Rover.com | Pet SittingReviews of rover.com

Unhelpful customer service when sitter didn’t stay as expected

Left my pets for 11 hours when she was booked for 24 hour stays.

We used Rover during the week of Thanksgiving. My MIL stayed with our son and the dogs/cats/reptiles Sat-Wed afternoon, handing off the house to the Rover dog sitter Wednesday afternoon at 2pm. We met V in advance, she seemed nice. She had all 5 star glowing reviews and a Star sitter designation. She is a middle school teacher so I felt she was trustworthy and if she could handle kids, she could handle my dogs. Only weirdness was, she never pet or talked to any of the animals, weird for a professed pet lover. I tested her by offering her my little snake (easiest way to see if someone actually hates snakes and is pretending. She held him easily but not fondly, which was fine enough. I had asked if she needed us to get any food to keep in the house for her but she told me she meal plans and would bring her own food and would not need to eat ours. We agreed she would come Wed 2pm-10pm, Thurs and Fri 9am-10pm. Saturday my MIL was to return at 9am and we were home that night. I let her know we have cameras in the house. We keep the house between 68-73 in the winter because we have reptiles and try to have a stable ambient temperature. My MIL reported V seemed really distracted and didn’t listen to instruction much. They showed her how to adjust the thermostat. When they came home Saturday, the dogs had no water and the heat was on set to 78 degrees, meaning my reptiles would be around a dangerous 90 degrees. When we got home, we started noticing weird things moved around in the house. My son had several shirts removed from hangers and tossed around his room, weird stains on the bathroom floor, like dye. Out of curiosity, I checked the cameras and noticed the dog sitter came Thursday around 10:30am, an hour and a half later than agreed. She left at 7:30pm instead of 10pm. Friday, knowing she had crated my dogs at 7:30pm, she didn’t come back until 10:30am. She left them locked up for 15 hrs, and I found no evidence their water was refilled. She fed them once a day instead of twice. But weirdest is she went through my pantry, fridge, and freezer literally dozens of times and took and/or ate whatever. She made herself a PB&J, looked at the camera, and licked the jelly spoon before putting it in our peanut butter jar, which was returned to the cabinet. My son ate 2 PB&Js before I saw the camera footage BTW. I checked to see if she gave the dogs their meds and she did, so there’s that. I don’t know if she fed the cats but they had no food or water when my son/MIL returned, either. I did not reach out to V directly, I was so livid. I posted a review on Rover before I dug into the videos because I urgently wanted to stop the chance she’d risk other pets like she did mine. After a week of hearing nothing and the review not posting, I reached out to Rover directly to report the situation more emphatically. They let me know there’s a 21 day period before reviews are posted. I pointed out that means they are knowingly letting her sit at other people’s houses with no notice to those clients that there could be an issue. They confirmed this is true. I let them know they need to do something or I’d let everyone know, it’s not just the sitter, who is very young, but their company’s choices to let her continue conflict with their business model and promotion that their sitters are all verified and the feeling of safety they construe. It was a month before an abbreviated review was posted. V went from a 5 star rating to 4.6 and kept her Star Sitter designation. I was offered no refund nor did I receive any further communication or acknowledgement from Rover. In fact they email me regularly to encourage me to rebook with V for my next vacation. I love my pets. Most people do. This girl is NOT a “Star Sitter” nor worthy of a 4.6 rating. Just not enough people have cameras in their houses. I saw the response from Rover. I did put in a formal complaint, I was told it was being investigated. I received a response that my report will be reviewed for safety and care violations. Despite my stating I have videos, I received no further communication after submitting my report except for the invites to rebook Victoria, which obviously would never happen. It took a month for my abbreviated review to be posted and I could not see any evidence she was suspending during investigation. I expressed concern at possible retaliation and was told Rover does not tolerate and retaliation, but that’s completely absent of meaning, since they’re not obviously going to stop her (she had my house key for 3 days).

Rover’s cancellation policy is problematic for last-minute, next-day bookings. I made a reservation late in the evening and canceled early the next morning, less than 10 hours later, after learning the sitter lived in an apartment with no enclosed area for my dog. Most of the 10 hours time was overnight, yet the sitter was allowed to keep half of the fee. While I understand sitters need to manage their schedules, an evening booking for the following morning that is canceled overnight does not realistically create a scheduling hardship. If this had been a reservation made days in advance, a penalty would make sense. In this case, it does not. Bottom line, if the roles were reversed, I would NEVER charge someone under these circumstances. Keeping half the fee in this situation feels unreasonable and unfair. Rover should distinguish between true late cancellations and short-window reversals of last-minute bookings

Horrible I want a refund now

Fui cuidadora en Rover durante bastante tiempo y llegué a ser Star Sitter, con buenas valoraciones y sin incidencias con clientes. Mi cuenta fue bloqueada por compartir mi número de teléfono a través de la app, una infracción que reconozco, pero que ocurrió sin mala fe y sin consecuencias negativas para nadie. Lo más grave no fue la sanción inicial, sino la falta total de humanidad del proceso posterior. No hubo una revisión real del contexto ni una posibilidad efectiva de diálogo o segunda oportunidad, a pesar de mi historial positivo. Además, en mi experiencia, Rover no permite crear nuevas cuentas, incluso cuando se intenta empezar de cero o regularizar la situación, ya que mantienen registros internos que impiden volver a trabajar en la plataforma. Intenté ejercer mis derechos en materia de protección de datos conforme al RGPD, incluyendo solicitudes de eliminación, pero estas fueron denegadas tras un proceso poco transparente y sin una alternativa real para el usuario. Esta experiencia me hizo sentir que los cuidadores no somos tratados como personas, sino como perfiles fácilmente descartables dentro de un sistema automatizado.

They overcharged me for walks. I didn't place and took me an hour to get refunded back. Couldn't do it on the app. Had to call the 1-800 number

I was still talking with Rover Support and waiting for a reply and now my case is closed and I'm asked to review?