"My in-laws were visiting for the first time, and with a toddler and a full-time job, our apartment was a disaster zone. The cleaning crew arrived on time and transformed our home into a sparkling, fresh oasis that even impressed my mother-in-law. Booking them was the best decision I made, and I can finally relax knowing my home is spotless for their stay."
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Policies · Lily Maids NYC
Cancellation and Rescheduling Policy for Lily Maids NYC
36 hours notice · $50 late fee
Change or cancel any booking, any time
Plans change in this city, and we build for that. You can move or cancel any cleaning, free of charge, with at least 36 hours notice. Inside that window a $50 fee applies, because a held slot usually cannot be filled in time. Everything below explains exactly how it works.
Free changes with 36 hours notice
Reschedule online, by phone, text or email
No cancellation contracts or lock-ins
Card charged only after the cleaning
Booked around a fixed date Brooklyn · family visiting
Why the notice window exists
Sarah M. had one date she could not move.
Her in-laws were coming to Park Slope for the first time. Between a toddler and a full-time job, her apartment was, in her words, "a disaster zone." She booked a cleaning, the crew arrived on time, and by the time her in-laws walked in the place had become "a sparkling, fresh oasis that even impressed my mother-in-law."
That worked because the date held on both sides. Sarah kept her slot and we kept our arrival time. Most cleanings in New York City get booked around something just as fixed: a flight landing, a lease ending, family arriving, a landlord walkthrough. So the useful question is not whether you can change a date, because you always can. It is how much notice we need to change it well, and what happens when a change comes in late.
01
The 36-hour window
02
When the $50 fee applies
03
How to reach us
04
Plan discounts
The short version
Four numbers worth remembering.
If you only read one part of this page, read this. Everything further down is detail on these four numbers.
36h
Free change window
Cancel or reschedule at least 36 hours before your start time and there is no charge at all.
$50
Late cancellation fee
Applies to cancellations and reschedules made inside 36 hours, and to visits we cannot get into.
20min
Access wait time
If we cannot get in, the team waits 20 minutes and tries to reach you before leaving.
4
Ways to tell us
Your account panel, phone, text, or email. Whichever is quickest for you.
Notice window
Thirty-six hours, counted from your start time.
The window runs backward from the start of your appointment, not from the end of the day or from midnight. Thirty-six hours is a day and a half, which gives us enough room to offer your slot to someone on the waitlist and to keep the cleaner who was assigned to you working a full day.
It is a slightly longer window than the 24 hours some services ask for, and that is deliberate. Our teams get their routes the day before, and shuffling a Manhattan morning slot on a few hours notice usually means someone loses paid work. The extra half day is what makes free changes possible at all.
| Your appointment | Free change deadline | After that |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday, 10:00 AM | Tuesday by 10:00 PM | $50 fee |
| Saturday, 9:00 AM | Thursday by 9:00 PM | $50 fee |
| Monday, 8:00 AM | Saturday by 8:00 PM | $50 fee |
| Wednesday, 2:00 PM | Monday by 2:00 AM | $50 fee |
Cancelling and rescheduling are treated the same
Whether you drop the visit entirely or move it to a different day, the same 36-hour window applies. Moving a booking is not a way around the fee, because either way the original slot goes unfilled. The upside is the reverse also holds: rescheduling with enough notice costs nothing, no matter how many times you do it.
The $50 fee
When the fee applies, and when it does not.
The late fee is a flat $50. It does not scale with the size of your booking, and it is the only cancellation charge we have. There is no percentage of the job, no penalty that grows the later you tell us, and nothing that carries over to your next visit.
The fee applies when: you cancel inside 36 hours of your start time, you reschedule inside 36 hours, or our team arrives and cannot get into your home.
The fee does not apply when: you give at least 36 hours notice, we cancel or reschedule from our side, or you are dealing with a genuine emergency. On that last one we use judgement rather than a rulebook. A hospital trip, a family emergency, a building-wide water shutoff, a storm that shuts down transit: tell us what happened and we will almost always waive it. We would rather keep a client for years than collect $50 on their worst week.
We also do not charge a fee for changes to scope. If you booked a deep clean and want a standard clean instead, or you want to add an oven, that is a price adjustment and not a cancellation. Tell us before the visit so we can allow the right amount of time.
