It indirectly was a feature. Instead of always going through HomeJoy customers would start going directly to the cleaners cutting HomeJoy out completely. This was on top of HomeJoy offering coupons that made the service so cheap they would lose money until the customer stopped going through them and directly through the cleaner.

Sorry, what I meant was, with the previous implementation of Homejoy, could you get the same person every time?

I realize their issue was people just went around Homejoy and paid the cleaner directly. I'm wondering if people did this because they liked the work the person did and wanted them back but Homejoy didn't offer this feature.

I may have been a bit facetious with my response previously but if I remember correctly HomeJoy offered that. Though it may be irrelevant whether HomeJoy offered the feature or not; if you're interacting with a person directly and you have the opportunity to continue working with them and it would be better financially for both of you (no HomeJoy cut for the cleaner and likely a lower price for you) then it's a bit inevitable. That was one of the issues HomeJoy ran into.

Perhaps HomeAglow is structured differently? Their website doesn't say.

I can understand why customers skirted Homejoy, and I would likely do the same. I asked my original question because I had wondered if that was there attempt at solving a pain point. Perhaps they lost customers not because they wanted to save $20, but because they wanted that same cleaner back and Homejoy didn't offer that option. So the only solution was to talk directly to the cleaner and cut the middle man. However it sounds like the above might not be true and people truly just wanted to save $20 and the process of booking and paying the cleaner isn't a lot of work (text them, set up time, pay using square/cheque/cash).