Craigslist House Cleaners: What You Need to Know Before You Make a Mistake
As you may remember me saying in previous articles, anyone with $500 and a vacuum can start a “cleaning company.” All you have to do is scroll your local Craigslist page and you’ll find it saturated with people offering to clean your house. The only problem (ok, there are several) is that many of these individuals aren’t insured or bonded for your protection in the event something does go wrong.
I found the following advertisement recently on Craigslist:
House cleaning – weekly, monthly, one time clean-outs; basements, attics, garages, laundry, shopping, meal preparations, transportation, elderly/disabled companionship, painting, fixing, cleaning, organizing, driving, house sitting, pet care – just about anything. Flat rates. Honest, reliable and thorough. References available upon request.
This person is willing to do “just about anything” to make some money. I especially enjoy how they mention that they are honest and reliable. I’m not saying they aren’t, but anyone can use buzzwords to make you feel good. You have to ask yourself how honest are they really and how much knowledge do they really have if they are able to do all of those things at once?
I especially like this post a little further down:
We are two friends who started cleaning houses/apts of a couple of our male friends who work alot and didn’t have the time to keep up with house work without their moms around. after doping this for a couple months we thought why not try to expand our services. Anything you need done we can assure you will get done.
The mistakes and typos in the text aren’t mine—I left them in specifically to prove a point. This is the very first time that a customer will have the opportunity to judge their attention to detail and make a determination of their services. You have to wonder how detail-oriented they are when they can’t even take the time to proofread their ad of a few short sentences.
Now I know this is a bit judgmental, but to be honest, you need to really think about what you are doing before you hire just anyone to come into your home. Trust me when I tell you, after being in business for over 19 years, we realize that things can go wrong when you invite people into your home. Saving money might seem like a good thing, but wait until you really need that insurance. If something goes missing or gets broken, your Craigslist cleaner might look at you and say “Insurance? What insurance? I don’t have insurance.”
You don’t want to find yourself in that position. By then, it’s too late and you’re left with nothing except the bill for you to pay. I could go on and on about the many reasons you should hire a professional cleaning service over an individual cleaner, but I won’t. I’ll build on this subject in future posts to help educate you on the importance of working with a professional! If you have any questions you’d like answered or are interested in a quote for cleaning, just click the get a quote button below and we’ll be happy to help you out.
