How Do You Choose a Cleaning Company in the Fraser Valley? 11 Questions to Ask

What should you actually ask a cleaning company before you book?

Ask eleven things, in writing, and judge the company on how fast and how specifically it answers. Five cover whether you are legally and financially protected, five cover what the service will feel like week to week, and one covers what is going into the air in your house. Most Fraser Valley companies answer the first ten easily. The eleventh sorts them.

This list works on us and on our competitors. Take it to whoever you are considering. If someone else answers all eleven better than we do, hire them.

Which of these questions cover insurance and legal protection?

The first five. These are the ones where a wrong answer costs you money rather than annoying you, so ask them first and get the answers in writing.

1. Are you registered with WorkSafeBC?

This is the question with genuine legal weight in British Columbia, and it is free to verify. WorkSafeBC states plainly that not registering when required “is against the law”, and that if an employer is not covered and a worker is injured or contracts an occupational disease, that employer “could be responsible for both the worker’s claim costs and your unpaid premiums” (WorkSafeBC, Consequences of not registering). For you as the customer, the relevant risk is narrower but real: WorkSafeBC advises that before you hire an independent business you make sure it is registered and paying, because “as a customer you could be held responsible for its premiums” if it is not.

Do not take the badge on the website as proof. Ask for the legal or trade name and run it through WorkSafeBC’s free clearance letter application. It returns the firm’s registration and payment status in a minute or two. There is a fuller explanation of how this plays out when you hire an individual rather than a company in our guide to hiring a cleaning lady versus a cleaning company in BC.

2. How much liability insurance do you carry, and will you email the certificate?

Commercial general liability is what pays when a cleaner knocks a television off a stand or floods a bathroom. Two million dollars is the common floor in the Lower Mainland market and the strongest local competitors advertise five million. Ask for the number, then ask for the certificate before the first visit rather than after an incident. A company with a policy can forward the broker’s certificate the same day. That is the whole test.

3. Are you bonded?

Bonding is separate from liability and covers employee theft. It matters because cleaning is one of the few trades where somebody works alone in your house while you are out. Bonding is not universal in this market and its absence is not automatically a red flag, but a clear answer either way beats a vague one.

4. Do you run criminal record checks on everyone who enters my home?

Watch the scope, not the yes. Ask whether it covers every cleaner including new hires and temporary cover, and whether the company ever sub-contracts a visit to somebody outside its own staff. Sub-contracting is where checked-staff claims usually quietly stop being true.

5. Are you registered for GST, and is GST included in the quote?

Cleaning is a taxable service, so GST is owed on it. A business has to register once its taxable revenue passes $30,000 either in a single calendar quarter or over four consecutive calendar quarters (Canada Revenue Agency). Any established company is over that line. The practical value of asking is that it tells you whether the quoted number is the number you pay, and quietly tells you whether the business files its taxes.

Which questions tell you what the service will actually be like?

Questions six to ten. None of these are legal issues. They are the ones that decide whether you are still happy at visit twelve.

6. Will the same cleaner come every visit?

Consistency does more for the quality of a recurring clean than any product or checklist. Somebody who has cleaned your house eight times knows the shower door with the stiff track and the cupboard that has to be closed a particular way. Rotating staff resets that knowledge every visit. Ask directly, and ask what happens when your regular cleaner is sick. “You get whoever is free” and “you get a trained substitute and we tell you in advance” are very different services at the same price.

7. How do you handle my key or door code, and what happens if a key is lost?

A good answer is specific and boring: keys labelled with a code rather than an address, stored locked, signed in and out, returned immediately if you cancel, and the company pays for a rekey if one goes missing. Most companies have never written this down. Asking is worth it partly for the answer and partly for what the hesitation tells you.

8. What is your guarantee, and how long do I have to use it?

The pattern that reads as credible in this market has a stated window: not happy, contact us within 24 hours, and we come back and redo those areas free. A guarantee with no window and no named remedy is a sentence on a website. Ask what “satisfaction guaranteed” means in days and in actions.

9. Do you bring your own supplies and equipment?

This changes the price, so it needs to be explicit in the quote, and it changes the quality: a company bringing a HEPA-filtered vacuum and fresh microfibre per home is doing something different from one using whatever is under your sink. If you are asked to supply products, you are subsidising the rate and you have no idea what is being mixed. If you have specific requirements, this is where you say so, before anyone quotes.

