Not long ago I wrote about how easy it was to get a house cleaner for free through our private health insurance, Adrea Mutuell-Multi. Sorry, I forgot for a moment that I was in France! Nothing is easy. While the process was seamless of our private health insurance hiring a cleaning company for us, we forgot to think about the nuances of working with the cleaning company.
In my last post, I mentioned that it was difficult for the cleaning company to find someone to come to our home since we lived in the countryside. However, they assured us around day 5 that they had someone from their office that would come over for two hours on three different occasions. We had six hours of cleaning available to us that must be used within 20 days from the time of notifying them we wanted a house cleaner. So the longer the service took getting someone to us, the less time we had to use our 6 hours.
Her first day was to be this past Friday. Notice I said “was to be.” The house cleaner never arrived. After 30 minutes of waiting, my husband called the cleaning company to see if there was a misunderstanding of the day or time. Apparently, her scooter broke down and she decided not to let us or her employer know that she would not be able to make it.
The company found someone else to come out on Monday. Again, about 30 minutes after she was due to arrive, my husband called the cleaning company. We found out that she was in the hospital that morning and for some reason took the rest of the day off. They said they would find someone else and call us back the next day. However, this would mean that we would get our 6 hours of house in one week.
My husband called the insurance company to notify them of what this cleaning company was putting us through and how it did not make sense for us to get 6 hours of cleaning within days of each other – that we needed it spaced out. Even though they told us before that they could not make exceptions, they finally made one for us. They extended our coverage time and found us a different cleaning company. The new company called us yesterday and we scheduled two sessions of 3 hours each. The girl came today… and was early!
The young woman did an excellent job and I am so thankful that we finally got someone over here. She will be coming back next week on Tuesday. Now my husband gets two weeks off from taking care of the house cleaning while I am on bed rest. Normally, we share the chores – but with him taking care of everything (including me!) plus working, this is a nice break for him.
The house cleaner was wonderful! Not only was she very sweet and cheerful, but for the entire 3 hours we never saw her take a break. She jumped right in and did not stop until my husband mentioned to her that she was already 10 minutes over. She definitely should have had a little break thrown in there, but it was nice having someone so motivated.
It is a hard life being a house cleaner. She said that she often works 6 to 7 days a week. Sometimes she will leave as early as 5am and not get home until around 8pm. She only makes minimum wage, which is sad since she really works so hard. We will definitely be keeping her number, as I am sure we would use her services in the future – especially at her rates, it is well worth a day off of chores.
Image Credit: Jos Dielis on Flickr.com
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