Rover

I hired a sitter on Rover. I left early for a short vacation and by 9PM hadn't heard from them. I tried texting and calling. Nothing. Anything could be wrong - an accident, who knows. But I didn't know if anyone was taking care of my 16 year old dog for the last 14 hours. So I called Rover. They tried to reach the sitter - I think they had trouble but I wasn't sure. I told them all I need to know is if the sitter is there and if my dog is ok. I pleaded with them to go over to my house and check. Rover would have none of it. Instead they sent me an offer for $20 on my next booking and told me they aren't responsible for the sitter. Never have I experienced a company being so inhumane. Mind numbing blind greed, pure stonewalling bastards, who would not do the obvious and responsible thing to make sure a dog and or sitter were OK. I blasted them with profanity, but nothing mattered. Their $20 offer told me they were pure greedy scum. The company has no moral compass and should be trashed with fanfare.

Rover does not care about pets. I had to leave town for a family emergency, and the rover hotline refused to even look for another sitter for a cat that needs daily meds while the owners are in another country with limited cell service. The woman on the emergency line screamed at me repeatedly and finally said I needed to either skip a family member's funeral or neglect the cat and face potential legal repercussions (although she screamed again and said it wasn't her job to know when I asked what they laws were in my state regarding sitting companies and emergencies). Not only is it apprehensible to scream at an employee (albeit, a freelance employee you've never met) who is in a state of emergency, but suggesting I might "just neglect the cat" goes against every single thing a pet sitting organization should stand for. Thankfully, I was able to contact the owner's fiancé who was able to contact his friend so that I could give him the keys on my way to the funeral so the cat could eat/get her meds. Please do not work here or use this service if you have any concern for the safety and health of animals. I have multiple repeat clients with 5 star reviews and I have since messaged every single one of them saying I am leaving Rover for another platform. There's a reason there are so many stories of pets being neglected by rover sitters; clearly the company condones that, and therefore all decent sitters will eventually work elsewhere.

I am from Illinois and have used Rover 2 times in the past and was very happy with the person, Bill, who was my dog/house sitter. To make the story short, while I was in Mexico in March 2019, I called and texted Bill all day and I couldn't get a hold of him. I called Rover and they have no emergency plans for anything like this. Luckily, I called my daughter who lives in the area to go to my house and check to see if Bill had been there. When she arrived, it was obvious that Bill had not showed up. My dogs had been left alone at this time for 38 hours. My daughter took the dogs to her house, Bill never did show up, he never called, he never did anything. Rover tried to handle this, but to no avail. Rover has no emergency plans in place for Rover employees. They didn't have anyone else to help us out. I was lucky that I had family to help with my Cavachon Zoey (1 yr old) and my Pomeranian Gus (11 years old), They could have died. I would never trust or recommend Rover to anyone it is too risky!

I have asked 16 times for my miles for using American Airlines miles (2000)plus 5 miles for every dollar spent. 13 to front end clerks three to elevated clerks, promised three times for a promiosed resolution, that was 2 weeks ago.
DO NOT USE THIS TRASH COMPANY.
I will be contacting the BBB. Attorney General.
Liars and horriblle customer service. Probably people who cant get a job a walmart or the bad lot of ex-cons. DISGUSTING. No phone call back, nor, email, text nothing but lies.
The sitter was awesome, however a week later my baby died.
This company is deceitful, diashonest and liars. STAY AWAY. It will be disputed with my Credit card, the lies are so uneal, you would not believe them. STy away STAY AWAY.

Rover will allow anyone to represent themselves as dog care people on their site and they do nothing when you confront them with the lies and dishonesty of their sitters. I left my dog at home at 8:30 in the morning. The sitter promised to be there by early afternoon. This was a home sitting arrangement. When I hadn't heard from the sitter by 8:30 pm, I sent my daughter to the house to check on our dog. My daughter advised that no one was with the dog and that the dog was distressed to get outside and do her business. Meanwhile, the sitter texts me and tells me she is with the dog and they just came in the house from playing outside. The sitter sent me a picture of the dog by the pool which I guess was supposed to corroborate her text message. I determined that the photo was taken on a previous engagement. If it had not been for my daughter, I would have had to cancel my vacation and return home as I certainly didn't want someone who told me blatant lies to continue staying in my home. I reported all of this to River. Never heard anything as to how they dealt with it, but I looked up the sitter and she was still on the site with a five star rating and my review never made it to the website.

