FAQ's

We sure do!

We are not simply a cleaning company, an organizer, or a personal assistant. We are ALL of those, plus more. We love to say "YES" no matter what our clients need. Plus, by taking care of all the other details, including liability insurance, workers compensation insurance, payroll, taxes, and hiring and training your assistant, we not only provide quality, we provide sanity!

Hiring an individual for your home needs can seem like an attractive option as the cost is typically less than hiring a business, so why would you choose Moxie Girl?

Two Reasons: Security and Service

Security – Moxie Girl screens all our employees, completes background and reference checks, and verifys our employees are all eligible to work in the US. We do not bring someone in to the company until we are comfortable having them in our own home.

Service – Moxie Girl will be there when you need us. Because we are a company and hire multiple team members we can cover your needs if your normally scheduled Moxie Girl becomes ill, goes on vacation, or otherwise is unavailable. Also, if you are not comfortable managing and holding someone accountable (especially a friend!), then their “help” can actually cause you more stress. Hiring Moxie Girl is often less stressful because you can give your feedback to your Account Manager and he/she can work with your Moxie Girl to improve the service. In addition, if your Moxie Girl moves on to other things in life, we take on the responsibility of hiring and training your new assistant to meet your needs so that you don’t have to.

For other reasons see Pricing and Policies below.

For most jobs, you will have 1 Moxie Girl in your home. There are many factors why this is but the main ones are as follows:

• Trust
  • It is much less stressful when there is only 1 person in your home. 1 person to believe in, 1 person to know about, 1 person to trust.
• Issues and problems
  • If there are problems everyone knows who to go to about the problem.
• Duplicating work
  • There is no possibility for work being duplicated or redone which takes up extra time and money.
• No team work flows
  • No need for team work flows (one person’s work is the trigger for another person to start their work). These workflows only work effectively if everyone produces the same amount or work at essentially the same speed. Otherwise, you have workers waiting on others which takes up extra time and money.
• Communication issues eliminated
  • The smaller the team or lack of a team diminishes and/or eliminates communication issues. The reasons for unproductive work in teams is typically because of excessive unproductive communication or a lack of communication slowing production. We eliminate that possibility. See Brook’s Law for more information on this.
• Group free-riding
  • Group free-riding is the idea that a team member doesn't do as much as others on the team expecting the other team to pick up his/her slack. This creates issues within the team as well as more time and money spent.

That is our goal, however, we would like to train at least 2 people in your home for the cases of illness, vacations, or other unavailability. If a complete substitution is necessary we want that transition to be as seamless as possible, so we train all our team to provide excellent service and continually strive to meet your expectations.

Moxie Girl hires and trains our staff for all services we provide. If you have a request that is beyond our abilities, we have Preferred Service Partners that we work with, trust, and refer out for all services that we are unable to provide.

Because of the specialized tools and training required for these services, we have found that it is more cost-effective for both Moxie Girl and our clients if we refer these services out to local professionals who are experts in their field.

While we love kids, unfortunately, our insurance company does not want us to be left responsible for them. We do, however, know and refer some great nanny companies in our Preferred Service Partners section.

Again, our insurance company will not let us take any humans in our cars. We do, however, know and refer some other great companies in our Preferred Service Partners section that can take care of all Aunty's needs.

Well of course the frequency of your service is entirely up to you as everyone has different needs and budgets. It also depends on what you need help with. As you might understand, laundry or groceries may be something you need more frequently depending on your lifestyle.

Regarding cleaning Moxie Girl recommends the following timeframes to keep your home in tip-top shape:

General Cleaning - Depending on your individual scenario (number of residents, children, pets, your living habits, etc.) Moxie Girl believes that a home should have a "General Cleaning" a minimum of once/month. We feel this frequency provides just enough cleaning sanity while limiting health related issues (allergies, bacteria, etc.) that may arise. If kids and pets are living in the home, the recommended visits could be as frequent as weekly or every other week.

Deep Cleaning - We recommend a thorough "deep" cleaning about every 6 months (a good "rule of thumb" is on the season changes - e.g. spring and fall). A deep cleaning typically includes items that are not normally done on a routine cleaning service visit. Deep cleaning may include but is not limited to the following items:

• Under/behind beds, furniture, and appliances
• Refrigerator, freezer, and oven interiors
• High ledges, light fixtures, and cabinets
• Cabinet and drawer interiors
• Pantry interiors
• Detail window treatments and window tracks

Moxie Girl Memberships are pre-paid either at the beginning or middle of the month or both (your choice) with reimbursement for any expenses due at the end of each month.

Moxie Girl Project Packs are also pre-paid with any reimbursements due at the completion of the project.

On-call and ongoing services and any necessary reimbursements are billed after services are rendered or by any schedule that works best for you. We are flexible to help make your life easier.

We accept cash, personal check, electronic check, and credit/debit card.

No! However, all Moxie Memberships come with a 30-day cancellation policy.

