Amazon may soon clean your house. According to Bloomberg, the online retail giant has begun adding house cleaners to its payroll — not for the sake of cleaning Amazon’s offices, but rather to help tidy up your personal space. These new employees, called Amazon Home Assistants, will be able to assist with a wide range of tasks, including cleaning, laundry, and other chores that you may not have the time to address yourself. So far, reports suggest that customers have taken well to Amazon’s newest offering.
Housekeeping isn’t actually an entirely novel space for Amazon to enter. In fact, the company originally launched Amazon Home Services three years ago, but that program connected customers to independent contractors. Amazon Home Assistants, on the other hand, are direct employees of Amazon, which means that the Seattle-based tech giant can exercise more control over the services these folks provide.
“All our technicians are Amazon employees who are trained professionals,” the Amazon Home Assistants website states. “We use 100 percent eco-friendly and kid-safe cleaning products which are rated four stars and above on Amazon. All our services are backed by our happiness guarantee. If you’re not satisfied, we’ll come back and fix any problems.”
As it stands, Amazon is trialing the program in Seattle, and pricing is determined by the size of the home and how often you’re looking to get it cleaned. For example, Bloomberg reports that a weekly cleaning of a 1,500 square foot property will set you back around $156.
In the last several months, Amazon has made strides to simplify its customers’ lives as much as humanly possible. The company is not only offering fast grocery delivery from Whole Foods, but is also bringing packages straight into customers’ homes by way of its Amazon Key program. That initiative, however, has met with some amount of skepticism from folks, who might not be totally comfortable with the idea of a delivery person unlocking and walking through their front doors. However, with the addition of Home Assistants, this could change — after all, if you’re willing to employ someone from Amazon to clean your kitchen, chances are you will also trust them to open your front door when a delivery arrives.
In any case, we have to wait a bit longer to see exactly how Home Assistants pans out across the country. Although knowing Amazon, anything that makes our lives easier is likely an avenue the company will explore.
