Choose the company that will answer four things in writing before anyone unlocks your door: what its insurance actually covers, what the visit costs, what gets cleaned, and how you will know it was done. In Miami there is a fifth — whether it can get past your building’s front desk. Every one of those has a document behind it, and asking for the document is the whole method.
These are not preferences, they are a filter: a company either produces the document or explains why it cannot, and the explanation is the answer. Here is the list, and below it, how to check each one.
- A certificate of insurance, addressed to you or to your building — not a sentence on a website.
- A starting price you can read in public, before you speak to anyone.
- A written checklist — and a straight answer about what is not on it.
- Proof after the visit that the checklist was actually met.
- An answer for your building: front desk, service elevator, keys.
Ask for the certificate, not the sentence
“Licensed, bonded and insured” is a sentence any website can type. There is a different piece of paper behind each of those words, so ask for the paper — and ask for it addressed to you. A certificate of insurance names a certificate holder: the person or entity the insurer confirms the coverage to. If you live in a condo, your association will want to be that holder before it lets a crew past the lobby.
Here is what we publish, and where: $2,000,000 general liability coverage · every cleaner background-checked, plus the route to the document itself — email bookings@jascleaning.com with “COI” in the subject line and the entity name. Most certificates are returned within 2 business hours. That turnaround is the part worth timing: a company with a live policy forwards the request to its agent and has a PDF back the same morning.
Ask the uncomfortable question before you hire rather than after: what if you break something? The answer we publish on our FAQ is a route rather than a reassurance — damages are documented in your CleanCheck, reported within 24h, and resolved through insurance. Watch the documentation step: a report that already contains photos of the room turns a disagreement into a claim someone can process.
A price that exists before the phone call
The second filter is whether a number exists in public at all. Ours is on the residential cleaning in Miami page: starting at $225, with a starting table by home size and a standard visit described as 2–3 hours with a 2-person team. That page is the source that gets updated; this one only points at it. A deep clean is a different service starting at $375, which is worth knowing before you book the shorter one expecting the longer one.
Then check what happens between the estimate and the invoice, which is where surprises live. In our flow the system shows an itemized estimate, you pick an arrival window and send the request — nothing is booked yet. There is no payment at booking: we invoice after each completed visit. Cancellation is free up to 24h before; inside 24h a $25 fee applies, which our own page says covers the cleaner’s short shift. Ask any company the same three questions: when is the price fixed, when am I charged, and what does a late cancellation cost?
“Almost none of these questions are about cleaning. Every one of them is about what a company will put in writing before it has your key.”
A checklist — and proof it was met
“A full clean” is not a scope. Ours is 28 items, every time, on the standard residential visit — and the things people assume are included but are not, such as inside the oven, inside the refrigerator, and interior windows, are separately priced add-ons, precisely so they show up as a line you chose instead of an argument at the door. Always ask for both halves of the answer: what is on the list, and what is not.
Then the part almost nobody offers: proof. On eligible completed visits we send a CleanCheck report with that visit’s checklist status and customer-safe photos. It matters more than it sounds when you were not home, when the apartment is a rental, or when the person paying is not the person living there. The policy on those photos is published too: they auto-delete after 90 days unless you extend or delete them sooner.
The Miami questions no national checklist asks
Can they actually get in?
In much of Miami-Dade, the clean starts in the lobby. Buildings want vendors registered at the front desk, and many associations require a certificate of insurance on file before a crew gets past it. Many towers require the service elevator, some assign it by reservation and time slot, and quiet hours and permitted service windows sit on top. Ask who does that paperwork: if the answer is “you do”, you have hired yourself a second job. We ask for the building’s rules before the first visit and store them on your unit’s profile — the detail is in our Miami condo cleaning guide.
Do they clean for the climate or the calendar?
Buildup here runs faster than it does in drier climates: humidity, salt air, and year-round pollen. That does not change the checklist, it changes where the labor concentrates — slider tracks, window screens, the aluminum frame, the film on the glass, the air vents. A good sign: the answer names surfaces rather than miracle products. Anyone selling you a chemical fix for salt instead of telling you how often the track needs another pass is not describing the actual work.