PSA for friends and family on using Rover for pets-

I just got notification that my fact only based review of the experience I had with one of the boarders for Rover is being deleted due to us not actually leaving our dog at the residence. The reason I felt the need to write the review (I promise I have better things to do) was to make sure people were aware of the conditions they might encounter and did praise when praise was due on the prompt communication. The other 60 reviews I read before choosing them (they have 5 stars... shocker) to watch our pup did not mention that they might have up to 8 dogs in addition to their 3 cuties in a 1000sq ft house (in our case my dog would have been the 9th dog there). I think it's rather telling that we chose to not leave our dog at their house after already paying for the stay in full and would have taken all of those factors into consideration before booking. Instead, Rover has decided to delete this information for future customers. It makes me sad I can no longer trust their company since they will just do away with a one star, but honest, and objective review. I know there are plenty of great people who provide a service on there that will be negatively impacted on this companies decision to censor.

The hired Hyten from Rover.com to walk my 3 year old American Stafford Terrier 2 times a day while I was on a business trip for a week. I met with her and walked her through everything. I even left her a $50 tip. She communicated with me every and sent pictures. I returned to Chicago a few hours earlier and let her know to still come and take my dog out, but that I would be home. She rushed to my home and had 1) gotten there, 2) walked him and (3) returned my keys all within 20 minutes. How do I know this? Because I was 20 minutes from home when I called. When I returned home, my apartment was full of urine and poop! My dog does not poop in the house. She did not do the services obviously! I contacted the company. There was nothing that they could do.It has cost me over $1000 to have my rugs and chairs cleaned and my floors cleaned and re-waxed. I will never use Rover.com again and if you use Hyten, be aware that she did not do her job and would not give back my money - not even my tip! Never use ROVER.com!

First, these people on rover are independent contractors. They do not work for rover. They just use rover to promote their business and if simeone books through rover, rover gets a percentage. You need to understand that many of the reviews can easily be faked. The credentials the sitters claim are bogus. They just take an online course so they can add it to their profile to look legit. My neighbor is a sitter on rover. Has a ton of fake reviews. She keeps the pets in a crate on a back porch. Leaves the pets in their own feces and urine. Never once walks them. Has a backyard that is like a junkyard. And had her own dog taken away for neglect. These are the type of people in Rover. Sure there might be some good, honest animal lovers on rover. But many are using rover to make a buck. Rover does not properly vet these people. If u must have a stranger watch ur pet, then go to their house. Check out their backyard. If they dont take care of their house/yard, then they probably arent taking care of ur pet. Dont rely on fake reviews and pictures.

I am deeply disappointed by Rover's lack of accountability, failure to live up their promises and lack of concern regarding my and my dog's safety.
One sitter stopped showing up and when I finally got ahold of her finally informed me without any notice that she was no longer available, period. For over a month I tried to get my keys back and she stopped answering. So this girl has 24/7 unauthorized access to my house and Rover did not care AT ALL. They could have simply comped me fifty dollars to replace the locks, but they called it a property damage issue and stated owners have to pay the first 250 of any property damage. Refused to acknowledge it was a safety issue, not a property damage issue and refused to do anything.
Then a sitter, at a meet and greet, instead of coming into the dog park called my dog into the smaller entrance gate. I thought that was weird but fine, until I realized the outer gate was WIDE OPEN. WTF. Obviously my dog got out and I screamed my head off because my dog has NO RECALL. Thankfully I got him back fairly painlessly but I was very upset and reported it to Rover. Again, they have not done anything and this girl who is so careless, she clearly did not even try to latch the gate, is still walking dogs. It's been 6 weeks and each time I follow up, they send me the same useless language about their privacy policy and state their specialists are doing a "deep dive" into the situation. What a joke. I am deeply disturbed by their callousness and lack of concern. Disgraceful.

