She sent UltraShine a booking request through its website and received a response the next day with a quote that said $150 + GST.<\/p>\n
She also requested an oven clean and window clean, which were quoted to her at the same time as $90 + GST each.<\/p>\n
She declined to go ahead with those due to the additional cost.<\/p>\n
The initial quote from UltraShine had the house cleaning price at $150 and terms at the bottom, Kelsey Howell declined to have an oven and the windows cleaned and these charging items were removed from further invoices.<\/p>\n
At the bottom of the quote were terms stating \u201cany recurring residential clean is subject to an initial deep clean to get the house clean, tidy and remove any build-up of dust and grime\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cInitial deep clean will cost x2 base price and is just for the first clean,\u201d the terms read.<\/p>\n
Howell said she skipped over that line in the quote because it was right at the bottom, and she claimed the terms were not discussed with her further during her email correspondence with UltraShine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey never explicitly said in any of the email comms that it would be more expensive. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey just said there would be two cleaners and that they were doing a deep clean on the first visit that might take longer. But they don\u2019t charge hourly, they charge per visit,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t say, \u2018Oh, by the way, since you\u2019re a first-time customer, it\u2019s going to be double the price\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cleaners cleaned Howell\u2019s house on October 7 and on October 13, Howell received an invoice from UltraShine for $300 + GST.<\/p>\n
UltraShine’s invoice to Howell asking for $300 + GST after she was originally quoted $150 + GST.<\/p>\n
After back-and-forth emails between Howell and Ultrashine, the company eventually agreed to charge Howell the original amount quoted, which Howell paid earlier this month.<\/p>\n
UltraShine managing director Rebecca Hoskisson said from the company\u2019s experience, the first clean of a home often required additional time and resources to meet its high standards for ongoing maintenance cleans.<\/p>\n
Hoskisson said before undertaking Howell\u2019s job, the company provided a quote outlining the cost of the initial deep clean, \u201cwhich was accepted by the client\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe quote included clear terms stating that any recurring residential clean is subject to an initial deep clean at twice the base price.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, we acknowledge that this information could have been made more prominent and have since updated our quoting process to ensure expectations are fully understood by both parties.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hawke\u2019s Bay Today sent the quote and subsequent invoice to Consumer NZ, the country\u2019s non-profit consumer advocacy organisation, for its view on the situation.<\/p>\n
A Consumer NZ spokesperson said a quote was an exact price for a job. <\/p>\n
Once it had been accepted, it was binding on both parties.<\/p>\n
\u201cFine print cannot be used in a quote to hide important information which would be critical to a consumer\u2019s decision to purchase goods or services,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the overall impression given by the quote is misleading, it is likely to breach the Fair Trading Act regardless of what is stated in the fine print.\u201d<\/p>\n
The spokesperson recommended disputing such invoices or paying the amount that was clearly disclosed.<\/p>\n
Customers could also lodge a complaint with the Commerce Commission, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She sent UltraShine a booking request through its website and received a response the next day with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1443,74,1975,1561,3390,16574,23485,138,52132,8556,3311,4187,44264,1976,10053,96823,18087,111,139,69,1118,1523,18369,8499,48461,16675,3048,13744,96822,1361,1533,1354,5816,13632,96821],"class_list":["post-143361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-about","tag-after","tag-at","tag-bay","tag-best","tag-bill","tag-bottom","tag-business","tag-cleaning","tag-companies","tag-consumer","tag-cost","tag-detail","tag-hawkes","tag-house","tag-houseclean","tag-issued","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-over","tag-practices","tag-quote","tag-quoting","tag-reminder","tag-said","tag-shock","tag-skipped","tag-that","tag-will","tag-woman","tag-womans","tag-written","tag-x2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}