What happens when a storm gets a name?
Hurricane season runs June through November, so here a cancellation policy is not fine print — it is half the year. Ask in writing what happens to a scheduled visit when the building closes, when the shutters go up, or when the power is out, and read the published window before you need it. Ours is published and carries no seasonal clause: free up to 24h before, $25 inside 24h. Expect company, too: the pre-season and post-season resets land in the same weeks for everyone.
Who answers in Spanish?
In Miami this question decides whether an instruction survives the trip. It is not enough that someone in the office speaks Spanish: the booking, the texts, the person standing in your kitchen, and the report all have to be the same language, or the note about the marble floor gets lost between step one and step four. Ours is bilingual end-to-end — bookings, texts, on-site, reports — and the whole site exists in Spanish, not just the form.
Three answers that should end the conversation
One: “we’d have to see it first” as the answer to what does this start at. For an office a walkthrough is legitimate; for a three-bedroom house, a starting price exists without anyone having been inside. Two: a certificate of insurance that is permanently about to be sent. Three: a checklist that only appears after the visit, or that changes once you complain. None of those is a customer-service detail: each is the information you will need on the day something goes wrong.
How to check us with our own tools
It would be awkward to publish this list and then fail it. Our transparency page carries the ledger of recleans requested and disputes opened with their resolution times, published straight from the operations record: a dash means that figure has not loaded yet, and a zero there is a real zero. It also carries a section called “what we got wrong” and an address, transparency@jascleaning.com, for telling us if you spot a discrepancy.
And there is one question whose honest answer is a qualified one, so we give it qualified: you can request team continuity, and we prioritize the same team when availability allows without guaranteeing it. When you compare companies, listen right there — what someone refuses to promise you is better information than what they promise.
Quick answers
What should I ask a cleaning company before the first visit?
Five things, in this order: can you send a certificate of insurance and how fast; what does this start at for a home my size; what is on the checklist and what is not; what will I get afterwards that shows the work was done; and how do you handle my building. JAS answers all five in public — $2,000,000 general liability coverage and background-checked cleaners, a published starting table, 28 items on a standard visit, a CleanCheck report on eligible completed visits, and building rules collected before the first clean.
How do I verify that a cleaning company is really insured?
Ask for the certificate itself, addressed to you or to your association, and notice how long it takes to arrive. With JAS the route is published: email bookings@jascleaning.com with "COI" in the subject line and the entity name, and most certificates are returned within 2 business hours. The certificate names the insurer and the policy period, which is what a condo association files. A company with a live policy forwards the request to its agent and has a PDF back the same morning.
Is the cheapest cleaning quote usually the wrong one?
Not automatically — but a price is only comparable once you know what it buys. Compare three things across quotes: how many people come and for how long, how many items are on the checklist, and what is excluded. A JAS standard visit is published as 2–3 hours with a 2-person team against 28 items, starting at $225; a deep clean is a different service starting at $375. A number that is lower because the scope is smaller is not cheaper, it is different.
Will I get the same cleaner every time?
This is a good honesty test to run on any company, because the honest answer is a qualified one. Ours: you can request team continuity, HomeCare is fulfilled by JAS-supplied, background-checked cleaners, and we prioritize the same team when availability allows without guaranteeing it. A company that promises the identical two people every visit for a year is promising something staffing cannot always deliver.
Do I need to buy supplies or leave out a vacuum?
No, and the answer tells you something about how a company runs. JAS brings everything — eco-friendly by default, fragrance-free on request — and HEPA-filter commercial vacuums come on every visit, though we can use yours if you prefer. If a company expects to use whatever is under your sink, ask what happens when it runs out mid-visit.
The short version
Choose on documents, not adjectives: the certificate addressed to you, a published starting price, a checklist with both of its halves, proof after the visit, and a straight answer for your building’s front desk. Still deciding whether to hire at all rather than whom? We run that arithmetic separately in is hiring a house cleaning service worth it?
This guide is part of the JAS operating playbook — written so you can run the same test on us that you run on anybody else.