Helpling - www.helpling.co.uk

We had an extremely traumatic experience after our first cleaning session with Helpling.

A week after the cleaning by the Helpling cleaner, we realised that two of our expensive watches (total value £2700) were missing. The watches were always kept safely in their boxes and were difficult to even spot unless someone was in their close vicinity such as the cleaner.

We also filed a police complaint but the police said that without any CCTV footage of the crime being committed they couldn't prosecute anyone.

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We called Helpling repeatedly for any updates on their "internal investigation" but they kept dragging the issue without any resolution offered. At this point, they also claimed that they were just matching cleaners with customers and the cleaners were NOT their employees!!

We argued that there was a similar theft incident reported in 2017 where the company had actually offered to partly compensate the customer but Helpling said it was for a different company - Hassle.com (By the way, Hassle was acquired by Helpling in 2015).

The company's response to the incident throughout has been completely shabby and standoffish. We were very conveniently not informed about the fact that the company has "NO THEFT INSURANCE" when we made the first booking despite asking repeatedly about cleaner insurance. They just mentioned a liability insurance to cover damages above €350.

We have tried our best to mediate a solution with the company but they don't seem to care about the customer's loss and are looking only at their bottomline at the cost of customer trust. We would have been happy had the company at least tried to recoup a part of our loss rather than dishing out their standard legal gibberish. This has unequivocally been the worst experience we have had with any service company where they send unvetted people into our homes and wash off their hands conveniently when there is a loss of property.

Bottomline: Please use Helpling at your own risk since you might get hoodwinked as we did if you end with the "wrong" cleaner. The cleaners apparently seem to know as much about the lack of evidence/prosecution issue in such cases and the brazen ones can do the trick leaving you with a big hole in the pocket. Do not expect HELPLING to help at all. The name is a misnomer!

Thought I should do something about this.

1. A year or more ago, I left a gold longines watch (lent to me by my dad) in my parent's bedroom, in our flat in Marylebone, since my father would be arriving in London in a few days and he would find it there then.

2. When I went back one day to that room, after the cleaner (sent from hassle.com) had left, I couldn’t find the watch. Only the cleaner had been to that room. No one else has come to my flat recently.

3. I reported it to the hassle.com, and they asked me to report it to the police.

4. I reported it to the police, who came to my place twice to ask questions etc. My dad was here then too, and we showed them pictures of my dad wearing the watch, etc.

5. Anyway, after a lot of days, calls etc, the cleaner came to the police station, and she said (obviously) that she hadn’t taken the watch.

6. The police also said that there was no criminal record of the cleaner, in their records.

7. In the end, because of the above, the police said that the case had come to an end.

8. I asked hassle.com for compensation for my watch due by their cleaner, from insurance, which they said that they have, but the weird thing is, they want a receipt! They said that on producing the receipt, they would give 75%, and 25% would need to be given by me for the taking of a product done by their cleaner.

9. Hassle.com mentioned that they had done a check for the cleaner, but no police check had been done for the cleaner.

10. I think it's a bit ridiculous for them to expect people to keep receipts for everything they buy; what would they do if family heirlooms would be stolen by their cleaners. We shouldn't have to produce a receipt for something which has happened due to their cleaner.

11. Horrible service, and have stopped using them. At least hopefully otherwise should be aware of hassle.com’s substandard service.