I have always been a big supporter of minority owned, woman owned small businesses. Over the 30 plus years I have lived in the bay area, I have gone out of my way to support these businesses that I believe are the lifeline of our community.
However, my experience with Cleanera has raised some important issues for me.
Cleanera has provided me with house cleaning services for the past few months. Francisco provided excellent service cleaning my windows and also my patio tiles. He was thorough and professional and I would highly recommend him for his work.
His wife, Patty runs the house cleaning. Here are the issues I faced -
- they run with a crew of many hispanic women who barely speak english. This is not a huge challenge as you can communicate using google translate but often a lot of time goes into communicating what needs to be done and how. Patty is not always on top of providing the instructions so the crew in very confused when they arrive as to what needs to get done. It took a lot of my time and effort in the middle of my work day and meetings to make sure they know what needs to get done.
- to make things worse, the crew members keep changing. It is a revolving door of people. Every week there is a new person walking through my doors which to me is a big concern for several reasons. The continuity is lost, the work does not get done right and it is a security risk when you dont know who is in your home.
- I have communicated my concerns to patty several times but she ignored my requests to maintain the same crew for my home.
- each week, the time keeps shifting because the crew is delayed causing a ripple effect on my busy schedule of work, kids picks up and other commitments.
- the crew seems overworked, going to too many homes in one day. They do their best but many jobs are left unfinished.
- sometimes they would leave early or not complete all the allotted cleaning jobs
- when I brought up the issues with patty, she outright told me 'we are not a good fit for you' and 'we have bigger homes to clean and long term clients to please' leaving me feel like I didnt matter to her.
- meanwhile the bigger concern is that some of her old crew members are messaging me directly which is super awkward and concerning.
- Patty insists on cash payments each week but today after "dropping" me she was quick to send a venmo link which I have been asking for. It would have saved me so much time and effort trying to get cash every week. Who does cash anymore??!!
Overall, very questionable conduct and practices. I had hoped to have found a cleaning service that I can rely on but that is not the case here.
A poorly run operation with an egocentric approach is never a great combo and to make matters worse, taunting new clients with "we clean bigger homes" is never a good idea! I dont even know where she was going with that! read more