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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

Landscaping, maybe. Cleaners and car washing are pretty commodity though. I agree with the broader point that there are a lot of tasks you don't want done by a random person who signed up with an app but those aren't the best examples.

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I hired a cleaning service through Groupon once. I opened the door to four people walking right by me without saying a word (they didn't speak English), and one "front person" who barely spoke. I had never had a cleaning service come in before, so I had some questions. I was also expecting one person that I could follow around the house to make sure they didn't take anything, but all I could do now was have faith in my fellow humans (in an industry notorious for theft). That was very off-putting, and I can't see how anyone would hire someone to clean their house whom they didn't completely trust. I know people do, but I will never again.

EDIT: Just saw your response to the other comment where you thought it was dry-cleaning. It may well have been, but I'll leave my story here anyway, since it's sort of in context.

> Cleaners and car washing are pretty commodity though.

You'd just let a random person who signed up with an app into your house to clean?

Ah. I read that as dry cleaning. You're right. At worst, I'm going to use a franchised service--and the period I did that I never had a real problem but I wasn't very happy with it either. Now I use someone I hired privately.

Through an established maid service? Yes. Though, like the sibling post, they did an awful job and I eventually found a private person to do the housekeeping. I have no idea how those housekeeping services stay in business - I tried several and they were all terrible. Nothing illegal or sketchy, just not good at cleaning.

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