When shopping for someone to help in your home and personal life, the differences between an independent contractor and a professional business can be significant. Some reasons why prices may be a little higher include the following:

• Moxie Girl pays all taxes on our team - If you pay more than $1700 per year to an independent home service provider, by law you must sign up for an Employer ID Number with the IRS and you are required to pay Social Security and Medicare (also known as FICA) and Federal Unemployment Tax. You may also be liable for Federal Income Tax withholding, state taxes, and disability taxes. These taxes become part of your personal tax liability and must be reported on your Form 1040. Penalties for non-payment include interest penalties and fines.
• Moxie Girl verifies legal work status for our team - You must verify that the independent home service provider is legally allowed to work in the United States. This can be done by completing an I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification form and completing the eVerify process. Penalties for hiring illegal aliens range from $250 to $10,000 per offense. You should keep a signed I-9, W-4, and e-Verify form on file for each service provider; you may also want to keep a photocopy of each employee’s Social Security card (to cover yourself in the event of identity theft).
• Moxie Girl supplies Worker's Compensation Insurance to our team - If an independent contractor is injured in your home, you can be held responsible for the medical bills. Make sure that your homeowners’ insurance includes a liability clause in case your service provider gets injured at your home. At least $300,000 in liability protection is recommended, but up to $1 million in an umbrella or excess liability policy may be needed to protect you. You also may be liable for workers’ compensation payments that would not be covered by your homeowner’s insurance.
• Moxie Girl is insured - We don't ever foresee it happening but in the horrible event that something catestrophic does happen (e.g. fire, flood, or other major disaster caused by us) to your home or possessions Moxie Girl carries liability insurance to give you peace of mind.
• Moxie Girl bonds our team - Bonding covers theft of your items and without bonding, if an item from your homes goes missing, it may never be replaced.
• Moxie Girl trains our team for all our services - We take the extra time upfront to train our team to handle as many situations that may be thrown their way. We do not believe in having different people for different tasks. If that were so we would have to send a different person to clean, a different person to organize, and a different person to host an event. That just doesn't make good sense to us. Plus, you usually want it done right then and there by the person you know. So they better know how to do it, right? We think so too.

We understand that price is important, however, when comparing prices be sure and always compare apples to apples. You wouldn't shop for cars, with all their different features and options, warranties and licenses and expect to pay the same price for all of them.

Because we are a mobile based company we do have a minimum visit charge of $100 (Moxie Memberships and Project Pack minimum is 2 hours, Home/Pet Sitting minimum is 1 hours).

Ahhh, the "buy in bulk" purchasing strategy. The concept popular with the big warehouse stores is possible because those stores can buy each item cheaper from the manufacturers because they buy a lot of it at the same time. They can then pass this price savings on to the consumer. Well, unfortunately in the service industry you typically don't get that luxury because the product that Moxie Girl is purchasing to sell back to the consumer is our people and the service they provide to you. The only way we could make this "buy in bulk" concept work for us is pay our team less $/hour if a client buys more hours. If you were an employee would you go for that? We doubt it and neither does our team.

With that being said, Moxie Girl has worked this "buy in bulk" concept into some of our prepackaged pricing (Moxie Memberships and Project Packs) as these packages are typically scheduled for service on a consistent basis. Because of this consistency Moxie Girl does not have to market as much to fill the time slot. For example, if we have a Monday morning time slot to fill, filling the slot with the same client each week has less administrative costs than having 4 clients who rotate the slot.

As we will typically work with clients regarding cancelling service we also understand that rare and extreme cases do come up. Some of the reasons why we have a cancellation policy are listed here:

• Our team expect that a scheduled time will take place and have adjusted their schedule to accomodate.
• It allows Moxie Girl a little time to schedule someone else (if you do cancel your service) that may have been waiting for help as well.
• To deter clients from scheduling service solely as a place holder for them.

Our cancellation policy is within 48 hours of your agreed upon scheduled service. Services cancelled within this timeframe are subject to a 50% service charge (not less than $75).

We carry most supplies with us to get the project done. We do ask, for sanitary reasons, that each client provide their own:

• Vacuum cleaner (they can carry allergens and fleas from home to home)
• Mop (which can carry germs and other “icky” things from other people’s floors)
• Toilet brushes (this one is pretty obvious, we think)

Any other supplies necessary for your project can be purchased by you or by Moxie Girl (billed to your account).

For cleaning type work we use green products for our main solutions (surface cleaner, tub/tile, furniture polish, etc.). If you prefer the harsher stuff (e.g. bleach, ammonia, etc.), or specialize products (natural stone cleaner, etc) we would be happy to use your supplies according to your instructions. If you have any other questions about supplies that we use or recommend please ask.

Not if you have better things to do. Some clients give us a key, some leave a key hidden, some give us a garage code, and some prefer to be home. Whichever you are comfortable with is okay with us.