Hometown Housekeeping

This company cleaned my house for about 3 years. She charged $20/hour and initially scheduled a 4-hour clean every 2 weeks. We changed the schedule from time to time and she was currently doing a 2-hour clean weekly.

At the beginning, I was pleased with the service. Cleaning seemed complete and thorough. Recently, I noticed that some of the quality seemed to be decreasing, For example, I was having a graduation party and she stated that she would pay special attention to the living room, going over it with a fine tooth comb. That week, I noticed that the table under our TV was not dusted at all. I also noticed a shelf that was very dusty. I dusted it myself before the party, based on the amount of dust on the cloth, it appeared that the shelf had not been dusted recently.

I mentioned these a a few other items to the cleaner in a note (she came after I left for work in the morning, so we often communicated by notes or text). Her response was that she did the dusting herself (not her new helper) and that is was a good job. She did acknowledge missing the shelf and some cobwebs. In fact, her exact phrase was, "...I'll give you the shelf and the cobwebs." I felt that meant that she realized she was not cleaning everything. I thought that perhaps the decrease in quality was due to the decreased amount of time in the house (i.e. the house was too big to clean in the 2 hours allotted) , so I suggested changing back to our original schedule which gave her more time in the house, but less frequently. She agreed and we set a date for the change. There was another cleaning scheduled before the change, which she did, again, poorly.

She asked how the cleaning went, and I told her that I was still unhappy (she still missed cobwebs, and my dresser was not well dusted - a 6 inch area at the end of the piece was missed). She wanted to get together personally to go over "problem areas." I stated that my issue was not any particular problem area, but inconsistencies and an overall decrease in the quality of the work. She did respond to that comment until a few days later, when I received a letter of resignation in the mail.

In addition to the quality issues, she frequently changed that day and time of my cleanings. I request a time late in the week and we settled on Thursdays. From time to time I would request a Friday clean if I was having a party at the house on the weekend. That happened about 3-4 time/year. Eventually, she told me that she had a permanent opening on Friday, which I took. At least one or two times per month she asked to switch me to Thursday, or occasionally even Wednesday. Usually I was able to accommodate her.

My intention was to see if the quality would improve when she had more time. The longer time frame was supposed to start the week after she resigned.