Choosing a cleaner · Fairfield & Westchester
Seven questions to ask every cleaning company you are considering.
Three companies will walk your office and send three different numbers. The numbers will not tell you which one is cheapest, because the cheapest bid and the cheapest contract are rarely the same thing. These are the questions that separate them, with the answers that should worry you and the answers we give.
Ask them of us too. If we cannot answer one of these the way it is written below, you should take a different bid. The seven are the same whether the building is a healthcare practice or a law or financial office.
1. How do I get out, and what does it cost me?
This is the first question, not the last one, and almost nobody asks it until month fourteen. Most agreements in this trade renew; that on its own is unremarkable. What decides whether a renewal can hurt you is the exit beside it. A notice window of 30 to 90 days before the term ends, a full new term if you miss it, and a renewal priced at the vendor’s current rate rather than the one you signed — that combination is how a low opening bid is made back in year two. Read the termination clause before you read the price.
“It’s a standard one-year agreement, it just renews automatically, and you can cancel with 90 days’ notice.” Ask what the renewal price is. If the answer is anything other than a number, it is the vendor’s choice and not yours.
Cancel any month on 30 days’ notice, no reason required and no early-termination fee — which is what makes the renewal question moot rather than clever. You are never more than a month from the door, in month two or month twenty.
2. Who actually shows up — you, or someone who bought my account?
Several of the largest cleaning brands in the country are franchise systems. The company that sells you the contract is often not the company that enters your building, and an account can change hands between franchisees without the client being told. There is nothing illegal about it. It is simply not what most practices think they are buying, and it is the reason the person who sold you the service cannot always fix a problem.
Anything that takes more than one sentence. “We have a local operating partner in your territory” is a yes. Ask for it in writing: will this account be serviced by your company, or by a franchisee or subcontractor?
Your account is never sold, subcontracted or handed to a franchisee. The people in your practice work for the company you signed with. If that ever had to change, you would be asked first, not told after.
3. Will it be the same people every week?
Turnover in contract cleaning is high enough that the question is really about what happens when it occurs, not whether. In a practice this matters more than it does in an office park: the people on your account hold keys and alarm codes to a building containing patient records and, in many practices, controlled substances. A rotating cast of strangers is a different risk from a stable team, and no bid sheet shows it.
“Yes, we assign a dedicated crew.” Follow it with: what happens the week someone leaves, and how will I find out? If the answer is that a supervisor handles it, you will meet your new cleaner by noticing them.
The same named team every visit. If anyone new is added to your account you get their name before their first night, and you meet them before they work alone. Keys and codes are logged on a written custody receipt.
4. What will you never touch?
The most useful question on this list, and the one that separates a cleaning company that has read CDC infection-control guidance from one that has not. In a healthcare practice the risk is not a missed surface. It is a cleaner who disinfects something that was your clinical staff’s to handle, pours the wrong thing down an operatory drain, or unplugs a vaccine refrigerator to reach an outlet. A company without a written no-touch list is deciding this at nine at night, by whoever is holding the cloth.
“We clean everything” — or an upsell to end-of-day disinfection of clinical surfaces. Both mean the boundary has not been thought about. Ask specifically about cuspidors and vacuum lines, the amalgam separator, red-bag waste, lab counters and the vaccine refrigerator.
A written no-touch list, signed by both sides as part of the scope. Clinical contact surfaces stay with your clinical staff. Nothing goes into cuspidors, chair-side traps or vacuum lines. The vaccine refrigerator is untouchable. Nothing with a patient name on it is read, moved or photographed. The full list is on the services page.
5. Can you produce the paperwork today, not after we sign?
Nobody is thanked for a clean reception area. People are asked questions when a surveyor or an inspector walks in, and the person asked is usually whoever signed the vendor agreement. Every document below is one a practice can be asked to produce, and every one of them is a document the cleaning company should already have. A vendor who needs a week to find them does not have a system; they have a filing cabinet.
“We’re fully insured, don’t worry.” That is a sentence, not a document. Ask for a certificate of insurance naming your practice as additional insured — a policy number alone does not name you.
A binder, kept current, that lives in your office rather than ours: certificate of insurance naming your practice as additional insured, W-9, safety data sheets with EPA registration numbers and required contact times, the signed scope, and the key custody receipt.
6. How will I know the work was actually done?
Most practices find out their cleaning has slipped by noticing it, which means it slipped some weeks earlier. The test of a reporting system is not whether it produces a report. It is whether the report has ever said no. A checklist that comes back perfect every night in a building where an operatory is occasionally still in use at nine o’clock is not a record of the work; it is a record of the form being filled in.
