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Homejoy says goodbye

blog.homejoy.com

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Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#241

Post by xenadu02 »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #61
aestetix wrote: post #11

If your company cannot afford to stay in the black with real employees (as opposed to contractors), you need to re-evaluate your business model. Edit: and the downvotes are rolling in! Would anyone who has downvoted this comment care to share why?

Or perhaps we need to re-evaluate our laws surrounding employment. Events like this (supposing they were caused by employment laws) are perfect illustrations of how overregulation kills jobs.

I agree. It would be far more efficient to have the government provide a baseline level of services to everyone. Then the vast majority of small companies and startups employing contractors wouldn't have to worry about it.

We already have a baseline level of retirement covered with Social Security. Companies who want to attract more talented employees offer enhanced retirement benefits in 401k plans or other incentives like stock options.

I propose we should give everyone healthcare regardless of employment; the exchanges should be open to all and offer Medicare as the baseline plan for free to anyone who wants it. I further propose that the government provide unemployment that matches your salary for 3 months, 80% for 9 months, then 50% for a year. I also propose free training and schooling so people can switch careers if needed. Now getting fired or "laid off" doesn't mean destitution... it means time to find a new job or go back to school to train for a different one. Then employers can be free of a lot of these pesky "regulations" and "taxes". We can pay for it by soaking billionaires with taxes which won't have any negative effect on our economy because we are overflowing with capital seeking return right now (and have been for 15-20 years). The only downside is listening to them whine and moan about how oppressed they are because they're money-penis isn't as big as they'd like.

... or were you just talking about fucking over everyone but the billionaires? (That's usually what "overregulation" means in this context)

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#242

Post by akshatpradhan »

jasonwilk wrote: post #129

I wanted HomeJoy to work and tried to use the service a few times. What the failure came down to: 1. The cleaners were not professionals. It felt like they were just recruiting anyone who wanted a job. You could really feel this with the lack of passion from the cleaners and the severe lack of quality cleaning. Most of the people complained and were quite rude sometimes. Cleaning is very much a skill as much as it is…

>1. The cleaners were not professionals. It felt like they were just recruiting anyone who wanted a job. You could really feel this with the lack of passion from the cleaners and the severe lack of quality cleaning. Most of the people complained and were quite rude sometimes. Cleaning is very much a skill as much as it is manual labor.

For me personally, it felt they had little training of how to clean. Things like dusting diligently, wiping diligently, and mopping diligently just weren't done. Sometimes they'd spend way too much time in one area. One person spent 45 mins on my bathroom floor. I couldn't understand why and when I asked him to work on other areas he said, "please don't tell me how to clean."

There is definitely a skill to cleaning and unfortunately, I didn't feel they had enough training to call them skilled.

>2. People don't want to let just anyone into their home to clean. Especially for those that have valuables, you want someone you trust who is going to hopefully be your maid for years to come. I wouldn't want someone new every time and for that reason, I used HomeJoy only at our office but even that wasn't enough due to poor quality.

There was one guy that came into my apartment, and he was in the valuables room. Not much of a peep had gone by in 30 mins, so I checked in and I heard a drop of the jewelry box. He said he was just cleaning around and that an earring was missing and he was looking for it. I didn't say much because I was thinking in my mind what's he doing with an earring in the first place when I had just put all jewelry out of sight. I walked out the room and he said something like, "here it is, its put back". Its hard to describe in words, but the atmosphere was very uncomfortable at that point.

I can't tell whether he took something or not, but that was the experience Homejoy provided.

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#243

Post by soheil »

I live in SF and the few times I used the service I was relatively happy. I certainly thought the cleaning was done better than Handy, but Handy got them beat in pricing. I also thought their UI was much friendlier than Handy. With Handy there is no way to terminate a recurring cleaning without contacting customer service.

In busy places like SF traffic and parking seem to me to be a major hinderance for services like Homejoy. Perhaps if they provided shuttle service of some kind for their cleaners it would solve that problem.

Also there is a lot of customization when it comes to cleaning vs Uber for example. With Uber you just go from point A to B, a pretty well defined problem. With cleaning services it's a bit more complicated, do you clean the light switches, door knobs, under the sofa (what if it's a 1 ton sofa?)... I think people have vastly different expectations to what it means to have someone clean your house. Sure, with Uber you care if they driver is not rude, plays your favorite music and doesn't drive like a lunatic, but there isn't a hundred others things that would significantly influence the experience, with Homejoy there is.

