I've used Book A Tiger many times and had a range of experiences. I've had a guy who couldn't…read morefigure out how to use my mop (this was premium supposedly) and another guy who said he was done early and just left (he hadn't vacuumed or mopped.. also premium). HOWEVER, I have had some great experiences too. Cleaners who, when finished, made me say "Wow! You're amazing" as I walked around my flat. And this is the problem with Book-A-Tiger, every time I've used it, its felt like roulette. And they do a poor job of building relationships with people like me, who want to use them regularly, which seems counter-intuitive as a business.
My biggest tip is: don't choose Premium if you're scheduling a cleaning within a week. Because what will happen is: unless one of their premium cleaners happens to, by luck, be available, they'll send you a regular cleaner but charge you the premium rate. I don't think this is to rip you off; I'll explain what I mean later.
Now if your immediate thought is, "well what is the difference between premium and regular in the first place", you've asked a very good question. I had a German class earlier this year and two guys in the class were cleaners for a Book A Tiger. One, with far less experience, got a premium booking one day, when the other guy, who had been cleaning for far longer was still receiving the regular rate. I would say the best answer is, the scheduling process within Book A Tiger is very manual and there is an editorial process that happens whenever you make a booking which can be inconsistent.
The website is probably the most unpleasant part of Book-A-Tiger. I'm also including the apps when I say 'website' as the apps are just thin wrappers around the website. My first booking was almost two years ago and I've seen several iterations of the website. With every change to their website, there is always something that doesn't quite work when you're a returning customer. My old solution was to just be a first-time customer every time. Earlier this year, however, they took away the one-time cleaning option for the menu. Maybe they've now put it back, but anyhow, I had to choose recurring. I happened to get a person who does a great job and for the first time in two years, they sent the same person the second time. The Book-A-Tiger website has a page showing all my future appointments happening roughly once-a-month. If I edit an of those appointments, something breaks, like my August appointment getting rescheduled for July with no way to move it back to the original date. Now I have no August appointment even though I want one. I want to hire them to clean my house, but they just won't let me do it.
One of the more confusing moments you'll have trying to sign up for Book-A-Tiger is figuring out what to actually request. How many hours? Regular or Premium? They used to make that clearer, but my guess is the additional options slowed new signups, so they took them away. Often you can't know until your cleaner comes the first time. In my case I'd asked for 6 hours and we talked at the end and she said she only needed 5. You can edit that, but not for all future appointments. Once you setup a recurring cleaning, the parameters of that cleaning are set in stone. Now you can edit the number of hours for an individual appointment, but as I mentioned earlier, touching the appointment could end in catastrophe. Sometimes though, maybe I want the windows cleaned and so I want to add an hour. I can't. This is why I don't think getting a regular cleaner after paying for premium is them trying to rip me off. I think it's more a broken company then a malicious one. Because giving them more money is difficult too.
I've half-considered writing a plug in for Chrome web browsers that fixes everything that's broken on their website.
The communication is never that clear. Sometimes I've scheduled a cleaning and gotten an e-mail with the cleaners name and everything. Other times I've gotten an e-mail saying they haven't found anyone yet but they will. But then there's no follow up so you have no idea who is gong to show up your door.
The last thing, there needs to be a pre-flight checklist. I've had cleaners who needed gloves provided or scorching cream. An e-mail ahead of time letting me what I should have on hand would have been helpful.