Rover

As a Rover sitter myself, whenever I speak with potential clients I always let them know what environment we have at home - I have one dog, I am not boarding or watching any other dogs, etc.

I booked with a woman who did not let me know she had any dogs. Her profile said no pets and she did not inform me she was hosting other dogs.

Though my dog gets along with other dogs - I am only comfortable with booking a reservation with an owner who has a dog because she would be able to watch her own and mine. I am not comfortable with several other strangers' dogs in the home with only one supervisor.

The day of the booking, a few hours before drop off, I inform the sitter I'll let her know when I'm on my way. She adds "I'm boarding two other dogs, they're playful and friendly."

She doesn't give more information until I ask, and she responds, "they've just been chilling all day."

1. She should have let me know before I even booked.
2. She did not give a thorough response.

I contacted the manager of Rover and she word for word said to me, "You have a responsibility to ask the sitter if she has any other dogs."
Essentially blaming me for not asking - or rather, for trusting what the sitter listed on her profile: "has no pets."

It is common courtesy and should be a standard to let the potential client know what environment they are stepping into.

The manager refused to refund me and blamed me for not asking if she had any dogs - even though her profile listed she had no dogs, and doesn't even state that she hosts multiple dogs.

I contacted another woman to re-book a reservation, and the first thing she asked me was, "Is your dog ok to play with other doggies? We are boarding one at the moment."
THAT'S how you communicate. As a sitter myself, I can 100% say it is the sitter's responsibility to let other owners know what environment they have at home. It's common sense.

OWNERS, BEWARE. There are responsible dog sitters on Rover but the system will not protect them - they only care about making money. The manger is disgusting and blamed the customer for not asking the sitter to disclose something she would have shared right off the bat.

I used Rover for the first time to hire a sitter for 5 days the first week of March because my boyfriend and I were going out of town.

We have a security camera in our home, which the sitter was made aware of before the booking. The sitter did not show up for over 30 hours from the time the booking was supposed to start and when she did show up, the footage shows that she stumbled to our bedroom and passed out in our bed for 4 hours and didn't even feed them. She unplugged the security camera after waking up, at which point it had almost been 2 days since our poor pets had been fed or walked. I don't know what happened the remaining days because she didn't plug the camera back in until the end of the booking as she was leaving our apartment for the last time.

I contacted Rover by phone immediately after seeing what happened (which was about 4 days after the end of the booking and I had reviewed the camera to find something entirely unrelated that I misplaced). Rover assured me that the issue would be "escalated" and that I'd be contacted the following business day by someone in the "Resolution Center". 5 days went by and I never heard back, so I submitted a new support request online. I got an auto-generated email saying I'd be followed up with, nothing again. I called, e-mailed, submitted support tickets a total of EIGHT times over a period of almost 2 months. Finally, today, one person finally e-mailed me with news that I am getting a complete refund. Rover apologized for my experience by noting the lack of communication as an "oversight".

After reading reviews to find a place to post this one, I have now seen that this company is absolute garbage. Dogs have died multiple times while under the care of their sitters, other sitters have not shown up to their bookings at all. DO NOT trust this company with the care of your pets. Absolute garbage.

Listen, guys, I have the PERFECT scam for everyone that you CANNOT get in any legal trouble for! Create an account on Rover saying you will pet sit or house sit and don't do anything and still get paid! It's amazing and you can say you're available to anyone and everyone that asks you to watch their pet. Once it is booked, you can sit on your couch and pretend to go to their house, maybe stop by and eat some food in their fridge, scour the house to see if there is anything worth taking or throw some parties if they have a nice home! You can even take other pets that you are supposed to be watching to their house and store them there so you don't have to bring them to your house. Let them pee all over their furniture, destroy their belongings and walk away free and clear (and with money in your pocket)! IF someone tries to file a complaint, don't worry, Rover has your back! Rover will blame the damages on their pet and say the home owner was the one who took the belongings. You not only get paid, have to do nothing but you also have a team of people backing you while you do it! This is the scam of the century and if you don't believe you can get away with... well, about anything... while pretending to be a sitter on Rover, just read all the reviews of the pet owners that have used this service. Don't forget to invite me to the house parties you get to throw at these homes!

