Policies
Cancellations received by Happy Earth one business day in advance will result in a 15% fee.
Cancellations received by Happy Earth “same-day” (including after business hours the business day prior to the scheduled appointment) will receive a 35% fee.
If we are able to reschedule a cancellation within one week of the original appointment, we will reduce the fee to 15%. Business hours are defined as 8 am-5 pm. Leaving your home inaccessible can also result in a cancellation fee if it prevents the team from entering your home in a timely manner on cleaning day.
Because we are cleaning people and not cleaning robots, your team will occasionally miss some cleaning tasks during your appointment. Other times, they might make a mistake while cleaning.
No one makes mistakes on purpose. Our teams strive only for excellence and want to hear from you whenever they miss that mark. Please reply to your supervisor’s customer recap email (sent after each appointment) with any critical feedback you might have. The team will use your direct feedback as a vehicle of development and improvement; they listen to and incorporate your perspective to prevent future mistakes.
If you’ve experienced a high volume of misses in one cleaning, a free make-up appointment may be necessary to fix the items missed during the initial cleaning. Happy Earth management will request photos of the misses and a list of items missed within 36 hours of the appointment to assess the misses for you accurately. They will use the timing in your plan to determine the total time allotment for all the misses and then schedule a make-up appointment for that amount of time at no extra cost to you. Time may be added to a future appointment if a return visit is unnecessary. Additionally, future cleaning credits and discounts can be applied if the misses caused inconvenience. This is how we stand behind our work – by collaborating with our customers to ensure their expectations are being met.
But remember: Just as we sometimes make mistakes, we also believe that the customer is not always right. Happy Earth management analyzes evidence from ALL angles (the customer, the cleaners, the plan, etc.) when investigating misses and calculating fair reimbursement.
Our teams handle thousands of objects while cleaning and dusting every month, and sometimes customer items get broken.
If there’s something in your home or space that absolutely cannot be broken due to its value (financial or sentimental), please let your cleaning team know as soon as they arrive. We would prefer to skip these items entirely, and we’ll note them as “untouchable” in your customer file. Heirlooms, inheritances, priceless works of art, sentimental items, and expensive objects are some examples of things we’d rather avoid entirely.
For all other broken items, we can reimburse the cost in a number of ways:
- Direct replacement: This is the best option if you know the make/model of the item, and it (or an equivalent) can be readily found online or in-store.
- An equivalent amount of free cleaning: If we can accurately pinpoint the item’s value, we can provide free cleaning in that amount to compensate for the break.
- Direct reimbursement: We can monetarily compensate you for the value of broken items.
In all cases, additional future discounts can be applied if any broken items cause extra inconvenience.
We love feedback of all sorts about our business and our teams. We strive for perfection with all customers, but sometimes we miss the mark. Other times, we far exceed expectations. Please let us know about your experience any time you feel the need. We appreciate your business and understand we can only grow and improve by listening and adapting based on your feedback. We are always looking for your input, and we implement suggestions from both customers and employees that often positively impact our business. Please email your Supervisor or use the “Contact Us” form with any feedback. We share feedback with our cleaning teams to help them grow and get better at their job.
For our teams’ safety, we reserve the right to call a “snow day” if the weather is bad, especially in the morning. Happy Earth Cleaning Co-op does not operate cleaning teams on snow days. All “snow day” appointments will be rescheduled or canceled, and customers will not be subject to a cancellation fee. We apologize in advance for any issues this may cause.
Again, for the safety of our teams, please keep the access pathway(s) to your home or office free of snow and ice. Supervisors reserve the right to decide on the spot if an address has properly maintained sidewalks, driveways, stairs, etc. If your Supervisor decides it’s too dangerous to carry equipment over any poorly maintained pathways, they will skip the cleaning appointment, and you will be charged a cancellation fee (per the “inaccessible” reason listed in the “Cancellation Policy” above).
