How I'd choose a cleaning company to leave my keys with

If I were choosing a cleaning company to leave my keys with, I'd start by asking who employs the person coming through my door and what they get out of the hour. A brochure answers neither. The way a firm answers tells me most of what I'd want to know before I hand anything over.

Read the price backwards

Nearly every price I can find comes from someone selling cleaning, so hold these loosely. One home-services marketplace shows a rate card on a page dated September 2024, though the picture may be older than the page.¹ Two cleaners for two hours in a two-bedroom flat comes to RM125, which by my division is about RM31 for each cleaner's hour, and its longer sessions land in the same place.¹

Now the floor. The law firm Skrine's summary of the Minimum Wages Order 2024 gives RM1,700 a month, or RM8.72 an hour.² Every employer had to pay it from 1 August 2025, though the order doesn't apply to domestic servants.²

One cleaner, one hour, in ringgit

That leaves about RM22 of air between the price and the floor.² I'd assume it pays for travel, supplies, any insurance, whoever answers the phone, a marketplace's cut and a firm's profit. I couldn't find what any Malaysian firm pays its cleaners, so I can't tell you how it divides.

So I'd just ask. What does the cleaner get for this hour, and is the travel between houses paid? A firm doesn't owe me its books, but I'd notice one that's happy to answer.

As for a fair price, that card is one seller's marker and the only one I'd trust myself to quote. I'd compare quotes per cleaner-hour, because two cleaners for two hours and one cleaner for four are the same labour, however different they look on a page.

Who's actually responsible?

A 2015 report on one booking platform put it neatly: "each cleaner is tied to a cleaning company".³ That's three parties, if you count the app, and I'd want to know which of them picks up the phone when something goes wrong.

The marketplace's page calls its cleaners "verified and reviewed" and "professionally trained", without saying how, or whether they're employees.¹ So I'd ask how. If the answer is that cleaners are contractors paid by the job, whether that minimum applies is a question for a lawyer, and I won't guess at it here.

The usual advice is to read the reviews. I would, because reviews are good at the things reviews can see, like whether someone came on time. They just won't tell you anything about the part that worries me.

The key itself

The marketplace's page doesn't mention keys at all, and suggests fixing a time so that you're home when the cleaners arrive.¹ I think that's right, and for longer than most people bother. A key is the last thing I'd hand over, not the first.

How I'd get to handing over a key

Before that last step, I'd want answers to these:

• Who holds the key between visits, the cleaner or an office?
• Is there a record of who has it?
• What happens to it when that cleaner leaves the firm?
• If it's lost, who pays to change the locks?

And I'd want nothing on the key that says whose door it opens. In a condo I'd also ask management what it wants before it lets anyone up.

The small print that isn't small

The same page promises a "14-day service guarantee" and a guarantee that it "protects your home against damage, theft or public liability".¹ That's a reassuring sentence, and I'd want the terms behind it: who I claim from, up to how much, how soon, and what proof they'd accept.

A few other things are easy to miss. That page puts supplies at an average of RM30 extra a session, and leaves out laundry, ironing and dishes by default.¹ It also says these sessions don't suit a just-renovated house or one between tenants, which need a different booking.¹

And it says nothing about what happens when your regular cleaner is off sick, so I'd ask whether a stranger comes or nobody does.

Its four-session package saves only 5%, so I'd book one session first.¹ That's cheap for what you learn, and the same logic works at any firm: a discount that small isn't worth signing before you've met anyone.

When I'd walk away

• Nobody can tell me who employs the cleaner.
• A different stranger each week, with no warning.
• No written answer on breakages or a lost key.
• A price per cleaner so close to the legal floor that I can't make the sum work, with no explanation.

I wouldn't walk away from a small firm with no app, or from one that charges more than the rate card above. If a dear firm can tell me what its cleaner gets, I might even prefer it.