** this is obviously a tongue and cheek review showing how absurd it is that so many people have had negative experiences and received no compensation while those who are Rover "sitters" suffer no consequences for failing to do their job. I do not condone any of the above behavior

Rover took $36 of my earnings… Should be enough said. Makes the work I did not worth it. The money I got was already low.

I joined Rover in 2015. My clients have NEVER had an issue with my service, until I met Karen. With over 100 messages, videos, and pictures she still was not happy. She had a "welfare" check on me when I didn't respond to a text at 11:30pm (I was asleep like most people in the world) apparently I was not supposed to sleep. I was awoken by two police officers asking if I was okay. They left shortly after speaking to myself and my husband who also showed up. She knew I was there because she had been watching me sleep somehow. She texted me every hour asking for updates and could not be pleased with anything. Finally after her second attempt at calling the police (again at night) I called rovers emergency support line. I told them I didn't feel comfortable and I asked if I could leave and cancel the booking. I was told that YES I was able to leave with no consequences and they would find her a backup. I went home (I lived 4 miles away) and I called Rover again, concerned about the two dogs that needed to go out. I offered to drop in for free because I wanted her pets to be okay. At that point I had called river a third time to express my concern for her pets and was told that it would be super helpful to do so. I contacted Karen and asked if she wanted me to let her pups out because a backup sitter had not been found. She replied with NO. So I didn't. I should have known there would be issues, when we had the M&G she had told me a previous sitter had been terrible, she didn't show up, no communication etc, the very same "issues" she claimed I was exhibiting. I just got back from a vacation, ready to continue pet sitting to find my account was terminated with no chance of appeal because of safety concerns. I'm contacting a lawyer but if you use Rover to pet sit just know they will not protect you as a sitter or even an owner. They protect one thing and one thing only. The all mighty $. Be warned.

3 stars because in general it's a really good site it's very easy to manage and decent to use the calendar for booking people but it's very very confusing on both the user and the clients and for payment and how many hours are there and if they need an overnight sit or not.

Very hard to find enough work to make study part-time income even if you live in a super dense area like I do I'm lucky to make 600 a month.
You have to give the clients your personal number and talk through there or else just wait until you meet up with them and strike a deal where you just do a few sits for them but then they pay you in venmo to avoid Rover taking 20% of your hard-earned money. RIDICULOUS!
I just got doing a week-long sit for the super obnoxious whiny needy hyperactive dogs( not every experience by any means) cleaning out numerous pets cages all freaking week long and they only paid me a beyond measly $290 Soooo pissed off but if you raise your rates any then nobody will pick you because of the competition so you're kind of screwed either way and you're relying on them paying you through venmo for extra days or getting a huge tip which you obviously won't expect from anyone. A lot easier just to get insurance and start your own pet sitting company

A lot of people think they're animals are just the most wonderful things in their most rotten spoiled hard to deal with pets lol. I would not recommend driving far for a week long stay where you're stuck in their house is horribly boring and you definitely need to make sure you can leave for a couple hours during the day at minimum. But then can you meet the nicest sweetest pups ever and you miss hanging out with them so it evens out sometimes

First off I have used Rover for several years and have had a couple of good sitters but mostly problems. It takes a long search to cut through all the bad ones. They don't vet there sitters and they believe anything they tell them even if they are blatant lies. We hired a sitter for just a 24 hour period that was suppose to arrive by 10am. We were gone and i kept trying to get hold of her many ways and she wouldn't respond. By 1pm I was concerned. Rover couldn't get hold of her either. Eventually i get a text from her that her daughter had her phone and didn't know i had contacted her. When i stated what that had to do with her being there by 10 am she then changed her story and said she had a fender bender and her daughter had her phone. Discovered that was a complete lie. On top of this. I had already spoke to Rover and they stated they would get someone else to come out. In the meantime they talked to the sitter and said they cancelled the sit because she was in a accident and is was to late to help me. One minute they want to help the next they throw their hands up and say... oh Well. Nothing we can do. This is the second time this has happened with one of their sitter and they cover for them and the customer is stuck with animals at home with no one to help. If you can avoid using them please do. There are to many inconsistencies with this company and their customer service is the worse I have ever dealt with.

