our 4 dogs out of the home for a hike and some errands. I asked that she start with our bonus room, so I could leave the two big dogs outside and take our smaller ones in the bonus room with me while she and her assistant cleaned the rest of the house.
When I returned, about 4 1/2 hours later, the bonus room was still in-progress, my upstairs office door was closed (apparently signaling the room was done), and the rest of the rooms upstairs were partially done. Checking out my office, it looked like my desk hadn't been wiped or dusted (dog hair, coffee spot), but I didn't say anything, figuring I'll check the whole house once done.
To make a long story short, around 6:30 PM when I overheard her ordering dinner for her and her assistant, I came down (really wanting to be able to get out of the bonus room with the two dogs that I'd now been in for hours, feed my dogs, and cook a meal for myself), I asked about how much longer she would be. She said "midnight". I honestly thought she was kidding. At this point, the kitchen had been mostly done, although I'm not sure to what extent cabinets were cleaned (part of the deep cleaning); the living room, our downstairs office, two downstairs bathrooms, our master bedroom, and our laundry room had all still seemed not to have been touched.
I told her that wouldn't work for me, and she needed to wrap up in the next two hours and please shift into a more general cleaning, the way she would if she wasn't doing a one-time deep cleaning. She offered to come back the next day (Sunday) or during the week, and, at this point, I declined, as I hadn't intended to spend my entire weekend working around a cleaning person in my own home.
After she left, around 8:30 PM, I checked the house. Our downstairs tub, shower, and toilet had not been cleaned at all, and I spent 30 minutes cleaning the rest of the bathroom. The next morning, I swept, mopped, and wiped down the laundry room. Definitely did not receive $400 worth of deep cleaning value.
Frankly, I'm not 100 percent sure how the time was spent. It seems she spent most of her time cleaning our fridge and oven, as well as our windows, (which are all part of her deep cleaning). Had I known that meant she needed roughly 15-20 hours to clean our house (which previously had been professionally cleaned weekly or every other week and which she came by to give us an estimate a week earlier) and get all the key living areas, I would not have proceeded. This was especially annoying given that I had stressed that previously we'd had a single person clean our home and that I thought it was too much work for one person and, since we both work from home, we really didn't want someone in the home for more than 4-6 hours on an average cleaning because it was disruptive to have calls and meetings, etc.
I guess others loved her service, and maybe this was just a one-off experience, but we were pretty disappointed.
