How to stop the milkman - I am a complete chicken

Linda32

mrbadexample wrote:

You could write to his dairy. Explain that although his service is exemplary, the milk delivery system does not suit your requirements, and you regret you have to cancel. Ask for a final bill.

Put something nice in about him so his bosses notice, and everybody's happy.

I was going to say somthing like this as well, write on ring the company, that way its not like actually telling the milk man.

tipsychick

I've been itching to cancel the window cleaner for ages as he was charging £15/month :eek:. I just couldn't face it, so last month I got my mum to come round and do it!

How pathetic is that?

Rage_in_Eden

just out of interest how much is a pint of milk from the local milko? I've just been on our local dairy website and it's very glossy but has no prices!!!!

Rage_in_Eden

tipsychick wrote:

I've been itching to cancel the window cleaner for ages as he was charging £15/month :eek:. I just couldn't face it, so last month I got my mum to come round and do it!

How pathetic is that?

LOL - actually we had a window cleaner for a while at our other house - I felt it important to support the local economy - but he wasn't regular and when he did turn up all he did was trample the garden - i mean, how difficult are a clump and bright red tulips to see?

Linda32

Rage_in_Eden wrote:

just out of interest how much is a pint of milk from the local milko? I've just been on our local dairy website and it's very glossy but has no prices!!!!

I think ours is about 46p a pint, we only buy three pints aweek though. I expect I'd use the supermarket if we bought more.

Nicki

recovering_spendaholic wrote:

I have the same problem with the girl who has cleaned for me for ages. She was my Mum's cleaner and when Mum died she started to come to me and I was and still am too chicken to get rid. The thing is she is a hopeless cleaner and since I was made redundant I can't afford the £20 a week for her wages but I don't know how to tell her....

I had a similar thing with my cleaner who used to come twice a week for a while when the kids were both very small, and I was very poorly and unable to clean the house. After about 18 months of this, I was well on the road to recovery but also decided to give up work (I'd been receiving my salary up until then under PHI scheme even though not well enough to work). The cleaner had been really good to me (even came out in the middle of the night once to look after my youngest when I went into labour with number 2) so I felt awful. In the end I said my financial circumstances had changed and I wouldn't be able to keep her on, but was aware that she would need some time to find something else so would give her 3 weeks notice or less if she found something else sooner. She said no problem, she could find another job for the slot easily and would finish whenever we wanted. She was absolutely fine about it, and we still see her and are on good terms with her. Similar set up with our nanny - this time we wanted to reduce her hours rather than let her go, and dreaded telling her, but suggested to her that we would support her in a nanny-share arrangement if she wanted to do this, and would give her reasonable notice. She came back within a couple of days and said actually she would prefer just to have more time to herself, and was very happy to reduce her hours asap.

You never know what is going on in other people's lives until you take the courage to raise something like this. Your cleaner may secretly be dying to give up the job but not want to do so due to loyalty to your mum's memory. If you treat her fairly, and just ask you may be surprised at how easy it is.

tim_n

Just ask a cleaner how is life and how is cleaning going. If she's positive that she's looking to get out of it or the job is killing her, just say you're looking to spend more time at home and want to do the cleaning yourself!