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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. |
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.