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You are here: Home Housing Renting Cleaner nightmare

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12/02/2010Cleaner nightmare

Cleaner nightmare Jessica of Swisstory recounts her less-than-perfect experience with professional cleaners on moving out of her apartment, despite high hopes of high Swiss standards.

So Chantal asked if we could detail what cleaners we used and I was all ready to write up a big report about how expensive but how great they were, but then they SCREWED IT UP! Let me explain.

When you move out of your apartment in Switzerland, the place has to be clean. And this is Switzerland after all, so they mean eat off the toilet seat clean... they mean so clean you can sterilise things just by placing them in the uber clean oven. We are talking spotless.

So when it came to deciding whether we would clean the place ourselves or hire someone, we decided to hire someone... mostly because hiring someone meant that we had a guarantee that during handover the cleaner would be there on site, mop in hand, in the event that something needed to be spot cleaned... AGAIN.

 

Spotless apartment


We knew this would cost a pretty penny from stories we heard, but we also had heard that if the cleaners were not called in and the apartment was not handover ready and the rental company had to call in cleaners to clean up after you, they would take the cost of this out of your deposit anyway - so you might as well pay for it the first time and save yourself the back ache. This was our plan...


So I got two quotes for cleaning. Both four digit figures. I am NOT kidding you. (Keep in mind, these quotes were based on our Swiss equivalent 4.5 room apartment with two bathrooms...) Now, I imagine there are back door services you could use that would indeed be cheaper, but I used services that came recommended on the expat sites – I got quotes from Markus Leutenegger and MrClean. In the end, I went with MrClean because their quote was CHF 500 cheaper... plain and simple.

To be honest, MrClean really did a great cleaning job. I did in fact eat off the toilet seat before leaving the apartment and didn't taste a thing... just kidding. But really, all was SUPER clean. We are talking every nook and cranny, they power-washed the blinds (lot of work), cleaned the oven, machine-washed the carpets, got all the calk out of the taps, and did a makeover on our two bathrooms. They even locked up on their own and showed up to the handover on time... but...

When I arrived at the handover, I noticed something on the floor and thought, 'Well, good thing they are coming as they will have to do that again for the price I paid them...' but after I showed it to them, I realised after much scrubbing on their part that it was not just dirt, they had chemically burnt the wood flooring in two places – right in the middle of the entry and near the dishwasher.

At first they wanted to blame it on the movers but I made a big hoo ha and told them that I walked the movers through the place the day before after all was packed – no damage – and that this was their mess and they would pay for it.

After some arguing, they decided to send their specialists and Wincasa sent theirs and the latest word is that it is chemical damage... and someone (NOT US!) will have to pay... that is the nightmare part of this whole story....

I am not sure how we could have avoided this, or if we even could have, or if this means I would not recommend MrClean as it was obviously a spill from one of their super cleaners, but I cannot help but be disappointed that my handover was marred and my bond is being held until this crap is dealt with... so Cleaner Nightmare indeed, but I am still really glad that we had the professionals do it.

Moral of the story – professionals good... just take photos of everything before they clean so you can assess damages afterward. I realise that is crazy as I type it but what else could we have done? Ah the joys of moving out of your Swiss apartment.

There you go, Chantal! ;)

Speaking of Chantal, she will be guest posting on Swisstory about
'Why Being an Expat Blogger in Switzerland is a Great Thing'... do join us, won’t you? ;)

 

Jessica Cartwright recorded her Swisstory of four years in Switzerland, before relocating to Australia in December. We're sad to see her go but all is not lost! New home, new year, new blog: follow Jessica now on Aussiestory.



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