10. What happens if something gets broken?

Something will get broken eventually. The answer that matters is the process: told the same day, in writing, repaired or replaced or claimed through the liability policy, and never quietly glued back together and left on the shelf. Ask what happened the last time. Companies that have been operating a while have a story. The ones that say it has never happened are either very new or not paying attention.

What is the eleventh question, and why can almost nobody answer it?

Ask this one, in these words: “will you send me the safety data sheet for every product you will use in my home?”

A safety data sheet is the standardised hazard document that ships with a professional chemical product. It lists the hazardous ingredients, the health effects, the protective equipment needed and the first-aid response. Under BC’s Occupational Health and Safety Regulation, Part 5, an employer whose workers may be exposed to a chemical agent that could cause an adverse health effect must ensure the identity of that agent, its health effects and the required precautions are indicated by labels or safety data sheets, communicated to the worker, and backed by training and written procedures. Section 5.5 requires a maintained WHMIS programme, reviewed at least annually. If a company uses professional concentrates, those sheets already exist in a binder.

There is one honest exemption, and knowing it makes you a better buyer. The supplier label and safety data sheet provisions in section 5.3 do not apply when the hazardous product is a consumer product as defined in the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act. So a company cleaning with supermarket bottles may legitimately have no supplier sheets to send. That is fine, and there is still a correct answer: name the exact products so you can look them up yourself. The general duty in section 5.2 carries no consumer-product exemption at all.

Which leaves exactly one wrong answer, and it is the one you will usually get: “we use eco-friendly products”. That phrase has no legal meaning in Canada. There is no regulation defining “natural”, “non-toxic”, “green” or “eco-friendly” for cleaning products, and the Competition Bureau’s 2025 guidance on environmental claims tells businesses to be specific rather than vague, in its own words: when in doubt, spell it out. Reading the bottle does not rescue you either, because Canadian cleaning-product labels are not required to list all ingredients. Under the Consumer Chemicals and Containers Regulations, only hazardous ingredients present at 1% or more have to appear, and only inside the first-aid statement, so an entire fragrance mixture can be legally invisible.

This matters more than it sounds. Roughly 15.7% of adults surveyed across four countries reported health problems from being in a room cleaned with scented products (Steinemann, 2019, self-reported rather than clinically diagnosed). If somebody in your house has asthma, migraine or a scent sensitivity, the product list is the whole decision. Certifications are the shortcut: Green Seal GS-37 bans formulating with asthmagens, formaldehyde donors and phthalates outright and caps volatile organic compounds, counting every fragrance component present at 0.01% or more. UL ECOLOGO is the Canadian-origin equivalent. A named certification beats an adjective. We publish the plant-based products we use and the ones we refuse to use for exactly this reason.

What does a bad answer sound like?

There are five, and they are all recoverable if the company gets specific when pushed. It is the refusal to get specific that is the signal.

• “We are fully insured and bonded.” With no amount, no insurer and no offer to send the certificate.
• “All our staff are background checked.” With no answer on temporary cover or sub-contracting.
• “Satisfaction guaranteed.” With no window and no stated remedy.
• “We use eco-friendly, non-toxic products safe for kids and pets.” With no product named, no certification named, and nothing to send.
• “We can start Thursday, I will text you the price.” Nothing in writing is the common thread in every bad outcome we hear about.

Do you have to ask all eleven?

No. Booking a one-off clean of an empty rental, you can reasonably skip the questions about consistency and key handling. If nobody in the house has a respiratory issue you may care less about question eleven, though it is still the fastest way to find out whether a company’s marketing is load-bearing.

The four we would never skip are WorkSafeBC registration, the liability certificate, the guarantee window and the product list. Those four take one email to answer, and the speed of the reply predicts the service better than anything on the website.

When you are ready to compare, the areas we serve page lists what changes between Abbotsford, Langley, Surrey, Chilliwack, Mission and Maple Ridge, including why hard well water in Abbotsford and soft Metro Vancouver water in Surrey are two different cleaning jobs. Our own answer to question eleven is already published, before you call.