Deciding to hire a professional home cleaning service is a decision made to have a perpetually clean home, as well as to create more time for family. Allowing someone else that not-so-fun duty frees up more time for you to control the ways it’s spent. This is a great option for dual working families. If you have always cleaned your own home, and this is your first experience with seeking out a home cleaning service, then ask others who use a cleaning company for their homes, who they use. The following are factors you should consider before hiring a professional home cleaning services.
Legal Considerations in Choosing a Home Cleaning Service
First and absolutely foremost, any professional service you are contemplating or thinking about using should be bonded and insured. This indicates that the company carries insurance that covers any damage to property or injury of any worker. What that means to you is in the event of any damage or even theft; you will not have to haggle with an individual over restitution or replacement. Also, in the case of employee injury, you will not be held liable. By being bonded, you can rest easy that the company has access to state-backed funds to cover claims should they occur. Additionally, ensuring all employees are thoroughly trained and finding a company who guarantees their work will go a long way in preserving your own peace of mind and satisfaction.
Health Considerations in Choosing a Home Cleaning Service
If you are sensitive to common household allergens, there are special circumstances that you must take into account when deciding on your cleaning service. A professional who uses a HEPA filter in their vacuum cleaners and chooses dust-trapping cloths and wipes will be a good fit for you. Due to the vast array of household cleansers available, if you have sensitivities to any type of detergent, your service will not have any problem locating an alternate type. This applies also if you prefer a more ‘green’ approach to your cleaning regimen. Communication will of course be the key.
Extra Steps toward an Informed Decision. Online
Forums can provide a great deal of information and feedback from other clients of these service companies. Asking for references is also an effective way to obtain a genuine assessment of the quality of service provided by your company in question. If a company you are interested in operates a website, they can also carry a lot of the information you need to put to rest any of your concerns or detail their services in a more thorough fashion. Place a call to the company over the phone and be proactive in your approach. Asking the right questions can make all of the difference in the world. The order that you ask questions in does not matter. What matters is that you ask all of the questions you need to ask to find out the information that can assist you in making the most appropriate decision.
How long has the service been in business?
The longer the home cleaning service has been around the better it is for you. Contact the Better Business Bureau (BBB) to find out if any complaints have ever been filed against the company. Doing this is not underhanded but is good investigative work. You can never be too safe in this regard.
Does the cleaning company have insurance?
The answer you want to hear is yes they do. If you get a no, then you need to call and talk with other companies. If you hire a company without insurance and one of the cleaners gets hurt in your house or something gets broken then you are responsible for paying the damages and this will affect your homeowners insurance. When talking to the owners or manager of the company find out if the employees are screened, bonded, licensed and insured. Make sure you ask about all of these aspects. You want to know that every employee has had a criminal background check and that if something goes wrong in your home (such as something turns up missing) that you will be compensated accordingly.
Referrals
The best way to find any company is always through word of mouth. Businesses treasure this form of advertising, because people see it as so much more authentic than what they see on TV or read in magazines. A company, after all, can say they are the best home cleaning service in the country all day long. It doesn’t prove a thing, other than that they had the money to pay for the advertising. When you can find unpaid customers who will speak just as highly, that means something. Ask your friends and co-workers and see if they can recommend a company.
Avoid Individuals
Unless there aren’t any in your area, you should look for actual companies instead of individuals. That’s not to say you can’t find a good home cleaning service in the back of the newspaper, but only that you’ll have less peace of mind when hiring someone that way. When you go through a company, you have many more resources you can use to check them out.
Some companies that offer cleaning services do not hire their own employees but instead send out contractors or third party suppliers or vendors. You want to select a home cleaning service that hires its own employees to do the work. You do not want anyone else showing up at your home.
Once you have found companies that look promising so far, you should ask for an in home consultation or a trial run of their services. They will probably want to know right away what exactly you are looking for, whether it is a once a month deep cleaning or a weekly tidying up. Be sure to ask them what services they include when they come to appointments. Most companies have a routine cleaning checklist that they follow that usually includes things like scouring, vacuuming, dusting, and straightening up.
Before hiring a home cleaning service to descend upon your home with their supplies you need to know exactly what jobs they are willing to do and which ones they do not do. For instance some companies do windows, others do not. Some will do your laundry, others will not. Some will clean ovens, others will not. If you have a specific task in mind then ask the individual you speak with on the phone if that is something that the workers would be able to do for you.