“Never run out of work”
When busy with year-end work, spending from a few hundred to a few million dong to hire home services is a trend of many families today. This is also the time for freelancers to find work, increase income, many people have to work late at night to meet the needs of customers.
Every year, in the last month of the lunar year, painters and interior decorators have non-stop work. They have to work all day, try to finish the work as soon as possible to move to another house.
Along with renovating the space of the house, interior decoration also receives much attention from homeowners.
Mr. Phung Cong Xuan Truong (28 years old, An Khanh, Hoai Duc, Hanoi) in the 60 sqm apartment has been over 5 years, the walls are deteriorating due to dampness. At the end of January, Mr. Truong sought a construction contractor to renovate the house for Tet. Because the contractor was busy “never running out of work” at the end of the year, although the house was painted and repaired for 3 weeks, his family still couldn’t move in.
“Though simple, I posted a vacancy on the resident forum and asked friends for referrals before finally contacting someone to repair the house. I thought the house could be completed in about 2 weeks, but it’s close to Tet and I’m still quite busy. They said it would take another 10 days to finish the painting and repair of the house “, Mr. Truong shared.
Meanwhile, the family of Ms. Bach Hai Trang (Nhan Hoa, Thanh Xuan, Hanoi) could not find anyone to repair the kitchen cabinets and wash the sofa on the weekend and had to accept working at home for the team. crafts people to work during office hours. And she also had to accept risks because the team she found also came from facebook groups because currently most reputable service companies are fully booked.
The service providers are increasingly investing in machinery and equipment to serve their work.
“The house has 4 bedrooms, it takes a day to clean up all the curtains, cabinets… Conveniently, I arranged to wash the curtains and re-cover the sofa at the same time. The cost of cleaning the whole house also amounts to millions of dong,” said Ms. Trang.
The demand for repairing and renovating houses during Tet is high, therefore, not only those who specialize in this work, but also students and temporary workers take advantage of finding suitable part-time jobs to earn extra income. Industrial zones are starting their Tet holidays early, Mr. Nguyen Van Thanh (52 years old, Hiep Hoa, Bac Giang) went to Hanoi to live with his son to work part-time. Starting work from the 15th of the lunar month, but the demand of people in the area is high, Mr. Thanh has almost no free time from now until the 28th of Tet.
Mr. Thanh shared: “In the days before Tet, I worked from morning to night and still didn’t finish the work. Compared to the hourly wage of housework, renovating houses during Tet brings higher income, some days earning 2,3 million dong.”
High prices but hard to find a reputable place
According to observations, this year’s Tet holiday, repairing and renovating house services are quite diverse, such as painting new houses while also including carpet, curtain cleaning, furniture cleaning, floor polishing, glass cleaning… Besides, service providers also take up the task of decoration and redoing the entire interior of the house.
According to many service providers, domestic cleaning services are usually crowded with customers from the beginning of the lunar month onwards. At such high prices, as Tet approaches, these companies are still “burning out” people because supply cannot meet demand, they want to receive more customers but do not have enough staff.
Towards Tet, prices can increase by about 20-30%, even 50% but it is still very difficult to find people, and service quality also significantly decreases. Due to the labors’ rush to complete as many jobs as possible.
According to household cleaning service providers, the closer Tet comes, the more people hire repair service company so the service prices will continue to fluctuate. Moreover, there are now some “fake” companies, self-employed services that receive contracts and then hire freelancers to work instead. Therefore, families need to have a plan early when using this service to avoid price increases or fraud.