Booked a stay for my boy Max a month in advance with Reilly of Lakewood, OH. The dates from June 6th-22nd. Had the meet and greet the week earlier, all went fine and I explained we were going for a 16 day dream European cruise vacation. Confirmed drop off time (4pm) the next day. At 12:47 pm I receive this message I went to the hospital and was admitted last night for a bowel obstruction and will be here until at least Saturday for a colonoscopy ´ That was it! I had also explained to her that we use rover because my 14 yr old senior dog does not do well at all in kennels or shelters. So we were left with 3 hrs to find a sitter in June for 16 days. We ended up kenneling him for 3x the price as they had to move him around different suites according to availability. Also had to get a friend cover 4 of the days adding to the confusion. Contacted rover for them to say they would be happy to cancel and refund the booking! Adding insult to injury they offered 20 bucks towards a replacement stay but that it would not be valid outside of the booking dates. Understand that had I cancelled within a week of the booking i'd of had to pay 50% of the booking fee. Does the sitter have to pay me?! Nope. I can't even leave a review because the booking was cancelled. I received a courtesy call from a supervisor... other than an apology I got nothing. So now... happy to copy and paste this to every review site possible.
BEWARE booking... you are not protected as the boarder. Reilly of Lakewood OH is NOT reliable or responsible for her actions.

I booked a few services due to platform for my puppy. When I pick my dog up, the sitter alerted me that my dog had been scratched in the eye by one of his dogs. His left eyelid was bloodied in the corner. I took my dog to the vet the next morning. I was told that they needed to do a staying to see if the cornea was scratched. Thank God it wasn't. I submitted the documentation to Rover to be reimbursed. They played games for five months: "we didn't receive your documents," "we received your documents and you can expect payment," "we didn't receive your documents," and "we have received your documents, and your claim doesn't qualify." They stated that the reason for denied my claim was that the diagnosis indicated on the vet records was "pinkeye." Why in the world would I go through the trouble of taking my dog to a hospital for an injury under the guise of getting his pinkeye treated? He is under a PetSmart wellness plan; therefore, it any, visits for non-emergency issues are covered under this plan. They did not ask for more information or for me to have my that provide specifics or more information on the visit. Please stay away from Rover because there is no guarantee that your pet will be kept safe for that Rover will cover the bill. Please use this company at your own risk, because from what I'm reading, I'm happy to have my puppy back alive.

I've had nothing but problems with them for the last year. I attempted to book someone who I felt was less than ideal for my pup so the booking was never finalized. She showed up at my door anyway and was angry when I turned her away! My last walker tried to tell me walks "increased to $40 around the holidays per Rover's policy". Rover said there's no such policy, if you start out at a certain rate through a walker, it stays at that rate, no matter what. Then I booked her for 2 walks on a day but got home early and I gave her the option of going through the evening walk or postponing it to another day. She declined both stating that she wanted to "save me money." And charged me a cancellation fee. Again she claimed this was per Rover which again they denied stating that the walker put in for the charge. Then one Saturday I worked a long day in which I required 2 walks for my pup and was charged 4 times. She submitted twice for the 2 walks that week. It took a lot of hair pulling to get my money back and I still think I was ripped off. But I talked to a rude as hell customer rep who threatened to hang up on me 3 times when I asked to speak to someone else. These calls are supposedly recorded and I can only hope that he was reprimanded! Then this walker tried to charge me twice for our weekly walk by saying, "I don't see it submitted this week. You'll probably have to go in and accept it again." This was for a Friday walk and she texted me Thursday evening at 5:30. I was charged that Monday for it. When I told her this, she said, "Oh, it just went through, now I see it." Early on in our relationship, she told me, "You don't have to go through the app. You can pay me cash and avoid the service charge. I have my own insurance." I'll text it to you". I never received any insurance information. My advice is to avoid this service at all costs!

