Latest / Cleaning Business Life / Cleaning Business Damages — Who Pays When Something Gets Broken? Ep.223

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Cleaning Business Damages — Who Pays When Something Gets Broken? Ep.223 · Cleaning Business Life

1:08
SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone, welcome back to Cleaning Business Life.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: My name is Shannon Miller, and I want to talk about damages.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: And the reason why I'm talking about it now versus in the past, and I have mentioned damages.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: You guys all remember the chandelier story.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: There seems to be a rash of damages coming up, and everyone seems to be surprised at the at what's going on.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: So what I'm seeing, make sure this is all up here.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: There we go.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: I can see everybody now.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: From what I'm seeing is a cleaning tech damages something.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: The homeowner immediately assumes that you're just going to pay full retail for whatever it was that was damaged.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: They buy a$4,500 oven after all, you're going to pay for it, right?
1:58
SPEAKER_01: And they're all excited, and you're like, oh my God, a$4,500 oven.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: When in fact the oven was from 1978, probably was worth maybe$100,$200.
2:08
SPEAKER_01: So there's this gray area that has been happening.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm seeing it more and more.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: So I thought I'd come out here and talk a little bit about it.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: In addition to that, I have created a document.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: It is my own damage policy with my own business.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: And it also comes with a checklist.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: You can laminate them, stick them in your Slack, whatever, whatever you're using for communication with your cleaning tax, if you're big or small.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: And that way, if they have a damage, they know to go to that sheet and go, okay, what's the first thing I do, right?
2:37
SPEAKER_01: You need to call the office, right?
2:39
SPEAKER_01: And you also need to mention in your onboarding paperwork what specifically your damage policy is.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: Ours is the up to$100.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: Anything over a$100 value has to be approved by the office.
2:54
SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that is because we don't want to pay$4,500 for someone's$200 oven that they said air quotes we scratched, when in reality, it's from 1978.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: That's like what 50 years old.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: And we all know that I can't count while I'm doing these.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: So you'll have to do the math for me and let me know.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: But you you we've all seen it.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: Broken lamps, chandeliers, scratched appliances.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: Oven tops seem to be the number one thing that gets scratched, especially the electronic component part.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: People are really rough with those.
3:27
SPEAKER_01: Cracked picture frames.
3:29
SPEAKER_01: We had an incident.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: Gosh, this was like four years ago, five years ago.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: We did a deep clean.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: This woman had a lot of very cool pieces, but it was cluttered and it was a lot of art and she had some health issues.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: We were catching your house up.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of the picture frames had like this thick, like a half inch of dust, right?
3:47
SPEAKER_01: So she had been sick for a while and we wiped it off.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, nothing happened while we were there.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: But sometime during the night, you know, because we were the last person to touch it, supposedly, that she wanted us to replace this frame and have it custom framed.
4:04
SPEAKER_01: When in actuality, it wasn't custom framed to begin with.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: The picture frame was not an antique, it wasn't a piece of antiquity, but she wanted like 500 bucks for the nail falling.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, her cleaning was 500 bucks.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: So that tells you everything you need to know about where her mentality was and what she was doing.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: She never wanted to provide me with a receipt.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: She's not going to be able to, obviously, it's from the 70s.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: I did offer to come back and clean up the glass.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: She said no, but I didn't genuinely feel that it was my fault or the cleaning tech's fault for touching it.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: There's gonna be risk involved in everything that we do.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: So I saw one, two, I want to say I saw 15 posts in the various groups where someone goes, Oh my god, what do I do?
4:51
SPEAKER_01: And the most recent one was for an oven top.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: So she the cleaning tech cleaned it.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: Supposedly there was damage, and it was an older oven.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: So I never found out if it was an older, older oven, an older oven as in the last five years, or if she was just being fleeced by the consumer because the consumer's like, yeah, 4,500.
5:16
SPEAKER_01: I don't know when any of you have recently purchased any appliances, but they're not cheap anymore.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: Uh refrigerators are about four grand.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: It's it's wild to me.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: And these are not like sophisticated beans, these are just basic run-of-the-meal refrigerators because of the tariffs and everything else that's been going on.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: And then there's a lot of emotion that plays.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: The homeowner's pissed off because they want it fixed right then and there.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: I can't say I blame them.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: It's an inconvenience and it's a hassle.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: So we try to make it as painless as possible.