For the safety of our teams, please do your best to keep your home or office warm during the winter months. Supervisors have been instructed to vacate any location colder than 65 degrees and to take a photo of the thermostat or thermometer readings as evidence. If this happens in your home or office, you will be charged a cancellation fee per the “inaccessible” reason listed in the “Cancellation Policy” above.
If you have air conditioning:
- Please make sure it is on for your cleaning team on your scheduled cleaning day.
- If you prefer to leave the AC off during the day, please leave a note for the team with instructions on how to use your system. If we don’t have a note, we may need to contact you during the day for information on how to use your system.
- Please note: If your home is above 85°F upon our arrival, there may not be enough time for the home to cool enough for our team to clean safely in the limited amount of time we have available.
If you do not have AC:
- Please leave as many windows open for us on our cleaning day as you feel safe doing, and please turn on fans if you have them. You can also leave instructions for us to close windows and turn off fans at the completion of our visit.
- On hot days, the team may move slower and take more water breaks in your home, and may not be able to get as much done as usual. We will note what we are unable to get done in the recap email.
- Please let us know if there are any windows in your home that should not be opened.
- Otherwise the team may open windows to keep cool during the appointment. Our teams are trained to close any doors or windows we open prior to their departure.
If the ambient temperature in your space is over 85°F, we will not be able to clean.
- We have given our Supervisors discretion to let us know when a space is too hot to clean. We will ask them to provide us pictures of the thermostat reading for our records and will need to reschedule or cancel your appointment. We will contact you if this is the case.
Very high humidity along with high temperatures could cause us to cancel your appointment even below 85°F.
- OSHA safety standards reference “wet bulb globe temperature”, which is a measurement that includes humidity and radiant heat as well as ambient air temperature. High humidity increases how hot the air is feeling and affects our team members’ ability to cool down.
- We reserve the right to evaluate each home on a case by case basis and make the decision that is best for the long-term safety of our team.
Our cleaners do not open any closed doors, cabinets, or drawers in your home. They need express permission from you to open any closed-off area. For example, when taking your trash out and replacing the garbage bag, you need to give your team permission to open the cabinet where you keep the liner bags.
The doors we open to access your home will be locked while the cleaning team is on-site and again upon exit. Windows we open will be closed and locked again upon exit. Alarms we disarm will be re-armed. Keys we extract from a lockbox will be placed back in the lockbox, and the lockbox will be left where it was found. Spare keys that come back to our office for us to store will be locked in our key safe until your next appointment.
While cleaning, our teams will not answer the door for anyone except you. We won’t sign for packages, let your dog walker in, etc., unless we have written permission on file.
We will not remove anything but dust, dirt, and grime from your home.
We are bonded and insured against any issues that might arise while we are in your home.
The state of Minnesota has banned smoking in the workplace. With that in mind, we do not work in homes where smoking occurs inside. Likewise, our teams are only allowed to smoke during unpaid breaks during the workday and should not smell like smoke in your home.
Our insurance agent will provide proof of our insurance upon request. Please email or call our office at 612-516-7112 if you need to initiate such a request.
Questions?
Review our policies and frequently asked questions, and if you still have questions, reach out to us!
FAQs
Yes, we do. Our commercial clients often find our Basics sufficient for most ongoing or one-time office janitorial appointments. We can also remove trash/recycling, restock some supplies, and recommend any repairs we might notice. Our natural products effectively sanitize offices, centers, clinics, apartment building common areas, bathrooms, break rooms, and kitchenettes. Our business hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. We do not currently operate any cleaning teams outside of those times.
Though we are available to do in-person consultations, our virtual consultation is the perferred first step in hiring Happy Earth to clean your home. Using Facetime, Google Meet or Zoom, this 20-30 minute virtual consultation delivers crucial information about your Twin Cities (MN) address directly to our salesperson. It costs nothing and is entirely risk–and obligation–free. We can perform the virtual consultation during a video tour of the home or commercial property with you. We use that information to write your personalized cleaning bid(s) within three (3) business days after the virtual consultation. Our cleaning bids are detailed and broken-down room by room with timing attached to each space. You will have the opportunity to continue working with our salesperson to hone your bid if you want to make changes. We will only schedule your cleaning bid if and when you approve it.
