For reference to those who don't live in NYC, this is following the Uber pricing model fairly well -- it's about double what most "good" maids charge, maybe triple depending on the area of NYC.
It's a good idea -- maid service can be commoditized, and particularly if you need a last-minute sort of thing, it seems smart. It's also notoriously difficult to find a good maid without playing the traditional "networking" game -- referrals, Craigslist, etc.
Personally, however, I see this only as a fill-in-the-gaps kind of service (which may be exactly what they're looking to provide). I have a regular maid who's been working at my place for 6+ years, charges a very reasonable rate ($25/hr), and most importantly, knows the apartment inside and out - exactly where to clean, how I like it, how to do the laundry, etc.
The biggest issue I see is the risk of extra-market activity. Whereas with Uber, car service is a true commodity, if Get Maid sends over a really terrific maid, there's a good chance that the buyer and maid are going to make a private arrangement for future work and cut Get Maid out of the deal. Which leads back to the ideal model being speed and "non-regular" usage.
> "The biggest issue I see is the risk of extra-market activity"
Unless Get Maid can provide the users and maids with enough useful features that they see a value in keeping the long-term-arrangement through the system.
e.g. convenient (recurring) payment processing, giving maids increased visibility in one-off job searches based on number of long-term relationships, centralizing maid scheduling [1], factoring maid schedules into one-off job availability, factoring required commute time/distance into job feasibility [2], seamless arrangement of Maid-approved 'fill-in' Maids when they need to take time off or something comes up, centralized 'gig notes' that would be made accessible to any in-system fill-in maids [3], etc.
There's plenty of opportunity for Get Maid to make a compelling pitch to keep everything in-system.
[1] keys being: allowing the maid to set 'availability' to reflect their personal-life scheduling demands (including vacations and such), keeping all job schedules in one place, automatically keeping this calendar up-to-date on their smartphone, etc.
[2] A maid may technically be available at 3pm for another job, but if the 3pm job is uptown and she just wrapped a weekly 2pm gig downtown, it's not going to work. Keeping everything in-system will spare users the hassle of contacting maids who can't actually make the scheduled time and spare the maids the hassle of seeing jobs they can't actually take.
[3] how the client likes the laundry done, high-traffic areas, etc.
Agreed -- another question I have is how much $ they keep. If they're only keeping 20% or so and the maid is able to earn $36/hr, then that's a big incentive to stay in-system for sure. Also to your point, if they build in the features to allow for recurring arrangements with a "preferred" maid and truly give the maid a business-management system (i.e. tax prep help, income reports, etc.), then that's further incentive to do so.
> "The biggest issue I see is the risk of extra-market activity"
Demetri from Get Maid here...
This is something that has traditionally been a problem in the maid sector. It's not perfect, but we take several steps to minimize this. On the customer side, we provide things that individual maids can't, such as on-demand booking and cashless payments. All of our maids are also bonded and insured so if something breaks by accident, you’re covered; individual maids rarely are. On the maid side, we give maids an opportunity to fill their idle time by getting them bookings on days/time that they are not very busy and/or are close to their current location. In addition, we pay an above-average rate (which also helps us recruit quality maids).
I have no idea about NYC rates, but in San Francisco my wife did a lot of searching and screening and we ended up paying $30/hr. That was, I think, the cheapest or nearly cheapest option. And that's before tip. We keep it simple and just pay $100 for her 3 hours every 2 weeks.
Unfortunately she's so good that she's not taking new jobs right now! I tried to get her setup with a friend and she politely declined. Makes me happy that she's fully-booked and making a good living from it.
This is one of those services that doesn't make sense to me as a mobile first & only product(for now).
If you are home and see that your house needs to be cleaned, you are probably near a computer. This isnt like Uber where you need to use their service across town. They have just alienated a bunch or their potential user base by just being on iOS (for now, ok whatever). But that's just me.
Thanks for the feedback. Particularly in NYC, we felt that mobile-first would satisfy most people since they can book on their way home, and even if they're in their home, they usually have their phone next to them before their computer. Having said that, booking via desktop will come VERY soon. In the meantime, you can also book via mobile web (go to getmaid.com on any smartphone), not just iOS.
This is definitely a concern we take seriously. Our goal is to not only offer a service that's on-demand, but also provide one of the best cleans you'll have. We do a lot of work vetting and training our maids to ensure quality and trustworthiness. This includes 1) interview, 2) reference checks, 3) a demo clean, and 4) background check...before we bring them onto our system. We train our maids to be as efficient as possible and that it's much better to have a customer twice than to work too slowly once.
In a traditional relationship, sure. But with these P2P Uber-like systems, I'm not sure that the consumer is convinced of that -- they're likely to say "that Get Maid person was slow. Not using the service again."
Sounds like an interesting idea...just found a maid for my Brooklyn apartment last week, actually. Money is a huge factor for me, so we went with something a little cheaper than this.
The ratings in the App store (all 5 stars, all glowing and highlighting different aspects/application of the service) are a bit fishy...
Please come to San Francisco! I would jump on this immediately. I hate the idea of trying to find, screen and co-ordinate someone to clean my apartment regularly. I've tried TaskRabbit for this, but I find the whole engagement cycle awkward.
Local leadgen is hard. They'll have to do a monumental job of generating buzz to keep this going. Traditional routes like buying keywords on AdWords are very competitive. "maid service new york" currently goes for $6.33 per click there... could take many clicks for a single booking.
We have a regular housekeeper that comes just twice a month but it would be great -- especially once we have kids -- to be able to get an on-demand maid the morning after a dinner party or a kids sleepover or whatever.
The first thing that came to mind was another good name would be "Maid in New York". But "Get Maid" is good too. Plus you don't have to change the name when you expand. Or maybe change it to "Maid in USA".
Demetri from Get Maid here...
1) You can currently book on our mobile site as well as the app. Working on desktop booking.
2) Yes, we are fully bonded and insured.
Was about to say after living 2 years. Never seen anyone on subway with cleaning supplies lol. I have no idea how would they go by car where most areas you can cruise for 2 hours before findng a spot and that alone will cost you dollars or tens of dollars. Anyone care to explain?
Our maids carry a backpack and come with the supplies, which are all-natural, they need to clean with except for a vacuum/mop/broom (kind of hard to carry these around on a subway!).
Nope, although after researching the space and working on the product, we did hear about it. We got the inspiration from having a kafkaesque experience trying to find and book a maid in NYC.
It's a good idea -- maid service can be commoditized, and particularly if you need a last-minute sort of thing, it seems smart. It's also notoriously difficult to find a good maid without playing the traditional "networking" game -- referrals, Craigslist, etc.
Personally, however, I see this only as a fill-in-the-gaps kind of service (which may be exactly what they're looking to provide). I have a regular maid who's been working at my place for 6+ years, charges a very reasonable rate ($25/hr), and most importantly, knows the apartment inside and out - exactly where to clean, how I like it, how to do the laundry, etc.
The biggest issue I see is the risk of extra-market activity. Whereas with Uber, car service is a true commodity, if Get Maid sends over a really terrific maid, there's a good chance that the buyer and maid are going to make a private arrangement for future work and cut Get Maid out of the deal. Which leads back to the ideal model being speed and "non-regular" usage.