Hiring a house cleaner is a trust decision before it's a price decision. Somebody you don't know is going to be in your home, with keys, around your kids, your pets, and your things. Most people skip past the checks that would tell them whether the company is legitimate — and then find out the hard way after something breaks, someone gets hurt, or the "cleaner" simply doesn't show up on the third visit.
This guide is the short due-diligence list. Seven things worth checking, in the order they matter, plus what a good first call actually sounds like.
1. Are they insured — and can they prove it?
The single most important question, and the one most Edmonton cleaning companies dodge with a vague "yes, we're insured."
What you actually want:
- Commercial general liability — covers accidental damage they cause in your home. $2M is standard; $1M is the minimum most homeowners' policies expect.
- A named certificate — a real insurance company issues a certificate of insurance (COI) on request, in the customer's name if you want, showing coverage dates and policy number. If a company can't produce one within a business day, they either don't have real coverage or they don't know how to ask their broker.
The gap that catches people: personal-line insurance a sole operator carries on themselves is not the same as commercial coverage for a business. If a cleaner slips and injures themselves in your home and they're not properly covered, your homeowner's policy is on the hook.
At Svit, we carry commercial general liability and we'll email you the COI before your first clean if you ask. That should be table stakes.
2. Are they registered with WCB?
In Alberta, the Workers' Compensation Board covers workplace injuries. If you hire a company whose cleaners are not WCB-registered and one of them gets hurt on the job in your home, the injured person's only path to compensation is often to sue the homeowner.
That is a real risk with cash-only, informally-run operations. Ask directly: "Are your cleaners covered under your WCB account?" A legitimate company answers yes without hesitation and can give you the account number.
For a sole owner-operator with no employees, WCB is optional but often carried voluntarily for exactly this reason. Ask either way.
3. Who is actually coming to the house?
There are three models in this market:
- Owner-operator with a trusted team — the same one or two people every visit, hired and trained directly by the owner. This is what Svit does. Consistency is high, quality is consistent, and if there's ever a problem the owner knows immediately.
- Franchise or larger agency — a rotating pool of cleaners. Quality varies visit to visit. Cheaper on paper, but you'll re-explain your home every time.
- Marketplace apps — the person who shows up bid on the job that morning. No relationship, no continuity, and the app takes 15–30% off the top of whatever you pay.
None of these is inherently wrong. Just ask: "Will it be the same people every visit? If not, why?" The answer tells you what you're actually buying.
4. Do they do background checks?
For any recurring service where someone will have access to your home when you're not there — which is most cleaning arrangements after the first few visits — this matters. Ask:
- What background checks do you run before hiring?
- Do the same people have keys or access codes for multiple homes?
- How do you handle keys and codes if a cleaner leaves the company?
A well-run company has an actual answer to each. A defensive or vague answer is the answer.
5. Is the pricing transparent?
This one is easy to check on the website before you even call. Red flags:
- "Call for a quote" with no starting price anywhere — usually means the price varies by how much they think you'll pay
- Hourly with no time cap — if a job is priced at $50/hr with no estimate of hours, a 2-hour clean can quietly become 5 hours
- "Deep clean" that costs 3× a regular clean — a real deep clean is 1.5–1.75× the time of a regular clean, not 3×
- Rush fees, weekend surcharges, holiday premiums — every add-on is a place for surprise charges to appear on the invoice
What you want instead: a formula you can understand. Svit uses a flat hourly rate applied to a defined scope of work, and the estimate calculator shows you the price range before you commit to anything. Our pricing page walks through exactly how the math works.
6. Do they use products you're comfortable with?
Ask what they use. Two failure modes to watch for:
- Harsh conventional cleaners — bleach, ammonia, quats — in a home with young kids, pregnant occupants, pets that lick floors, or anyone with respiratory sensitivity, these are a real concern. Residues stay on surfaces after the cleaners leave.
- "Eco-friendly" that's marketing — a company that markets itself as green but can't tell you which specific products they use, or brings anything from a spray bottle they filled themselves, is not eco-friendly. They're just using the word.
At Svit, our team uses named non-toxic products with third-party certifications. We can send you the exact list on request. If a company can't do that, "eco-friendly" is just a landing-page word.
7. What do the reviews actually say?
Star ratings alone are noisy. What matters is reading a dozen reviews from the last twelve months and looking for patterns:
- Do reviewers describe the same experience? (consistency = well-run)
- Do reviews mention the owner or specific cleaners by name? (real people, real relationships)
- Do the negative reviews (there will be some) get real responses that address the issue? (accountability)
- Are the reviews spread out over time or clustered in a suspicious burst? (bought reviews arrive together)
Google reviews are the most reliable source because they're tied to real Google accounts. Facebook and Yelp are secondary. A perfect 5.0 with 4 total reviews tells you nothing; a 4.8 with 200 reviews across three years tells you a lot.
The first-call test
Once you've narrowed it to two or three candidates, the phone call is the last filter. A well-run cleaning company:
- Answers the phone — or calls back within a business day
- Asks you questions — home size, current condition, what you actually want cleaned, any pets or allergies, access details
- Gives you a real price range — not "we'd have to see it," not "starting at $99" with no ceiling. A range like "$280–$360 for that home" is what you're looking for.
- Doesn't push — no pressure to book on the call, no "we only have one slot left this week" urgency
- Confirms in writing — email or SMS follow-up with the price, scope, date, and cleaner name
The company that does all five is almost always the one worth hiring. Companies that do three or fewer are usually the ones that show up an hour late with two different people than you expected.
Common questions
Should I always get three quotes? Two is enough if the first two are legitimate companies with transparent pricing. Getting five quotes turns the process into a research project and doesn't produce a better cleaner.
Is the cheapest quote ever right? Sometimes. But the cheapest quote plus "cash only," no insurance, no COI, no WCB, one Google review — those things arrive as a package. Cheap on its own is fine; cheap with three of those together is a warning.
What if a cleaner damages something in my home? With an insured company, you tell the owner, they file a claim on their commercial liability policy, and their insurer handles it. Turnaround is usually 2–4 weeks. With an uninsured operator, you're in small claims court trying to collect from a person who may or may not have assets.
Do I need to sign a contract? For a one-off clean, no — a written price and scope is enough. For a recurring arrangement, a simple service agreement that lists the scope, price, cancellation policy, and access details is normal and protects both sides. It shouldn't be more than one page.
What if I want to switch companies later? That's what a good cleaner expects. Give the current company one clean of notice, get your keys or codes back, and start fresh. There's no lock-in in this industry, and any company that acts like there is should be the first one you leave.
Where we serve
Svit Company Inc. — owner-operated, insured, non-toxic products, transparent pricing — across Edmonton, St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Fort Saskatchewan, Spruce Grove, and Leduc. Same rate everywhere.
Ready to talk?
Build a quote in 30 seconds with our estimate calculator or call (587) 778-4567 for the first-call test yourself. We'll answer the seven questions above without needing to be asked.
— Svitlana
