Sigh. Looks like I am still on the hunt for the elusive awesome house cleaner. This company seemed so promising, but fell very short of my expectations. After placing an ad on Craigslist looking for cleaners, I was contacted by the owner of this company. She sent a lengthy and impressive email, and we arranged to chat on the phone. Both her email and the phone call hit all the right notes in terms of what I was looking for, and I felt very confident that I had finally found "the one," so we booked the first cleaning appointment. Sue, the owner, and another cleaner would be coming to clean my place, showing up between 10:30-11:00 AM. We confirmed the evening before. On the morning of the cleaning, I received a text message at 9:20, stating that Sue's car had broken down and that she would not be able to make it, but was trying to see if one of her other cleaners could come in her place; otherwise we would have to reschedule. I was disappointed, of course (because I was SO looking forward to having the place cleaned), but totally understood -- these things happen. We spoke a short time later, and she advised that one of her cleaners, Kat, would be able to come clean our place. Normally we like to have two cleaners because of the scope of the job (it's about 4-5 hours of work for one person), so I double-checked that Kat would be okay with doing all this work by herself. I also mentioned that I needed to be out of the house by 11:30 to take my son to a doctor's appointment at noon, and was reassured that Kat would arrive between 11:00-11:30. At 11:40, Kat arrived. When she got out of her car, she had only a tiny cat litter bucket with a few cleaning supplies -- no vacuum or mop, few or no rags. When I had my original conversation with Sue, I mentioned that I wanted the cleaners to provide all supplies, and that we do not own a proper vacuum cleaner for cleaning the carpets and sofa. Kat told me that nobody had told her to bring all her supplies, but that she would see if someone could bring a vacuum for her (we had a mop she could use). On the way up the elevator, she mentioned something about Sue having left her a message the previous night, but that she didn't get it until that morning. It seemed odd to me, that if Sue had known about her car troubles the night before, she waited until the morning of our appointment to let me know about it. Kat was a little bit odd, and kept getting my name wrong, even though I corrected her several times. She told me she was sorry for being late, but had just dropped her daughter off at school. When we got into my place, she said something about having three sons, and I was like, "Wow. Three sons and a daughter?" and she said, "No, just three sons." So that was weird because I'm sure she had just told me a few minutes earlier that she dropped her daughter at school. Maybe I misheard? Anyway, I gave her a rapid-fire tour of the place (remember, we were now running late for a doctor's appointment) and I left her alone to clean, suddenly feeling very ill-at-ease about leaving this complete stranger in my house, given all the weird things that had transpired. BTW, I was 15 minutes late for my son's appointment as a result of her tardiness, which was really frustrating. All through my son's appointment, I kept having a bad feeling, so I rushed home, only to drive into my parking garage and see that Kat's car was GONE. OMG, cue panic. Did she rob my place and leave? There was no way she finished the job after just one hour! I went upstairs and found a note from Kat (with my name wrong. again.) saying that there was an emergency with her son and she had to leave. I checked the entire apartment and didn't find that anything was missing, so that was good :). As for the cleaning, she had only cleaned one shower and toilet before she left, so that was not so good, since I now had to spend the day doing the cleaning myself. About half hour later, I got a text from Sue letting me know that Kat had left due to an emergency. That might have been a helpful thing to have had BEFORE I arrived home! I later emailed Sue to express my disappointment in the events that had transpired. I really wanted to believe that this was all one big bad coincidence of unfortunate events, and that her company was every bit as professional as I was led to believe. Sadly, I never heard back from her, so I call BS on all the excuses. I am pretty sure that both the car thing and the family emergency didn't happen. I think that once Kat saw the scope of the job and realized she had showed up woefully unequipped, she decided she was not up to the task and she made an excuse to leave. I don't believe the car troubles happened either, since Sue apparently knew about them in advance, the night before. And that is my sad story about not finding the cleaners of my dreams. The search continues... read more