My dog was killed by a Rover petsitter. The petsitter was negligent and had lack of empathy and care for my pet and family. Rover policy is a cover up to negligence

I will never and I mean never use this service again. I hired a sitter from this so called service and the sitter I hired was supposedly a 5 star sitter. I went out of town to attend a funeral and my trip was cut short because at 6:00 in morning I had to rush home because this negligent sitter did not close the door to my house allowing one of my dogs to escape to my neighbors house. When she tried to do the neighborly thing and return him walking over to my house seeing my front door wide open she yelled out to me and was met by my other dog who went into protect mode and bit her until she retreated back to her home. Meanwhile this sitter is upstairs sleeping absolutely clueless to what was going on. Even after she heard the commotion and eventually came to see what was going on with the dogs she was supposed to be watching my neighbor (still being ran off by my dog by the way) had to scream at this sitter to help her get my dog away. Then to top it all off my dog gets taken by the city for quarantine and rover suspends my account. If I could give this services a zero I absolutely would I have filed a complaint with the BBB about this company. An absolute joke

We hired a dog sitter with Rover, paid for 3 days and on the 3rd day she just dumped my dogs because she said she had things to do and wouldn't stay with them no more. We had to just end our trip and come home immediately to find them starving and no water. Contacted Rover they didn't do anything, no refund, didn't let us write a review for her and she still there on their website taking people's money. Worst dog sitter, nasty experience, worst company. DO NOT WAIS YOUR MONEY WITH ROVER

These dog sitting services are the worst honestly… I had an issue with TrustedHousesitters where the sitter simply DID NOT SHOW UP. So I had to find a last minute sitter on Rover. She seemed nice and agreed to the last minute sit. I told her on the phone and in person (twice) that my dogs have never slept alone and she needed to stay at the house overnight. She said "ok, that's fine". I told her she did not have to clean up much and she could enjoy the pool, use the washing machine - to which she replied: I don't think I'll need that. I said "ok". We left. The first night she left at 10:30pm & came back at around 3:30am. The second night she left the backyard door open and my bigger dog out until 1:30am - when we specifically told her NOT TO DO THAT because of the possums that may come by. Third night she left at 11:00pm & came back at 5:00am. On the 4th day she brought "a friend" and they had a little pool party. They smoked near my dogs & she denied. She left my dog who is in heat on my white couch. When I told Rover they told me I needed to talk to her first & request her for a refund. After her taking back on me and saying a lot of lies and just reiterating she left for only a few hours & that she had an emergency (never mentioned it to us) and that her friend came over because there were spirits in my house. After all that, Rover is giving me "a one time only" refund of $100.00. Out of the $600.00 I had to pay. I will never use this website again.

I have a pet sitter that I normally use who was unable to board my dogs for a short trip out of town because she has a newborn and is understandably taking some time off from boarding. So I decided to try Rover to find someone who can board my dogs. I made a reservation through the site with someone who lived very close to me, had a meet and greet with her to give her a chance to meet the dogs and have them meet and interact with her kids, and get everything squared away. That went fine, so I figured we were good. Wrong. A few days later, (literally a week before my trip) I get a message from the sitter saying "something came up" and she can't board my dogs. So now I had to scramble to find a place to board them, during spring break no less. Luckily, I found a place. But I'm highly peeved that the Rover contractor can just cancel so close to the reservation and not be held accountable in any way. If I hadn't been able to find another place I would have literally had to cancel my trip, as I cannot bring three dogs with me. And I wasn't given the opportunity to review the sitter at all, since the reservation was canceled. Sorry, but if they canceled the reservation at the last minute, I should be able to review them to warn others that they might receive the same treatment. Needless to say, I am not going to use Rover again. Not impressed

My fiancé and I did not want to leave our 3 month old puppy at home alone for 12 hours, so we decided to use to app Rover. We veted the guy and looked at his 70 reviews, all stating how amazing he was. Throughout the day we only received one photo of our baby girl and it appeared she was chained up to the porch with a leash. Two hours later we received a txt advising we needed to call him. My fiancé called
Him and he advised our puppy was dead.

The sitter advised us he took another dog on a walk leaving our puppy at his house alone. When he got back from the walk he said he found her with her head stuck in the fence and she was dead. One I believe this sitter is lying. Two when we dropped her off and in his bio it advised he would never leave her alone.

When I picked our girl up she was dead. The sitter did not try to bring her to a vet. The sitter would not advise on how long he was gone from the house. Rover was contacted and the best they could do for us was suspend him from the site. The reason I am writing this is to warn dog parents and advise against using this app. The people at Rover showed little remorse to our lose.