Getting in
If we cannot get in, we wait 20 minutes.
A locked door is the most common reason a cleaning does not happen, and in New York City it is usually nobody's fault. A doorman was not told to expect us. A lockbox code changed. A buzzer is broken. Someone stepped out for coffee. So the team does not just leave.
We arrive
Step oneThe team reaches your address at the scheduled start time and follows whatever access instructions are on the booking.
We wait
20 minutesIf there is no way in, the team waits on site for a full 20 minutes rather than moving straight to the next job.
We reach out
Call and textWe call and text the number on your booking, and try the front desk or super where there is one.
We leave
$50 appliesIf those 20 minutes pass with no way in, the visit is treated as a late cancellation and the $50 fee applies.
The easiest fee to avoid entirely
Access instructions in your booking notes prevent nearly every lockout we see. Doorman handoff, lockbox location and code, smart-lock code, super's number, elevator reservation, which entrance to use on a walk-up. If you live in a building that requires a name on a list, add us before the day. Our guide to preparing for your cleaning walks through it, and you do not need to be home while we work.
Making the change
Four ways to move a booking.
Use whichever is fastest. There is no preferred channel and no form to hunt down. What matters is the time we receive your message, since that is what the 36-hour window is measured against.
Your account
Sign in to your customer panel on our site to reschedule or cancel yourself. Fastest option, and it timestamps the change automatically.
Sign in to your account → Phone
Call and talk it through, which helps if you want to move to a specific day and check what is actually open.
Call (646) 825-3550 → Text
Send a text to the same number. Handy when you are on a train or in a meeting and just need it done.
Text (646) 825-3550 → Email
Email us with your name, address and appointment date. You get a written record of when you sent it.
Email support →One thing to watch with late-night messages
We read messages during business hours. If you send a text at 2:00 AM, it is timestamped at 2:00 AM and counts from then, so a late-night message can still land inside the free window. But if you need same-day help or your cleaning is only hours away, call rather than text so an actual person can act on it. For anything that is not time-critical, the contact page has all our details in one place.
Charged after the work Not before
Payment and refunds
Held the night before, charged after.
The night before your cleaning we place an authorization hold on your card for the booking amount. That is a hold, not a charge. It confirms the card is good and reserves the funds. You may see it show up in your banking app as pending, which sometimes surprises people, so it is worth knowing about in advance.
After the cleaning is finished we charge the full amount at the end of that day. So you are never paying for work that has not happened yet. If the scope changed while we were there, the final charge reflects the actual service rather than the original estimate, and the flat price you saw at booking is what you pay when nothing changed. Our pricing page explains how quotes are built.
If you cancel late, the hold may already be in place. In that case the $50 fee is charged and the rest of the authorization is released back to you. Release timing is set by your bank, not by us, and it commonly takes a few business days to disappear from your statement.
If you are not happy with a cleaning, that is a separate matter from cancellations. Tell us within 24 hours and we come back and re-clean the areas in question at no charge, as set out in our satisfaction guarantee.
Recurring plans
How rescheduling affects your plan discount.
This is the part worth reading closely if you are on a recurring plan. Plan discounts are based on the actual gap between two cleanings, not on the label you signed up under. Stretch the gap and the discount steps down to match the frequency you actually received.
A weekly discount needs 7 days between visits. If a reschedule pushes that gap past 7 days, that visit earns the bi-weekly discount instead. Bi-weekly needs 14 days. Push past 14 and the visit earns the monthly discount, which needs 28 days. Go beyond 28 days and no discount applies to that visit.
| Actual gap since last cleaning | Discount applied to that visit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 7 days | Weekly rate | The full weekly discount, exactly as planned. |
| More than 7, up to 14 days | Bi-weekly rate | Applies to the stretched visit only. |
| More than 14, up to 28 days | Monthly rate | Monthly pricing needs a 28-day gap between visits. |
| More than 28 days | No discount | That visit is priced as a one-time cleaning. |
Your plan itself does not get cancelled
A stretched gap changes the discount on that one visit. It does not end your plan or reset you to one-time pricing going forward. Get back on your normal rhythm and your usual discount comes back with it. There is also no minimum number of visits and no contract, so you can pause or stop a plan whenever you like. See the pricing page for current plan rates, and note this is separate from the 36-hour rule: skipping a recurring visit with less than 36 hours notice still triggers the $50 fee.
