Hi,
Most of cleaning agency give a lot of very positive testimonials, but never bad testimonials, that's why I'd like you to know what happenned to me with the cleaning agency A-team amah.
I precise that my experience is just one out of thousands and I know that many clients of this agency were very happy with them, but I just wanted you to know that sometimes, even with the most reliable agency, some people should be very unhappy... unfortunately for me, it's my case !
We called on monday the very good agency a-team (according to many testimonials) to ask for someone able to babysit our 20 month old daughter during at least 3 weeks on monday and tuesday at the beginning (but maybe for thursday and friday also) and to clean our apartment on friday (or eventually one babysitter and one cleaner).
The lady who came on tuesday was a babysitter (supposed to be a nanny sometimes) who didn't want to do housekeeping and didn't speak english properly (we must repeat at least 10 times each sentence), that's why she didn't understood what we asked her to do with our daughter (we gave her some clothes for our daughter, but when I came back at 5pm after 8 hours, my daughter's dress was still on the hanger in the bathroom ! We asked her not to let our daughter sleep longer than 2 hours and a hlaf i nthe afternoon because we just came back from Europe 2 days ago... if she's sleeping too long in the afternoon she won't sleep at night... and as the babysitter let her sleep 3 hours and a hlaf in the afternoon, our daughter cannot sleep before 3am !!)... that's why we don't want this woman to babysit our daughter anymore !!
This morning I called back the agency to ask for a cleaner... someone told me that I have to pay one more time s$ 188 of agency fee because I just paid the agency fee for a babysitter but not for a cleaner, even if we asked for both and our contract don't mention any restriction between babysitter, nanny and cleaner !!!
They never told us that we had to pay the agency fee 2 times : one for the babysitter and one for the cleaner... and when we signed the contract it's written in title "guarantee for replacement cleaner/nanny/babysitter*" and the * means "delete if inapplicable"... but anything was deleted.
About the babysitter, even if the guarantee says that we should allow a probation period of 1 month before requesting a replacement, we paid a s$ 188 agency fee, because we asked for an english speaking maid/babysitter... the minimum is to provide someone who can speak and understand english, that's why we want to change her immediately !!
I precise that we employed 3 cleaners from this agency in 2006 : one was very good, but after one month she didn't came back and the agency wasn't able to locate her ! an other one was often late (1 to 2 hours sometimes) and didn't want to stay after the scheduled time... she was working very quickly (to finish her work in 3 hours instead of 5) and the apartment was never cleaned perfectly, and the ironing never perfect. An other one was very hard working but as she was working very slowly sometimes she didn't finished her duty (cleaning a 2 bedroom apartment + ironing clothes for 2adults + 1baby, in 10 hours a week)
... Our experience wasn't perfect but quite good !