I will never use Rover again. We had planned a Disney World vacation for over a year for our entire family so we started looking for someone to take care of our dogs a couple of months before we were supposed to leave for the week long vacation. First we had a hard time even finding someone available for the week we were going to be gone but finally we had Renne who had accepted the job to watch our 3 small dogs. We wanted someone to stay in the house with them as 2 are rescued dogs and have anxiety and we thought it would be easier for our dogs if they stayed in their own environment. Everything was set to go a month before we were supposed to leave and then the day before we were supposed to leave to catch our flight for a vacation we've been planning for a year she text me and canceled. We now had no one to take care of our dogs and we were supposed to catch our flight the next day. She didn't help us find someone to replace her, rover did nothing to remedy the situation. Thank God we did get a refund but I think that's because she never came over. We had to scramble to find someone else to take care of our dogs and after reading some of these reviews thank god we did!

This sitter made two attempts for me to contact him outside of River. The first attempt I ignored and the second attempt I agreed upon after he changed his pricing. I had to contact him over and over again to see if he was even there with my dogs. No updates were given. We have a puppy cam which thankfully captured how he really treated our dogs. The second day we were out of town I reached out to him to see if he was at our home and informed me that his tired had blown. This meant he had not been to my house in 8 hours. We booked him for house/dog sitting.

More Info below of what we sent him/what happened…

1. You did not go by the schedule we provided and agreed upon. Instead you came and went as you pleased without updating us of your arrival unless I messaged you first.
2. Yes the pup cam did work and I am home looking at the footage of you using my husbands game system without permission, going into our bedroom without permission, picking baby doll up backwards and basically dropping her when she wanted to get down.
3. The times you said you were there with them you were not.
4. We had to drive 9 hours back home rushed because you did not provide a service even prior to your tire supposedly blowing.
5. You did not take Ben for walks and you did not give them treats (we were very surprised at the unopened bag of carrots left for them in the fridge).

We would definitely like the full refund we agreed upon.

Even though we cannot provide a review on your account because you persuaded us to book outside of the app, something I had second thoughts about when you suggested, we will be contacting Rover and reviewing your service on the entire Rover app.

Hopefully you provide EXCEPTIONAL service to the next family who hires you and the 5 stars you consistently received never had to see how you truly treat their four legged family members.

Only three cans of dog food in trash, I was gone a week. Paid a pretty penny. Won't use any stranger again.

Before the covid-HOAX outbreak paid over $300 to take care of my dogs for 1 night and 2 10 hour days... No-over nites... Talked to brenda, the sitter in vegas, many times and rover gives a BOGUS phone number to operate under... Vegas shut down, told brenda I want my money back,,, she never paypaled me it back and rover would never even respond... My Air BNB was no problem! Rover is a COMPLETE SCAM... brenda even said shed be at the gym both mornings for an hour or 2 and leaving my dogs UNATTENDED! WILL NEVER do anything with F-in rover as they ARE DOG$#*!!

Rover markets itself as a competent animal focussed business. The truth is it treats those who care for peoples animals as expendable poorly educated ignorant low grade workers. They make no distinction between inexperienced young people and those with decades of experience in other industries who may be retired or working part time in this industry because they love pets, those of low intelligence and varied work experience and those who are arguably only doing this type of work because they perceive it to be easy work or can't get better paid regular work in other industries etc. Their staff have very little actual experience themselves in the business they operate but think they are experts because they scrape the internet of per related articles and present them as scientific fact or best practice. This is then used to "educate" sitters and deceive pet owners into thinking they are an expert organisation. They are happy to break laws, such as those that require people doing this work to be licenced in their particular jurisdiction and they do almost nothing to facilitate the collection of quality data from pet owners such as vaccination records. Operating an internet based business they do almost no vetting of their Sitters and instead rely on complaints and other parameters (eg response times) to grade sitters. You will find some excellent well qualified and experienced people on Rover but they are there despite the quality of Rover and its policies not because of them. You will also find many people with very little to no experience or concern for your pet beyond trying to make a quick buck. People who will cancel on you at the last minute and use simple methods to deceive you into thinking they are doing a good job. You will get nowhere trying to escalate an issue and be met with petty punishments if you challenge their decisions or try to speak to senior decision makers who you hope have more business sense and knowledge than the people you are forced to deal with. 2 years as Rover Dog Sitter in South East UK