(Please note Fetch has taken this very seriously and has changed policies as a result, but this is a cautionary tale worth telling. We're re-posting without full names this time so Yelp won't remove the review. Feel free to contact me for that.)
Guys, be careful about who you let into your home. My husband and I wish we could give zero stars for this one experience we had.
Even if a company says they fully vet their sitters/walkers, we learned the hard way to take the time to run our own check on them to avoid dognapping, pet illness and a trashed home. Also, we'll check that management at the company is smart enough to handle a situation without turning it into an emergency.
The whole story --
My husband and I hired FETCH PET CARE of Los Angeles Westside to arrange for a petsitter to stay in our home and watch over our beloved animal companions while we're out of town. We were impressed by their reviews on Google and Yelp. Their website claims "Fetch Pet Care's experienced sitters are background checked, bonded, and insured pet lovers." They quickly set us up with their sitter/walker named Anthony V (AKA Tony) who outwardly seemed like a good candidate to take good care of our dog & cat. So, we agreed to book him for the 10 days we'd be away.
In the late morning of day 7, our cleaning crew came in for a routine sprucing and they were so shocked by the ill state of the apartment they felt compelled to contact us. They texted us photos of feces and urine left in various rooms, beer cans & liquor bottles filled our recycling bin, piles of garbage spilling onto the floor and other examples of disarray uncharacteristic to us and our pets. They also told us that a woman was in the apartment with the sitter (who had not been permitted by us), and a strange dog that also was not permitted by us.
Alarmed by the situation but thinking it can still be handled rather easily, my husband called Fetch Pet Care to have them address the situation. They told him they would replace the current pet sitter with a more responsible person as quickly and uneventfully as possible. What he didn't know was that the representative from Fetch Pet Care would soon make an irreversible management error that would threaten the security of our dog, cat and home.
The Fetch representative called the sitter first to confront him about the situation over the phone, while he still had our dog with him. We found out later that this confrontation then led the sitter to openly put the blame on the woman who was with him and that the woman quickly became unhinged as a result. They argued and then she suddenly disappeared with our sweet, sensitive dog.
We were scared out of our minds, though, not knowing what was going on with our poor dog but we couldn't do much else but wait. At some point, we were eventually told that the kidnapper was a diagnosed schizophrenic and possibly more unstable than we'd initially imagined. We were worried sick about any possible misstep that could cause a big reaction from this woman. We kept calling the police, the park rangers, the Fetch representative and even the sitter for updates but for many hours none came. A couple hours later, the woman contacted the sitter again and this time she demanded ransom money from him in exchange for our dog's safe return.
Late in the evening, our dog was finally turned over to a representative of Fetch Pet Care. We cut our trip short and returned the very next day. Upon our return we took our dog to the vet for a checkup and though her general heath was okay, she had lost 4lbs in during those 7 days and was slightly anemic. Our cat also looked as if he hadn't been fed in several days but other than that he was fine. Our home was mostly restored by a thorough cleaning & some minor repairs. Still, this never should happen to anyone.
Fetch refunded our money and paid for the veterinary and home repair expenses we incurred. While we are trying to be accepting of this gesture, and the owner of FETCH Santa Monica's apologies, it can't erase this horror of a day or the fact that it never would have happened if only they had managed their human resources issue in a more sensible, secure way. Nor would any of this happened if they had properly vetted this sitter before touting him to all of their clients as an appropriate caregiver.
I warn everyone to stay far away from Anthony V (Tony) and to fully vet your pet sitters and policies of pet service companies they come from. This guy might trash your home, fail to feed your pets, fail to walk your dog regularly, fail to clean the litter box, and expose your furry loved ones to a potential dognapper as well as another animal that hasn't been approved or proven to be in good health. read more