5:45
SPEAKER_01: We've actually been in a house where a cleaning tech was putting the grates on the granite under a towel, and she went to take the top because it was a gas stove.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: She took the top off, and those are made from a special material and they're fragile.
6:01
SPEAKER_01: And if you drop one on the floor, it'll actually crack.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: It'll it crack like glass.
6:05
SPEAKER_01: Well, we dropped one.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: So uh obviously that's our fault.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: She the the homeowner watched, she's scared of the cleaning tech.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: This cleaning tech was startled, and you know, it was kind of a calamity event.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: So we dropped the thing.
6:20
SPEAKER_01: So now that that became a policy change.
6:22
SPEAKER_01: We no longer will remove those off the stovetop.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: We'll wipe them down unless we're doing a deep cleaning, and that that's a whole different set of rules.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: And then we we put it back.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: We don't really move them around, we don't put them in the sink, we don't wash them off, we just wipe them.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: And if they need a little toothbrush, we do it right there over a towel.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: We don't remove them from that area at all.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: And that was 150 bucks.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: So I had to Amazon the part.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: We had to look at the part.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: We both agreed that it was our my fault.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: I just wanted to get it over with.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: She ended up, we ended up dropping her off the schedule for a lot of other reasons.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: But those are the types of things that come up, right?
6:57
SPEAKER_01: And then the technician feels terrible.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: They panic, it throws off the whole shift.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: They don't, they don't want to go to a second house, they're all freaked out.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: And the reality is things happen.
7:07
SPEAKER_01: Things happen all the time.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: We're touching thousands of items at any given time, right?
7:13
SPEAKER_01: So depending on how much clutter is in someone's homes, it very well could be hundreds of items, it could be up to a thousand items, especially when you're doing a large deep clean of a large home, thousands of items that you're touching.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: So the probability of something happening to one of them is pretty high.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: It just happens, right?
7:31
SPEAKER_01: And I believe that a lot of these situations could be handled way better if there was a process to the things.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: That's so that's why I wanted to come out here and talk about it.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: So let's acknowledge reality.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: If you've been in business long enough, something eventually has to happen, right?
7:45
SPEAKER_01: Something is gonna break.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, it's a small thing that breaks and not a$1,500 shower door.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: $4,000 shower door that, you know, the the inch thick, the cube showers that were so popular in the 2000s and the in the teens.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: So professional companies aren't defined by never making mistakes, they're defined by how they acknowledge and take care of those mistakes.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: So documentation is going to be your best insurance.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is when you take on a new client, you're going to take pictures of the shower doors.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: You're going to take pictures of the stovetop and the front of the oven.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: You're going to take pictures of the refrigerator on the outside.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: And if you do the inside, you're going to take pictures of that.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: And what you're going to do is you're going to create a Google file and you're going to drop all of those photos in there.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: You're going to list it by the address, and you're going to just say label them before and then put the address.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: And the reason for that is because sorry, my bird.
8:59
SPEAKER_00: We'll edit that part out.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that is so you have documentation.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: So that happens right when they're doing the walkthrough.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: Because remember, everything we do is silencing.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: We're not walking anything.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: We're negotiating as we go.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: And that's just how things are done.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: So we're documenting the appliances, shower doors, any sort of damages that you see in the house.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: If there's a long scratch along the wood floor, if there's a chip in the dining room table, you're documenting that.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: Dropping in a file, it sits there in the abyss.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: Just hangs out, has parties.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: It's like it's 1999, right?
9:33
SPEAKER_01: And then it can it can continue depending on how long they stay on board.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: And we usually dispose of them after four years, the files.
9:41
SPEAKER_01: The reason why I keep them on so long is because sometimes, as you all know, sometimes people come and then they go and then they come and then they go.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: But usually the reason why they get deleted and I'm starting to not delete them until way further down is because of documentation.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: So I have too many external hard drives.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: I have a lot of external hard drives like this.
10:03
SPEAKER_01: This one says podcasts.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: I get two of these a year.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: That's how much data I go through.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: I might, I think I meant like, I don't know, 33 terabytes of information.
10:13
SPEAKER_01: It's a lot.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: So make sure that you're documenting and tell your clients, hey, we're just taking some photos, preliminary photos for before, so that you have that.
10:25
SPEAKER_01: So they can't come to you and you get caught with your pants down and they go, you scratch that floor, and you're like, dude, that's been there the whole time, right?
