Every facility contract looks the same in the first month. The staff are new, keen and on time; the vendor's owner personally drops by. The differences only show up around month three, when the novelty wears off and you find out what you actually bought. The trouble is that by then you have signed.
You can catch most of it earlier - in the first meeting - if you ask the right things and watch how they answer.
1. Who exactly will be on my floor, and are they verified?
Not the company. The people. Ask whether staff are police-verified, whether they are on the vendor's own payroll or sub-contracted, and what happens to your cover when someone calls in sick. A vendor who fumbles this question is telling you their delivery is improvised.
2. Who is my single point of contact, and what happens at 9pm?
There is a name attached to your account, and there is the number you call when a pipe bursts on a Saturday. Find out if they are the same person, and how far the second one is from the ground. Escalation that runs through three call-centre layers is escalation that does not work.
3. Show me a site you run that looks like mine.
Not a testimonial - a reference you can actually call, ideally a business your size in your city. The gap between "we serve enterprises pan-India" and "here is the number of a facility manager who will vouch for us" is where a lot of vendors quietly live.
4. What is genuinely included, and what becomes a "small extra"?
Read the scope like a lawyer. The classic trap is a low headline rate where consumables, machines, deep cleans and holiday cover all arrive later as add-ons. A slightly higher all-in number usually beats a low number with a long tail of extras. Ask them to price a realistic month, not a brochure month.
5. How will I know it is actually being done?
Attendance registers, quality checklists, a monthly report - or a shrug? You cannot manage what you cannot see, and a vendor confident in their delivery will happily show you how they prove it. Vagueness here is a forecast.
6. What is your notice period, and can I leave if you underdeliver?
Look hard at the exit before you enjoy the entrance. A fair contract lets you leave on reasonable notice if standards slip. A contract that locks you in for a year with no performance clause is protecting the vendor from you, which tells you what they expect to need protecting from.
7. What happens when I add a branch?
If you are growing, your facility partner has to grow with you without a fresh negotiation each time. Ask how a new city gets onboarded, how fast, and whether it lands on the same contract and invoice - or becomes a whole new headache.
This is, quietly, the case for a managed platform. On MyOfficeFix the answers to most of these are structural: verified vendors, one accountable point of contact, a full request-and-quotation trail you can see, and a new branch that joins the same dashboard and the same invoice the day you add it.