I had a friend that experienced racism from one of their employees. I submitted a complaint but never heard anything back.

Set up a meet & greet to see if I wanted to use this service - "sitter" did not call or show. Good to find out before I REALLY needed them or in case I was not local on a vacation.

The first time I booked the dog watcher cancelled on me last minute. Then I found someone else, I had her come over before we went on vacation. She seemed like a good fit so we booked with her. While we were gone she went through our cabinets and broke one of my dishes. It was a little annoying, but not the end of the world. Accidents happen.
A few months later is where the real issue happened. We booked a vacation and asked the same dog walker to watch our dogs. We have security cameras in our house and she was fully aware, as we disclosed this to her and wanted to make sure she was comfortable and she said she was. We noticed that she was gone for very long periods of time and then one night we got an alert on our phone at 3 in the morning and she decided to bring a guy to our house to spend the night. This was very concerning as she never asked us and we have no idea who this person is. He hasn't gone through a background check or anything and who knows if she just met him that night. We didn't text her about this when we were gone because we were worried of retaliation when she is in our home with our pets. The next day she texts me that she's sorry because she tried washing our guest towels but she bleached them and ruined them... why is she bleaching guest towels? She never asked to use our washer and she's never washed anything in the past so I'm grossed out as to why she's bleaching our dark GRAY towels the day after a guy stays over. I was very annoyed and waited until we got back too let Rover know. They did NOTHING and took no accountability. I haven't used them since and never will. Terrible.

I have been a Rover client and sitter for several years. A new client of mine left a slanderous review. Our message exchange proved that her review was defamatory (i. E., that she made a false statement damaging to my reputation), so I reached out to Rover to ask them to review the messages against her claims, and consider removing the review. They refused to remove the review stating that it was the client's "perspective." I asked them whether they actually read the messages, believing that if they had, they could not allow the slanderous review to remain posted on my profile. Rover said they had, and that the messages correlated with her claims. I was truly shocked -- how could they deny what is in writing? I sent screen shots of the messages to Rover. I asked them to please address each of my client's claims in detail and show how they were substantiated by the messages (more importantly, her claims not only could not be proven, which would be different -- that would be a "perspective" -- but her claims were wholly disproven by the messages). Rover sent one last response that said they would not revisit the subject and closed the request.

The most damning claim that the client made was that she did not hear from me for over 48 hours after she dropped off her dog. I've attached a screenshot showing that I reached out to her the day after his first night at my home (he was dropped off at night, so this was approximately 16 hours later during his first afternoon with me). I actually only heard from the owner three days after drop-off. Despite her lack of communication (which is fine; she is the client), I continued to send regular updates (again, this is substantiated by the messages).

Has anyone else experienced something similar? Given all of the horrible news stories about negligent / abusive Rover sitters and Rover's completely unethical response, it seems to me that they are focusing their efforts to be better in the wrong place (by insisting to keep slanderous reviews posted).