10:32
SPEAKER_01: So those types of things happen.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: So the sheet covers what to do when there is a damage.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: So everything under$100 doesn't really need to be approved.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: There is a protocol that your cleaning tech needs to follow, including not admitting faults until the office gets involved.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: The off just say, you know what?
10:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna call the office right now.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna step outside.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: And then they're gonna call the office and they're gonna say, Well, I can't remember what our code is.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: Code 87.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: Code 87 tells the person who answers the phone that they need to speak to a member of management or person who can make a decision right away.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: Not that there's an emergency that happened, but that something, a damage has occurred and I need it addressed.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: And that way you can get priority instead of hanging out and you're listening to elevator music.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: I'm just listening like it's every scary movie out there, and they always play the happy elevator music before the killer comes, right?
11:26
SPEAKER_00: So documentations tell the story.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: So that way you're covered.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: Just five five to ten quick pictures.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be any sophisticated, anything expensive, pieces of art.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: You want to make sure that you're documenting those as well.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: We have a person, well, he's no longer around.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: He passed on to the Rainbow Bridge.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: But Ed he was a hoot.
11:55
SPEAKER_01: He had such a sense of humor.
11:56
SPEAKER_01: I miss him.
11:58
SPEAKER_01: Ed actually and his wife, I believe his wife is still around, but she he was much older than her, had pieces in MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: He was a very interesting, funny and colorful individual.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: But they also started the archaeological process for the state of Hawaii.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: So these guys are were in their 70s and 80s, and this was over a decade ago.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: So I don't think I I don't think she's around, but I know for sure he he didn't make it through COVID.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: And we had a policy in place for his fine art.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: So anytime we had someone come in there, uh, and you've heard me talk about this a hundred times and I don't know how many episodes.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: When you go to see Leonardo's Da Vinci, the Mona Lisa, you are not allowed to get too close to it.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: There's, if you notice on the floor, there's bars.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: There's usually brass bars, it's in a shape of a square, and it's to keep you a certain distance away.
12:52
SPEAKER_01: Not because they don't want you to see the brushstokes, not because they don't want you to see the art.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: It's to prevent you from damaging it should you fall forward.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you how many times I've seen damages inside of a museum or a piece of antiquity because someone got too close and knocked something over.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: There was an incident in the Egyptian museum, and they took this big bowl or pot, water jug, whatever it was, someone wasn't watching their child, and the child ended up pushing over the vase and it broke.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: So they were able to, you know, not press charges and glue it back together because, you know, after all, it was damaged.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to excuse it for those hardcore artifact people.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: But there comes a time and a place where they don't want damage.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: So that particular painting is worth a gazillion dollars.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: And they have the square brass thing.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: They also have security on it.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: They also have red laser beams.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: So if you actually were to reach to try to touch the painting, the alarm would go off.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: There's all of these protocols in place, right?
13:55
SPEAKER_01: Because over the years it's become so valuable that people have attempted to do something stupid to see if they can get away with it, especially with the selfie movement, right?
14:02
SPEAKER_01: Remember when that was a big thing and everyone had a selfie stick?
14:06
SPEAKER_01: I know you know what I'm talking about.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: How many selfie sticks did you have?
14:10
SPEAKER_01: I had four.
14:12
SPEAKER_01: I even had one that swivels.
14:13
SPEAKER_01: My kids were playing with the other day.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I spent 300 bucks on that thing.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: It's just the wild things, right?
14:19
SPEAKER_01: The technology changes, the we the wants and needs.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: So what your cleaning tech should do if damages occur is don't make any have them make sure that they don't make any promises.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: My boss will fix this, we'll cover it, it's no problem.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Don't say any of those things.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes damages will occur after an item is cleaned.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: Right?
14:45
SPEAKER_01: So when you have an item is clean, like for example, there was a person who I don't remember what group, too many groups I'm in.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: She took on a cleaning and on the dirt code, it's one to ten, and this was like a 27, and I couldn't believe she took it on, and it was really bad.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: I was surprised that someone was living in that condition, but they were, it's fine.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: But she got it all cleaned up by herself with a helper.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: I was just like, you bless you.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't know if I could have done it, the emotional toll.
15:39
SPEAKER_01: But they tried to rent, and she was a brand new cleaner and a brand new business owner and didn't know what to do.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: So she got everything all cleaned up.
