I've used Handy a few times because they offer pretty aggressive pricing. Hit or miss as far as quality of cleaners. I do agree they have some borderline tactics. They make it impossible to find a contact number, force you into recurring bookings, and when I cancelled my last appointment they said they would give me a $35 credit to my account (with $15 penalty off $50 claning) but instead charged me an extra $15 and gave me a $50 account credit. Small thing but kinda shows the quality of their system.
On a side note, I wonder why the reporter bothered changing the name of the co-founder of Handybook in that piece. From the remainder of her description (e.g. the mention of a Harvard MBA and the experience at McKinsey) I was able to determine that "Ajay" was actually Umang Dua, after about two minutes on CrunchBase and LinkedIn.
All the more reason to name the co-founder. I disagree that a co-founder has the same right to privacy as an employee. Employees can claim that they're following rules or policies, and that any sleaziness on their part is due to the constraints they're operating under. A co-founder has no such excuse. He or she sets the policies. If the company behaves sleazily (as it did in this article), it's due to the policies and culture that they've created.
I don't know too much about it, but just from an initial glance it seems like it is better positioned, simply by offering things like plumbers, electricians, etc - again, they aren't services you fall into regular patterns with. They're very much on-demand when there is water leaking all over your apartment.
That said, I'm sure "doesn't seem to be struggling from what I can tell" could have been said about Homejoy, until it couldn't. Venture capital makes it difficult to tell who is succeeding, and who just has money to spend.
Yeah, Homejoy's demise took everyone by surprise. Unless the company is public, it's almost impossible for a casual observer to tell how healthy it is.
My first question when I heard of them is how they prevent cleaners from ever using the platform again. This seems to be the single biggest long term stumbling block, that they never really got close to solving.
Aside: I saw Adora at the London StartUp school hosted by YC. She really didn't come off that convincing to me. Then she said something really, really strange - "You don't fail until you give up", and I wondered why someone would say something like that.
I don't get what's the issue with that statement. Until you give up on the idea, you didn't fail. What other interpretation do you have in mind? It's one of those cliche way of saying failing is just the beginning of success.
The thing that convinces me is her determination. She worked as cleaner before starting the business, and understood some of the pain. She probably overlooked at the issue and probably overconfident like the article cited, but someone who was willing to cover cleaner to apologize for cancellation on Thanksgiving? That's very good for her (but unable to prioritize some critical negativity in the algorithm? that's just sad). Without knowing the full story (we are just hearing fragments from allegedly ex-Homejoy employees), I think the business model is not profitable. Maybe doing cheap is really hard, and doing fancy and professional is the only way out.
Handy's software is atrocious. I went to change a recurring cleaning schedule and they presented me with a modal pop-up to keep my cleanings at 50% off. I agreed, and my future cleaning pricing all showed up at $43/cleaning.
My next cleaning comes around, and I'm hit with a $101 charge. The receipt literally says "Price: $101, Discount: $58, Total Charged: $101". I end up having to go back and forth over Twitter DM because they refuse to respond to my emails and pick up their phone to get my charge adjusted. I ask if the remaining three cleanings that I was signed up for would honor the $43 price reflected in my account summary. They said yes.
The day before the next cleaning, I get hit with the same $101 charge. Again, I reach out to them and spend about three hours going back and forth finding out that the "last representative did not provide the right information", and that I need to "show the coupon code (I) used" (there wasn't one). I ended up getting my service cancelled for good.
Terrible. Never again. I'd rather pay a premium for a real cleaner to show up.
Handy's a terrible service, actually. Creepy automatic recurring subscriptions for house cleaning, no way in the UI to cancel the subscription (!), frequent site downtimes. Had to go to great lengths to cancel an appointment I didn't create in the first place.
Handy isn't the only one, and this ought to be illegal. If I can sign up online I ought to be able to cancel online.
These companies can lie to themselves and the public all they want - the exclusive purpose of making you call to cancel (or worse, visit a physical location) is to discourage cancellations. It compromises the notion of a free and voluntary exchange of money for services.
LA Fitness has this one down to a fine art. You have to send a form, -by certified mail- to an address. They will not let you cancel in person, on the phone, or online.
And if you send in the paperwork, but not by certified mail? They'll toss it, unactioned.
Was the cancellation form in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard"? :)
If you look into the ownership of major gym chains you'll find that they are owned by financial companies - more specifically billing companies.
It seems like providing the gym itself is more of a side hobby to the main business: find people to bill and keep billing them whether they like it or not, and build a core competence to avoid ever not billing someone.
I've used Handy with very varying results. I ended up ditching them because I couldn't get the same cleaner regularly. To use Handy, I would have to take the day off every time I wanted a cleaning, so that I could meet and vet the new cleaner.
One time, a new cleaner showed up, but I wasn't home. She didn't have the key, and so she couldn't clean. I asked for a refund and never got it.
https://crunchbase.com/organization/handybook/
edit: I'm in Chicago