I decided to try Helpling through a promotional offer. I booked three hours of cleaning (9:00AM-12:00PM on a Saturday), and the cleaner showed up as scheduled. I had to head out, but my husband remained at home. At approximately 11:00AM, I received a call from the cleaner via my husband letting me know that the main areas were completed, and was there anything else she could do, so I made a couple of suggestions.
I returned home at 11:50AM to find that the cleaner had left, and my husband said that she had gone around 11:30AM despite that we had her booked until 12:00PM.
This would have been somewhat acceptable had the place been properly cleaned, but a number of areas (which I normally get when I clean on my own) were missed. The tops of waist-level book shelves and dressers weren't dusted, and some of the corners weren't vacuumed all that well. The cleaner really could have spent the extra time we had booked for taking care of these items.
The worst part is that when I sent an email to Helpling bringing to their attention my dissatisfaction, I did not get a response. I wasn't looking for any kind of compensation or re-do, but I would have appreciated at least an acknowledgement of my complaint.
Like I said, if a thorough job had been done in 2.5 hours despite that we had booked 3, I would have been happy. But that combined with the lack of response from the company has put me off completely.
***UPDATE***
It is worth noting that after seeing my review on Homestars, Helpling reached out to me directly and did everything they could to make my experience "right".
I now believe that they did have an issue with their email system at the time when I emailed them, and I will be happy to try them again granted the response I have received since.
I have updated my rating from a 4 to a 7, and hopefully next time I'll be able to give them a "10".
Thank you, Helpling, for all of your efforts.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $75.00
- Company Response
Hello!
I am very sorry to learn of your experience. As the Managing Director of Helpling Canada I can assure you that customer care is our most important priority! I'm personally surprised by this situation as we should have responded to you on Tuesday morning (just after the holiday). I have already notified my team and I will personally respond to you as soon as I have all of the details.
Blake
*** Updated: Monday, May 25, 2015 (original reply May 23)***
Hello Amy - as promised I followed up with my team on the weekend and sent you a personal apology on Saturday. For the sake of transparency for others, I wanted to provide a quick update here...Without over-explaining it, we underwent a change in our email system the week that you sent your email and unfortunately it was classified as "addressed" when it really wasn't. Normally, we respond to all emails and phone calls within one business day. Hence my surprise to learn of your situation.
The response you should have received on April 20th should have said that we are not okay with what happened, we would follow-up with our cleaning partner, and that we would adjust the booking duration by 30 minutes.
With Helpling, you only pay for the time our cleaning partners are cleaning. If you wish to increase or decrease the booking duration, you simply need to ask the cleaning partner if they can accommodate the change and if so, then just send us an email or give us a call and we'll make the change. It really is meant to be that simple and flexible.
Your comments - as with all customer reviews and comments - are very helpful as they enable us to determine whether we can continue to list our cleaning partners on our platform.
Thank you again for your feedback and I'm sorry that you needed to post on HomeStars to get our response. That's definitely not our intention!