“You can log into our portal and see the completed checklist.” Good. Now ask how often it records something that was not done. A portal full of perfect checklists is a record of the form being filled in, not of the work.
A signed checklist left on your desk after every visit, and in your Keeper portal, naming anything we could not do and why — a locked operatory, a room still in use. Supervisor inspection weekly for the first 90 days, then monthly, with a written report. If something is missed, tell us and we return within 24 hours at no charge.
7. How did you arrive at this price?
A price given without seeing the space is a guess, and a guess is how a contract gets renegotiated in month three. Five things actually set the number in a practice: operatory or exam room count, square footage, frequency, restroom count and traffic, and how the building is accessed after hours. If a bid arrives without the vendor having counted your clinical rooms, they have priced a generic office and will discover the difference later, at your expense.
A number over the phone, or a per-square-foot rate applied to your suite. Neither has looked at your operatory count, and the clinical rooms are the largest single driver of the real cost.
An estimated range, yes, from the numbers you give us. A flat monthly price, no. We walk the practice at the hour we would actually be working, then send a written scope naming every surface room by room and a flat monthly price, the same day. The walk-through is free and carries no obligation. The first-visit deep clean is included rather than billed as an extra.
The short version
Take this into every walk-through, including ours.
| What you are checking | What you will often be offered | What to insist on |
|---|---|---|
| Renewal | Renews, and leaving needs 30–90 days’ notice at the term end | Renews, and you can leave any month regardless |
| Leaving | Notice window, early-termination fee | 30 days, any month, no fee |
| Who services the account | May be a franchisee or subcontractor | The company you signed with, in writing |
| The crew | “Dedicated”, changes unannounced | Named, changes announced before the first night |
| Clinical boundary | Verbal, or sold as an add-on | A written no-touch list, signed by both sides |
| Insurance | “We’re fully insured” | A certificate naming your practice as additional insured |
| Proof of work | A checklist that is always complete | A checklist that records what was not done, and why |
| The price | Quoted by phone or by square foot | Quoted after a walk-through, flat monthly, the same day |
None of the right-hand column costs a vendor anything except the ability to raise your price without asking. That is the whole reason it is rare.
Put us through it.
Walk us through the practice and hold our answers against the seven. Written scope and a flat monthly price the same day. The walk-through costs nothing, and you can leave any month on 30 days’ notice.
Or call (203) 212-9064
Questions we get asked
What questions should I ask a commercial cleaning company before signing?
Seven, in this order. How do I get out, and what does it cost me? Who actually services the account — you, or a franchisee or subcontractor? Will it be the same people every week, and how will I hear about a change? What will you never touch? Can you produce the insurance certificate today? How will I know the work was done? And how did you arrive at this price?
Ask them before you compare the numbers. Three bids on a healthcare practice will differ by more than their monthly price, and most of the difference is in the answers above rather than in the figure at the bottom.
How do I compare cleaning bids that are not the same price?
Separate the monthly figure from the contract around it. A lower bid attached to a 90-day exit window and a renewal priced at the vendor’s current rate is not a lower price; it is a lower number on a longer leash. Check the termination clause before you compare anything else.
Then check what is included. A first-visit deep clean quoted separately, or a mobilisation fee, can move a bid by a month’s service.
Is the cheapest cleaning bid usually the most expensive one?
Not always, but a bid well under the others is usually explained by one of three things, and all three are visible before you sign. The vendor has priced a generic office rather than counting your operatories or exam rooms. The contract allows a price increase at renewal that recovers the difference. Or the crew is paid by the hour, which pays for speed — and speed is the one thing disinfection cannot survive, because an EPA-registered disinfectant has to stay wet on the surface for its full contact time to make the claim on the bottle true.
Should a cleaning company be able to show proof of insurance before you sign?
Yes, before the first visit rather than after you sign. Ask for a certificate of insurance that names your practice as an additional insured — a policy number alone does not name you. Both are documents a practice can be asked to produce, and a vendor who cannot hand them over on request is telling you how the rest of the account will run.
What is a no-touch list, and why does a healthcare practice need one?
A written list, signed as part of the scope, of everything the cleaning crew will not touch. In a healthcare practice the expensive mistakes are not missed surfaces — they are a cleaner disinfecting a clinical contact surface that belonged to your staff, pouring something into a chair-side trap or vacuum line, moving regulated medical waste, or unplugging a vaccine refrigerator to reach an outlet.
Without it, that boundary is decided at nine at night by whoever is holding the cloth. With it, it is decided once, in daylight, by both sides.
Still have a question?
Call and ask. We can give you an estimated range on the phone, and the walk-through costs you nothing either way.