P & L Housekeeping Service

unknown

unknown

I needed a house cleaning service and found P&L in the phone book. Peggy was able to schedule a consultation quickly, which I greatly appreciated because I needed the cleaning done within two weeks time. At the consultation we discussed what I needed done, the price, and how long the work would take. After she surveyed the rooms I needed cleaned we agreed on three hours of work, possibly going to four if it seemed necessary once the work began. We scheduled the work for the following week. On the work day Peggy called to let me know she had personnel issues and was running behind schedule. She arrived 1-1.5 hours late and informed me that another woman would arrive later to help clean. I ran some errands and when I returned Peggy was gone and the other woman was cleaning. When Peggy returned she asked for more time to clean. At this point the two woman had been working for 3.5 hours. I asked her to just finish the work they had started (rather than clean the other rooms we had agreed P&L would clean but that hadn't even been started) and to stop working at five hours. When I returned home 3 hours later Peggy was just finishing up. She left me with an estimated bill of 8 hours of work, told me the bill would come in the mail and I could pay it over two payments. I was dumbfounded! The work ended up taking twice as long we agreed upon at the consultation and was three hours more than I agreed to when she asked for extra time. Yes, the parts of the house that got cleaned looked good. But not as amazing as one would expect for 1,000 sq ft in that amount of time. Also the toilet seat in a bathroom that wasn't even cleaned was mysteriously broken. While I appreciated P&L's ability to schedule my job quickly and to conduct a consultation, I did not have a positive experience with this company.

Peggy was contacted to clean a vacant house we had, so that we could rent the property (we had purchased a new home.) Two women showed to do the work and then apparently others replaced them during the day. Since the home was vacant and empty, we did not stay with them all day as they cleaned. When we returned the house looked great. After paying the bill we discovered that either through improper use or improper cleaning the microwave/hood had been damaged and no longer worked. When Peggy was contacted she promptly offered to compensate us. We felt comfortable with her and her responses so we arranged to have her come and give us an estimate on coming in once a week to help clean the new house. She explained that she had a 2 hour minimum and we agreed to have her come in once a week for two hours. (We have four kids and we both work so a little home help is a good thing.) We agreed to have a big one day cleaning and then two hours a week thereafter. Without confirming with us, the inital cleaning job was scheduled and someone showed up at the house when we were not there. Finding the front door unlocked they came into the house and randomly cleaned for which we were billed. (I say randomly because they decided to spend extra time cleaning the newly painted baseboards that we had just installed; I would have directed them to the bathrooms and kitchen.) Two of the kids came home to find a stranger cleaning in the house, while their dad and I were out of town. I felt very uncomfortable with this and let Peggy know. She apologized and we scheduled subsequent cleaning dates with a confirmed time. The first lady who showed up did a wonderful job, but talked so much that I finally had to leave the house. Since my job entails me working at home, I requested a different person. The next lady that came did a very average job. I asked to have two bathrooms cleaned and any additional time was to be spent in the kitchen. (Remember it was only two hours.) Instead of doing that I came out of the office to find she made the kids beds and straightened up their rooms, something I specifically told her NOT to do. I was not on board with paying $35 an hour to make beds for teenagers! I moved to the living room so that I could monitor what was going on better and soon discovered that the woman cleaning would stop cleaning to text and answer her cell phone. Since she didn't have a Bluetooth headset you know what that meant....stop cleaning, text, start cleaning...stop cleaning, answer phone, talk real fast, hang up, start cleaning. The final straw was when I figured out I was being charged for two hours even when the person cleaning was 15 minutes late and leaving 10-15 minutes early. Peggy has been very good about adjustments when I call her. However, it was just too much supervision to be worth the effort. It is not so much that something was "wrong" as it was that I didn't like spending all this time fixing all these issues so that I could pay money to save time! I might use her again, but only because there really isn't any other cleaning service available in my area. If I do have them back in the house it will be on a day where I can follow them around to make sure we are on the same page with expectations.