Singapore Expats

Morning rant... My wife is hiring maids for her mother. We just found out yesterday that the new Indonesian maid stole quite a hefty chunk of our wedding money.
What's frustrating:
1) the family is Malay, not Chinese, treat the maid very well, she has a lot of free time,
2) the maid did not pay any agency fee, so she was in much better position than other maids,
3) we used the maid for our house once a week, so we were paying her additional money as gratitude (she didn't work in mother-in-law's house on that day anyway), so this puts her even in better position than some other maids are in.

To extent that's mother-in-law's fault - keeping money in easy-to-reach place, but it doesn't justify the maid. The maid was enjoying her stay with us so much, that she even bought a ring in TAKKA jewellery (we were wondering where did she get it from), at the same time transferring the rest to Indonesia through Western Union.

And she started stealing already on the 1st month with us. 30 yo, not that young - I'm surprised abt her moral values. Now we have to go to police (my wife is advocating "confronting" the maid ourselves 1st, I'm against it).

Silly, but I wonder is there any way to get back at least some of our money if she still has it on her account in Indonesia? Not only we lost that, we lost the maid and we will have to fork out another 3 K SGD to get a new one without guarantees...

Here goes most likely our end-of-year trip... But the maid "earned" over a half a year of her agreed-upon salary in just a bit more than a month - lucky maid!

Sergei82 wrote: I wonder is there any way to get back at least some of our money if she still has it on her account in Indonesia?

Sorry about your situation, it definitely sucks. I always try to put anything more than $100-200 into the bank to hopefully avoid just this situation.

About your wonder, no, you're 99.999% screwed. You'd have to convince Indonesian courts to freeze that money. Besides that, if it is actually Western Union as you said (and not Pay4home, or DBS/Local bank remittance), it didn't go into a bank account. Someone picked that money up cash at the local 7-11 or equivalent.. It's gone.

Sadly, now I have a look at the whole "maid thing" from Singaporean point of view, and understand many aspects of what is that attitude towards maids in Singapore stemming from.

And if we ever have a kid, we need a maid anyway - no nannies in Singapore (at least we don't know about such thing), stopping to work seems to be not a noption for us.

Buy a $200 safe from home fix. Keep your cash and valuable jewellery in it.

PNGMK wrote:Buy a $200 safe from home fix. Keep your cash and valuable jewellery in it.

And some small cameras. You don't need to cover the house, just your private bedroom and the front door (To see if she's bringing in her bangla bf! ).

Btw, that is not the 1st case of maid stealing in the family. A few years back the mother-in-law did not take away the maid's passport (some may consider taking it away to be a human rights violation), ending up losing a lot of money and jewellery (some pieces inherited from generations before) and maid running away to Malaysia and back to her Indonesia (after that police lost her track).

Sergei82 wrote:And if we ever have a kid, we need a maid anyway - no nannies in Singapore (at least we don't know about such thing), stopping to work seems to be not a noption for us.

There are. The problem is they, on average, provide only slightly better quality comparing to the living in maids but you pay at least 2-3x more for their services. Still, any local help has some strong points comparing to the l-in maids from overseas, especially from directly neighboring countries.

We had a coming cleaner once per 2 weeks - local SGrean woman (works in MRT, part-time working as cleaner) - we used her to do general cleaning of our house for the same fee that we added to the mother-in-law's maid's salary. Not a single issue with her, she even looked after our cat when we were out for a few weeks. Looks like, we need to contact her again.

We are extremely lucky to have a good local nanny and can only say positive things about her. The best would be to find one through the word of mouth from other expat families but still a lot of luck is needed - a friend of mine just failed this exercise and had to resort to a l-in maid.
Our, was a part time cleaner before and she never tried to hide this. What is needed is to have somebody honest, with right attitude and some experience with kids (for example having her own kids).

That really sucks sorry for what happened to you.

Many of you teased me mercilessly when I told you my wife wanted to bring across her best friend to be our maid. Six months on I can say it is working perfectly and the best decision we ever made. Totally reliable, 100% honest, really hard worker.

However, as was mentioned above we do have a safe in the apartment which I think is a good idea for anyone hosting a stranger in their home.

Sergie, Our maids cousin might be looking to move she is having a rough time working for a Chinese family. PM me if interested.

Steve1960 wrote:Many of you teased me mercilessly when I told you my wife wanted to bring across her best friend to be our maid..

For completely different trust reasons...

...completely different reasons.

nakatago wrote:

Steve1960 wrote:Many of you teased me mercilessly when I told you my wife wanted to bring across her best friend to be our maid..

For completely different trust reasons...

...completely different reasons.

hahaha yes I know and I can confirm everyone has remained in their designated beds

Steve1960 wrote:

nakatago wrote:

Steve1960 wrote:Many of you teased me mercilessly when I told you my wife wanted to bring across her best friend to be our maid..

For completely different trust reasons...

...completely different reasons.

hahaha yes I know and I can confirm everyone has remained in their designated beds

I'm still hopeful there will be a good story or two in the future...

bgd wrote:
I'm still hopeful there will be a good story or two in the future...

Don't hold your breath!

Sergei82 wrote: 2) the maid did not pay any agency fee, so she was in much better position than other maids,
3) we used the maid for our house once a week, so we were paying her additional money as gratitude (she didn't work in mother-in-law's house on that day anyway), so this puts her even in better position than some other maids are in.

Bad news as I believe it is illegal to pay her (or even if unpaid) for her to clean your place if she is the maid of another person.
Someone I know a few years ago hired a part time maid through an agency, then hired her directly. I am unaware of how they got caught, but my acquaintance was fined around $8,000 for breaching employment laws as the maid was illegal.

Hypothetically, when my part time maid was caught stealing I waved a prior police report for theft in front of her and told her I wanted everything back that day or I was giving her name to the police. We got back a $4000 bracelet but cash, gift vouchers and other items were gone for good. My 12yo lost all her savings. Having been burgled earlier meant the police report was an extra scare but in reality, hypothetically, I would have never been able to go to the police.

Will tell you more details if I see you IRL.