Dog killers. A dog was killed under rover's care and they did not care to answer for their actions. Continues business as usual

My first and last time using Rover. I am in complete shock of their lack of intelligence, common sense, and zero customer service. Our experience with our sitter was a nightmare, but I won't even get into that. I called the day our booking ended because a ROVER representative told me to call back to make sure the person that referred me got her $20 credit. Long story short, the person that referred me sent me a link to the person she uses. They were not available, so they sent me a link to someone else who was not available, this happened about 4 times and finally I just picked someone. Now Rover is giving me a problem because it was not booked through their link? I spoke with a ROVER representative the date I booked, that told me they noted my chart and just call back when my booking was over and they would give my friend her $20 credit. Now that is all a lie and now I spoke with 2 incompetent employees that sound like the call is being sent out of the country and are robots. They both interrupted me talked over me and just kept repeatedly talking about the link. Like a script. I asked them is it worth $20 to ROVER to receive a bad review? And to lose multiple customers? No response, Be assured I will never use ROVER again, nor will my friend that referred me. She used to use ROVER monthly. I see/talk to about 20 patients a day, I will make sure they know about my experience and never even think of using ROVER. I think it is extremely sad and pathetic your company is run so poorly. It is not even about the money. Hopefully, one day you will comprehend what you are doing wrong, and if not I will make sure to let the world know.

I had 3 experiences with rover and each one was terrible. I'm not sure what their requirements are to be listed on their site but 3 out of 3 have been failures.

Experience #1: I'm 700 miles away. There's a major snowstorm. My dog sitter tells me she can't stay she has the leave. She leaves my dogs alone. I had to rely on neighbors who were practically strangers to take care of the dogs until I could get home 3 days later. In addition, this pet sitter is recruiting for her own pet sitting business. She recommended that we do not go through rover and I go direct with her.

Experience #2: It had a sitter tell me she's available. We had a meet and greet. She tells me she is excited to watch my dogs. She gives me a price sends me an invoice I pay it. Then tells me she wants more money. Since my trip was 2 days away I reluctantly agreed. The next day she cancels and tells me she can't do the gig. So I have one day to find a replacement dog sitter. Rover did contact me to see how they could help. I gave them my info and I never heard back from them.

Experience #3: This is part 2 of the experience listed above in number 2. So with one day left before I leave on an unexpected business trip I have a commitment from another dog sitter who said she would be available to sit for my dogs. And again, she cancels.

Fortunately after my 2 experiences I spoke with the local pet store who gave me the name of a pet sitter and I scheduled with her and everything went smooth. Plus, the pet sitter through the pet store was about a quarter of the price. Plus she was mature. She works for a vet and she was reliable.

So far my experiences with rover pet sitters is they are not responsible. I will NOT use their service again.

In my wildest dreams I could not comprehend leaving dogs unattended When the honor is hundreds of miles away or canceling at the last minute. I guess I have different work ethics than some look f these rover sitters.

Very unprofessional and whatever rover claims their guarantees are they don't deliver.

I have used Rover several times to board my dogs, and generally, the experiences have been good. The sitters have always been good to my dogs and one time my dog actually seemed depressed because he did have his friends to play with when he came home. But here's the problem: for most of the sitters, this is not their full-time gig and sometimes life happens. I had scheduled a sitter for an upcoming trip. Two nights before I was scheduled to leave, I received a text that one of the sitters had been hospitalized and needed to cancel. While I do not place any blame on them as this was no fault of their own, I was left in a huge lurch to try to find another sitter at the last minute as there is no contingency for an issue like this. I tried 3 different sitters - one never responded and another responded several hours later to say that he was booked in spite of the fact that his calendar said that he was available. The third option did respond and said that he would be available. He asked if we should meet first or go ahead with the booking. Since this was an emergency, I said we can forego the meet-up and book. After that, I never hear back from him. I sent a follow-up text the next day to verify that we were still on schedule, but nothing. I became desperate and started calling around to kennels, which were all booked. Fortunately, a local vet took pity on my situation. They had an extra-large kennel normally reserved for very large or multiple dogs available and they let me board him there. Just after I had done this, the sitter who had said he would board my dog said (and I quote) "I won't be able to watch him anymore, the wife said no :/" . Wow. I don't even know what to say to that. Bottom line, for most of these people this is not their primary source of income, so there will be a lack of professionalism. As well, if your booking is canceled, you are left to your own devices. You are better off boarding with a professional so that you know your reservations will be upheld and that your dog is being attended to.