15:45
SPEAKER_01: It took her three visits.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: And at the very end, on the last visit, the homeowner tried to say that she damaged the floors.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, there is no way that you damage the floors to that degree.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: Looking at this, this is years of wear and tear, like of walking on God knows what.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: This is long-term damage.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: You did not damage that.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: And I had to walk her through the process, tears involved, of what she needed to do to like, you know, not be blamed for this.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: And so I had to, we had to use some strong language.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: And we eventually fixed her problem.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: So don't be one of those people.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, make sure that your cleaning texts, and she could have easily said, you know, I'm gonna, I'll I'll pay for new flooring.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, flooring could be 10 grand depending on what you pick.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: Rosewood comes, it's imported, right?
16:34
SPEAKER_01: I've seen floors like that.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: You gotta be really careful on what your staff says.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: Train your staff to say, I'm sorry, this happened.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to notify the office immediately.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: They're gonna reach out to you as soon as possible, hopefully before I'm done cleaning.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: And that's it.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: No admitting fault, no promising money, no arguing, no debating, just professionalism.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: If you teach your cleaning text to put your hand on your heart when they're talking and giving eye contact, that means that subconsciously is telling the person that you are sincerely sorry and you're nodding your head.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: That diffuses a lot of the escalation because people get really funny about their possessions.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: I totally understand that, but it's not someone's gonna die for it, right?
17:17
SPEAKER_01: And every deserter, every incident deserves an investigation.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: So what happens is the clean tech calls the office, you say code 87, someone calls you back and they start to get all of the information.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: So there's gonna be a form that the other person on the phone is gonna fill out.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: Don't have your cleaning tech take the time to fill out a damaged thing, especially if you have someone who's hot and wants to like do crazy things to the poor cleaning tech or anybody else left around because they don't have good emotional control.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: Get your question sheet out and ask the questions, right?
17:53
SPEAKER_01: To the homeowner.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: Then look at the photographs.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: The cleaning tech's gonna have already sent you photographs, not the photographs that you did when we when we first arrived, unless it's necessary.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: But it's if this is a regular maintenance client, you're gonna look at the the damaged photographs because you already have the first set of photographs in your Google, your Google Drive, right?
18:13
SPEAKER_01: Talk to the technician, talk to the client.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: How old was the item?
18:19
SPEAKER_01: Was it already damaged?
18:20
SPEAKER_01: Was it installed correctly?
18:22
SPEAKER_01: Could it be repaired?
18:25
SPEAKER_01: Could it be restored, which is what we ended up doing for a museum piece that was from the Flagstaff Museum.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to remember the name of the museum, but I've talked about it.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: We took on this house.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: This woman, you had to take your shoes off.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: This is when I still allowed it.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: I know, I know.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: And it was a first time trying it out.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: Not a deep cleaning because her house was really well maintained, which I shouldn't have done.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: And she had 197 pieces of antiquity sitting in her house.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: It was like a museum.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: And somehow or another, the cleaning tech knocked one off.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: So instead of going to the homeowner and saying, Hey, I broke this, because her other cleaner, of course, was there 22 years and never broke one.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: At least that's the story she said.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: She scooped it up really quickly, threw it in the trash, threw the other trash on it, took the trash out, walked it to the trash can.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: I, of course, was on the hook for this vase that she caught because she went to the trash can.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: And then it became the I pay this pot is worth, I don't remember at the time this was 13 or 14 years ago.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: I believe it's still on my profile for castle keeper cleaning.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: If you look that up, I don't want to say next door.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: I don't even remember.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: It's up there.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: But in any case, she's like, it's$1,597, is what the value is.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: And I said, okay, I would like to investigate it.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: And she wouldn't even give me like 24 hours to investigate.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: She wanted me to cut her a check.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: She didn't want to pay for a cleaning.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, let's hold off on paying.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: Let's let's try to resolve this.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: Well, I called the Flagstaff Museum, and they actually they had copies of all the receipts they had, the capacity to look it up.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: And in actuality, it was an original piece of activity.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't an original piece of antiquity.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: It was a replica.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: Remember when they we had the museum stores?
