Melanie's Cleaning Service

She walked in the door and saw a cardboard box and got upset. I thought that's odd, not a good start but I thought give her a chance. She called to me and I came downstairs. She said you have so many items on the floor, what do I do with them. I looked at where she stood, 1 lid 2 cat toys and a sock. I took them from her and asked what else. She said she couldn't work at my home and left. She shouldn't be in Angies List. She is off somehow. I searched the house for "items on the floor" and no matter how hard I looked, I found nothing.

Service was extremely variable. Some regular cleaners were excellent, but they rarely stayed long. Melanie's interactions were her employees were sometimes difficult to be witness to. Very often there were people being trained who had no idea how to clean and were not at all efficient. Overall, the team followed a strict routine, which led to pretty superficial cleaning. In fairness, Melanie would ask if there were specific items we wanted clean, but they never took initiative to do obvious things. After they left I wiped a small open shelf in the kitchen (lower than eye height) and it obviously hadn't been touched in years. One real positive is that the staff were careful with all of our things. The bigger problem was extremely poor communication. Despite asking for a consistent time, we were always given changing windows as if our schedules didn't matter. Eventually, Melanie said we bounced a check. After I instantly produced the cancelled check and provided assurance we would see this resolved, she became petulant and non-responsive. Several messages asking if she resolved the issue with her bank have gone unreturned. I guess she has more business than she needs.

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We hired Melanie on the recommendation of a friend. She and her staff have been cleaning our house every two weeks for about a year. Initially, there was frequent turnover of her staff, which meant she was spending time directing them in pretty basic ways. More recently, she has had stable employees. All are very nice, professional, and responsible. Melanie sometimes cleans herself and sometimes supervises, but she makes sure that things are done to my satisfaction. She is easy to communicate with and is responsive to special requests etc. Her's is not the cheapest service, but I don't mind paying because more because I trust her and her people to take good care of our home and belongings.