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#244

Post by uptown »

tomlongson wrote: post #106

I have a hard time understanding this. The markup and demand is extremely high. Were they just overvalued so couldn't meet expectations?

If you believe the reviews on Glassdoor, internal management was a major problem:

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Homejoy-Reviews-E686596.htm

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#245

Post by x0x0 »

uptown wrote: post #235
Retric wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no scenario that's rather optimistic of you. Don't get me wrong there currently very popular and profitable so they don't need to worry about a Pets.com style crash. However, the barriers to entry are relatively low just look at Lyft. Eventually investors are going to want to get their money back, so they either start issuing dividends or face a hostile takeover.

>and profitable Are they? Everything I've read indicates that they are not. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-06-30/uber-loses-m...

Actually, everything I've read says they are in mature cities. Leaked numbers say they're stupendously profitable in their oldest markets: nyc, sf, etc. They are losing money overall because they subsidize drivers when they move into new markets. But the key is always to look at existing markets.

The quickest numbers I could find were leaked in 2014.

   est yearly rev run rate  city
   =======================  ====
   $212+mm                  sf
   $312 mm                  nyc
   $141 mm                  dc
   $150 mm                  chicago
   =======                  =======
   $815 mm                  total
http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-revenue-rides-drivers-an...

edits: made table

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#246

Post by ilyagr »

jasonwilk wrote: post #129

I wanted HomeJoy to work and tried to use the service a few times. What the failure came down to: 1. The cleaners were not professionals. It felt like they were just recruiting anyone who wanted a job. You could really feel this with the lack of passion from the cleaners and the severe lack of quality cleaning. Most of the people complained and were quite rude sometimes. Cleaning is very much a skill as much as it is…

I've had the opposite experience: the many different Homejoy cleaners I got were all very good or excellent. Perhaps that is because I live in the south of Chicago, where there are many people desperate for a decent job.

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#247

Post by pjhile »

brianmcconnell wrote: post #217
mycroft-holmes wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question to ask in this case is whether those regulations should be there in the first place.

In the case of using the "independent contractor" loophole to avoid paying UI, social sec tax, minimum wage, etc, it's an issue of making sure everyone plays by the same rules. Operators who abide by these rules should not be punished for doing so.

Are you implying that taxes/regulations are punitive?

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#248

Post by enraged_camel »

jasonwilk wrote: post #129

I wanted HomeJoy to work and tried to use the service a few times. What the failure came down to: 1. The cleaners were not professionals. It felt like they were just recruiting anyone who wanted a job. You could really feel this with the lack of passion from the cleaners and the severe lack of quality cleaning. Most of the people complained and were quite rude sometimes. Cleaning is very much a skill as much as it is…

>>1. The cleaners were not professionals. It felt like they were just recruiting anyone who wanted a job. You could really feel this with the lack of passion from the cleaners and the severe lack of quality cleaning. Most of the people complained and were quite rude sometimes. Cleaning is very much a skill as much as it is manual labor.

Yep. That's what happens when you run a service business and you accept investor money: the constant pressure to grow leads you to sacrifice quality -- which leads to your downfall in the long run.

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#249

Post by markbnj »

x0x0 wrote: post #225
jonknee wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can take pride in all sorts of work.

Yeah, but complaining their cleaner wasn't "passionate" mostly comes off as being pissy your poorly-paid short-term menial labor didn't fluff your ego enough for being so awesome to pay him or her. You can do a perfectly good job cleaning without pretending you're so passionate about cleaning you'd just love to do it for free! (I have similar complaints about development jobs, btw -- you can do a perfectly good job a…

I don't think the replies meant "passionate" as in "man I am so STOKED to clean your apartment, brah!" What they meant was "cares enough to do a good job."

Re: Homejoy says goodbye

#250

Post by eridius »

fraXis wrote: post #7

I used Homejoy and I liked it's ease of use. But after the cleaning lady they sent me was done, she offered me her direct phone # and told me I could contact her directly for any future cleaning needs. I always wondered how this business model was going to work if Homejoy's contractors could just give out their phone # at the end of their first service and the customer could just contact them directly for any future…

I believe that the cleaners were not supposed to be allowed to give out their number to be contacted directly. If they did so and Homejoy found out, they could be kicked out of Homejoy. That said, it would not surprise me in the least if a great many cleaners did it anyway.
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