20:16
SPEAKER_01: The Metropolitan Museum of Art still sells replicas.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: It was one of those.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't valued at$15.97.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: It was only valued at$197, which was just under what the cleaning was.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: So I just because the employee didn't handle it right, I gave this woman a free cleaning and we just parted ways.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: But she still went around to bash me all over social media and left me this review, I believe, on next door or Angie's list or whatever it was.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: So make sure that your cleaning techs are following the protocol so they understand what the policy is.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: So you have to mention it in your onboarding paperwork damages.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: We are not responsible for sliding the furniture.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: We are not responsible for breaking of the blinds.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: We are not responsible for these items, whatever you laundry list, whatever those items are.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: And we only will approve up to$100 of replacement value.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: After that, it has to go to the office.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: And then the office does an investigation and they determine it takes it out of the responsibility of cleaning tech, whether it's going to be a full reimbursement or not.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: And then you prevent homeowners going, hot damn, I'm buying myself a brand new frickin' oven at$4,500, right?
21:33
SPEAKER_01: So, and they didn't even ask the cleaning tech.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: The cleaning tech's panicking, doesn't want an insurance claim, doesn't know what to do or say.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just like, oh my goodness.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: So I really need to come out here and talk about it.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: And fare doesn't need to be new.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: When you have something that is older, sometimes you can split the current retail.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: So if it's an oven that maybe is an$800 oven and she's had it for 15 or 20 years, and you she wants a replacement, maybe you split the cost.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you pay her$400 for the oven and she gets to not be reimbursed for the full amount.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: So and it can be sticky.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: We have the was that up in Canada.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: There was a clean a cleaning business owner in Canada.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: She stuck in a 1099.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: The 1099 ruined the faucet, which was brand new, and the wolf stovetop scratched it.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: So I had to walk her through on what to do.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: And ironically, the woman, the customer, was an attorney.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, you need to handle this like a hot potato.
22:34
SPEAKER_01: We went through all of the things that had to be said and done.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: And in reality, she was operating 1099s without insurance.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, that's ugly.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: That's gonna be ugly.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: So we had to tiptoe around to try to find a resolution, right?
22:50
SPEAKER_01: Because the attorney, attorneys are, what do they do?
22:52
SPEAKER_01: You're liable.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: Possession is nine tenths of the law.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: So make sure that you negotiate first on what that replacement protocol is gonna be.
23:03
SPEAKER_01: $100.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: Like I ordered that woman's part for her stovetop right off Amazon, had it delivered to her door.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I'm really sorry.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: Blah, blah, blah.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: She still paid me for the cleaning.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: I apologize.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: We moved on.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: Other times with the pot, she broke the pot, threw it in the trash, and threw it in the customer's trash.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: She didn't take the trash with her.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: So the homeowner found it, showed me a picture, and was just livid.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: And you know, then the cleaning tech lied.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: And this was actually a W-2.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, unfortunately, this is gonna cause you to lose your job.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: So if you're dishonest here, where else are you dishonest, right?
23:37
SPEAKER_01: So every situation is different.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: And then your damage policy, you need to have one.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have a damage policy, you can click on the document link, copy, make a copy of it as yours, and your policy should explain how the damage gets reported.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: It should explain who gets notified.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: It is it should explain how documentation happens, how investigations happen, how compensation is determined.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: And most importantly, every claim that is reviewed individually, and consistency protects everyone.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: Cotton dry.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: And you know, sometimes things happen.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: People make mistakes.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: You have to decide whether that how much that mistake is gonna be worth for that cleaning tech to hang around or not.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes damage is anything over a grand, unfortunately, more than likely you're gonna lose your job because you can't technically make the cleaning tech pay for the damages.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: I know in the mechanic industry, if you're a mechanic and you make a mistake, the per the house that operates for the employees doesn't take the hit.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: It's actually the cleaning tech that has to pay back that damage, something to think about.
24:49
SPEAKER_01: So here's what I want you to remember.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: Documentation protects your client, it protects the technician, and most importantly, it protects your company and your business.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: So when everyone knows the process, there's less emotion, less conflict, better communication, which I love, and usually a much happier outcome.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: If today's episode got you thinking, I encourage you this week to sit down and write a damaged policy before you ever need it.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: Again, go to the Google Drive.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: Because the best policies are always written on calm days, not when you've blundered it and go, oh gosh, there's a policy change.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: So they're not emotional.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for hanging out with me today.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: And always keep learning, keep growing, and we'll see you in the next episode.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: You guys take care.