If we have to move it Priority rebooking, no fee
When it is our side
If we have to reschedule you.
It happens rarely, but it happens. A cleaner calls in sick. A team gets stuck when a subway line goes down. A blizzard makes travel across the boroughs genuinely unsafe. When we are the reason a visit moves, you never pay a fee, and we put you first in line for the earliest slot that works for you.
We tell you as soon as we know rather than letting you sit and wonder, and we do it by phone or text so it actually reaches you. If your cleaning was tied to a hard deadline like a lease handover or guests landing, say so and we will prioritise accordingly, including working outside our usual pattern where we can.
For weather specifically, we follow public guidance rather than guessing. During major storms the National Weather Service New York office is what we watch, alongside MTA service alerts. If the city is telling people to stay off the roads and out of the transit system, we are not sending a team out with mops.
Questions and answers
The bits people always ask.
Every answer is open by default, so nothing is hidden behind a click. For questions about what a cleaning includes, our FAQ page and the cleaning checklist cover scope room by room.
Is rescheduling really the same as cancelling? 01
For the purposes of the notice window, yes. Both need 36 hours. The reason is simple: whether you move the date or drop it, that original slot sits empty and the cleaner assigned to it loses paid hours. The flip side is that rescheduling with enough notice is completely free, and there is no limit on how often you can do it.
What if something genuinely urgent comes up? 02
Tell us what happened. Hospital visits, family emergencies, a burst pipe in the building, a storm that shuts down transit: we look at these case by case and we waive the $50 fee in the vast majority of them. Call (646) 825-3550 rather than emailing if it is happening right now, so someone can act on it before the team is already on your block.
My doorman turned the team away. Do I still pay the fee? 03
If the team could not get in, waited the full 20 minutes and could not reach you or the front desk, the $50 fee applies. But talk to us, because front-desk mix-ups are common and often not your doing at all. Adding clear access instructions to your booking, and putting us on the visitor list where your building requires it, prevents almost all of these. See preparing for your cleaning.
Why is there a pending charge before my cleaning? 04
That is an authorization hold, placed the night before to confirm the card and reserve the funds. It is not a charge. The actual charge for the full amount happens after the cleaning is finished, at the end of that day. If a booking is cancelled, the hold releases on your bank's timeline, usually a few business days.
Can I skip one visit on my recurring plan? 05
Yes, with at least 36 hours notice so no fee applies. Your plan stays active. Just know that skipping stretches the gap between cleanings, and the discount on the next visit follows the real gap: past 7 days it becomes the bi-weekly rate, past 14 the monthly rate, past 28 there is no discount on that visit. Your normal discount returns once you are back on schedule.
Do I lose my plan discount permanently if I reschedule a lot? 06
No. The adjustment is per visit, based on the actual days between cleanings. There is no penalty that carries forward, no contract, and no minimum number of visits. If life gets busy for a month and your gaps stretch, those specific visits price differently and then things go back to normal. Current plan rates are on the pricing page.
Can I change what gets cleaned instead of cancelling? 07
Often that is the better move. Switching between a standard and a deep cleaning, adding an oven or fridge, or dropping a room is a scope change rather than a cancellation, and there is no fee for it. Tell us before the visit so we can allow the right amount of time, since a deep clean needs noticeably longer than a standard one.
Where do these terms sit alongside your other policies? 08
This page governs cancellations, reschedules and no-access visits. Our terms and conditions cover the wider service agreement, the satisfaction guarantee covers re-cleans, and the privacy policy covers how we handle your information. As a New York business we also operate within state consumer protection rules, and the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection publishes useful plain-language guidance on consumer rights.
Ready when you are
Flexible dates. Clear terms.
Pick a service, pick a time, and see your flat price before you confirm. Change it free with 36 hours notice. Serving Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Questions about a specific booking? Call (646) 825-3550.
Lily Maids House Cleaning Service
101 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005
support@lilymaidhousecleaningservices.com
Serving Manhattan · Brooklyn · Queens
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