Choosing a cleaning company is mostly a trust decision made with very little information. You cannot inspect the product before buying it, the marketing language is near-identical across providers, and the main visible difference is price.
What follows is the set of questions that genuinely predicts how the arrangement will go, along with the answers that should give you pause.
The non-negotiables
Three things should be settled before anything else, because each of them is a risk you would otherwise be carrying yourself.
Insurance and bonding
Liability insurance covers accidental damage to your property and injury on it. Bonding is protection against theft or dishonesty. They are separate and it is reasonable to ask about both.
Ask for evidence rather than a verbal assurance. A company that carries cover will produce it without hesitation; hesitation is itself an answer.
Background checks
Anyone entering your home unsupervised should have been screened before they got there. Ask whether screening happens, and whether it applies to everyone including newer staff.
"Our people are trustworthy" is not an answer to this question.
A written scope
You should know what is included and what is not before anyone arrives, in writing. Not a formal contract — just a clear statement of service, rooms and any additions.
If the scope is being decided on the day, disagreements are essentially guaranteed.
The questions that reveal the most
These are less obvious than the non-negotiables, and the answers tell you how the company operates rather than what it claims.
- 01What happens if someone is ill on my scheduled day? — tests whether there is any depth behind the service
- 02Will I have the same team, and what happens to my preferences if it changes? — tests whether knowledge lives in a system or one person
- 03What is your guarantee, and by when do I have to use it? A defined window means somebody has thought this through
- 04What is explicitly not included, and what do additions cost? — the single best question for preventing disappointment
- 05Who is liable if something is damaged, and what is the process?
- 06How do you handle keys or access codes between visits?
Answers that should concern you
Certain responses are reliable signals, and they are worth taking seriously even when everything else seems fine.
- A firm price quoted without asking about bathrooms or condition — that is a guess that will be revised
- Vagueness about insurance, or a promise to "send it over" that never arrives
- No written scope, or reluctance to put exclusions in writing
- A price far below everything else you have been quoted — something is being cut, and it is usually insurance or time
- Pressure to commit immediately, or a discount that expires today
- A guarantee that your deposit will be returned — that outcome is not theirs to promise
- No process for complaints beyond "just let us know"
How to read reviews usefully
Star ratings are close to worthless on their own. The useful information is in the pattern and in the negative reviews.
Look for repetition. One person complaining about a missed bathroom is noise; five people describing the same failure over months is a process problem. The same applies to praise — repeated mentions of consistency mean more than a single glowing review.
Read how the company responds to criticism. A specific, non-defensive reply that describes what was done about it tells you more about how you will be treated than any five-star review.
Be sceptical of a wall of short, generic, five-star reviews posted close together. Genuine review histories are uneven.
Start with one visit
You do not have to decide everything up front, and you should not.
Book a single visit — usually a deep clean, since a first visit on an unmaintained home needs one — and see how it actually goes. You will learn more from one visit than from any amount of research.
What to watch: did they arrive when they said, was the scope what was agreed, did they flag anything they could not do, and did the walk-through feel like an honest account of the work. If all four are yes, a schedule is a reasonable next step.
What good looks like after a few months
The signals of a well-run arrangement are unglamorous and mostly about predictability.
Visits happen when they are supposed to. The result is consistent rather than dependent on who turned up. Your preferences persist without you repeating them. Problems are raised proactively rather than discovered by you. And when something goes wrong, it is fixed without an argument.
That is the whole product. Anything else is marketing.
