If they quoted you over the phone, you already know everything

This text is for owners and managers of business premises, apartments, cafes, restaurants and offices. In other words, for people looking for a cleaning company with nothing to judge it by except the price.

We are writing it as one of the companies that answers those calls. We have no interest in hiding the questions you can compare us by, so we are putting them in writing. If we fail one of them, you have a reason not to hire us.

Imagine you call three companies. Two quote you a price in the first minute. The third asks how many bathrooms you have and offers to come and look at the space.

At that moment the first two feel better, because you have a number and you can plan with it. But a price given over the phone is not calculated, it is guessed. And a guess gets charged later, usually in the third month.

Square metres do not set the price

A company that quotes you before seeing the space either does not know what it is doing or expects to make the difference back somewhere else. What actually sets a cleaning price is this, and none of it is visible over the phone:

• The number of bathrooms. It is the most expensive room in any building, always.
• The type of floor. Grout, stone and old parquet take twice as long as laminate.
• Glass and height. Every glass surface and every shelf above head height is a ladder job.
• How many people pass through daily. An office with fifteen people and one with three are not the same job at the same size.
• Whether food is cooked there. A kitchen in daily use is a category of its own.
• The trip to get to you. And this is the one that surprises most people.

So it is worth asking how many other properties the company already covers in your neighbourhood. If they have some, your price can be lower and it still pays for them. If they have none, you are paying for their travel too.

Six questions a serious company should ask you

This is the reverse of the usual advice. Do not only think about what you will ask them. Watch what they ask you. If nobody has asked these, nobody has planned anything yet:

1. How many bathrooms you have and how big the space is
2. How often guests or shifts change over
3. What hours we are allowed to enter
4. Who holds the key and how it is handed over
5. What in the space is not to be touched
6. What annoyed you about your previous company

The sixth question matters most and is almost never asked. The answer to it is the whole job description, written in your own words.

One question for you to ask them

If you only have time for one question, ask this: what happens when the person who cleans my space is on holiday?

There are three possible answers and each one tells you everything.

Someone else will come. There is no list, you will explain the space from scratch, and the first two visits will be worse.

I will call you and we will sort it out. Your space hangs on one person and their mood that week.

The stand-in arrives with the list for your space in hand. There is a system, and you called a company rather than an individual.

You get the answer in three seconds and it is worth more than the whole written offer.

Three items that appear in the third month

The first month is always good, with anyone. Contracts are not written for the first month.

• Supplies and equipment are suddenly billed separately, because it was never said they were included
• A different person turns up, because the first one left, and nobody told you
• Nobody answers on Saturday, and Saturday is your busiest day

Why the cheapest offer turns out to be the most expensive

Not because anyone is stealing, but because something is left unfinished. Your bartender wipes down what was not wiped before the shift. Your receptionist tidies in the morning what was not tidied. That hour never appears on any invoice, but you pay for it at the full rate of your own payroll.

In the end you become quality control for a job you paid to stop being yours.

How we, at ToRo Clean, answer all of that

A site visit before any offer, always, free of charge. A written task list as part of the contract. The same team, and when somebody is away the stand-in comes with the list. Properly employed staff. The key held by the company under a written agreement. Supplies, equipment and transport in the price. Saturdays, Sundays and call-outs. One invoice at the end of the month, covering the cleaning and the laundry and ironing.

We are not the cheapest and we do not pretend to be. But the price we give you after the visit is the price you will still be paying in the third month.