As far as we can tell, yes. Let us know if you have conflicting information. We’re a little like a grocery co-op, except only employees can purchase a share (sorry, customers). Employees who purchase a share of Happy Earth Cleaning Co-op become “member-owners” with a vote at all member meetings, the potential to be voted onto our Board of Directors, and rights to profit-sharing (called “patronage”) at the end of every fiscal year we finish in the black.
If possible, we ask our customers to be out of their homes as a part of our COVID-19 cleaning protocol. If you’d prefer to be home, we ask that you isolate on a level or in a room of the home where the team will not be expected to clean during the appointment. This is to preserve social distancing at all times.
We strive for consistency whenever possible, but there are numerous factors that might impact which team members clean your home – sickness, vacation, turnover, and other customers rescheduling their appointments. Our best practice is to have two different Supervisors who have cleaned your home multiple times and can become “regulars”. Our highest priority is being able to keep your appointments on our schedule with no disruption; at times, this may mean sending a non-regular team to your home.
Your customer file is constantly updated (at least once per appointment), so your team’s information about your home will always be accurate and up to date in our Dispatch software. Our goal is to deliver a consistent experience, regardless of who cleans your home. No matter what, there will always be at least one supervisor to monitor quality and time usage at every appointment.
Once you’ve committed to regular cleaning appointments, they will always be scheduled for the same day of the week and the same time of day. If any changes need to be made, we will approach you first. The frequency will depend on how often you want service: weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Remember that we have a 2-hour arrival window for every visit, meaning your team may arrive up to 1 hour before or 1 hour after your scheduled time.
It depends on how many cleaning hours you’ve requested. We take the total cleaning hours for your job divided by the number of cleaners in your home to get the actual time spent there. If we quote your job at 6 hours, a team of 2 will complete the work in 3 hours (2 people x 3 hours = 6 cleaning hours). A team of 3 will complete the same job in 2 hours (3 people x 2 hours = 6 cleaning hours).
- Animal waste
- Bodily fluids/human waste
- Litter boxes
- Diaper Genies
- Insect-infested homes or areas
- Deep carpet cleaning
- Full window cleaning, especially exterior windows
- Large-scale or home organizational jobs
- Laundry
- Areas where smoking occurs inside
- Anything above our reach on a 2-step ladder
- Metal Venetian Blinds
- Oven Interiors
- Suspended glass or heavy objects (i.e. chandeliers)
- We do not move heavy furniture.
Your team does not expect a tip, but they’ll love you for it. If you believe that great morale produces excellent work, tipping your team can be a worthwhile investment. Mostly, we hire artists, a notoriously cash-strapped segment of the population. That said, tipping is never expected.
Yes, we do! We offer gift cards in any amount over our 2-hour minimum. We make an excellent gift for new homeowners, new parents, and people experiencing big life changes. You can purchase a gift card here on our website! Make sure the gift card recipient resides within our service area.
Absolutely! Our primary disinfectant is white vinegar, which we small-batch infuse with lemon for extra cleaning power. We also use Dr. Bronner’s SAL SUDS as our all-purpose cleaner for surfaces that don’t tolerate vinegar. For scrubbing, we’ll use baking soda, The Pink Stuff, or our own gentle cleaning scrub formula made in-house with eco-friendly materials. For polishing, a little coconut oil goes a long way. But the most important material is Good Ol’ Fashioned Elbow Grease. We never use any chemicals or bleach because we’re 100% green and eco-friendly.
- Additionally, we have many waste reduction tactics in our daily operations, which include:
- Removing disposable products from our cleaning materials by mixing them in batches and using refillable containers.
- Reducing paper waste with an iPad/tablet fleet.
- Eliminating paper towel waste by reusing towels and microfiber cloths laundered by Do Good Diaper Service.
- We are recycling plastic bags for ourselves and our customers.
- Planning driving routes to reduce overall miles driven.
- Supporting other local, green businesses.
