We've been on the hunt for a new pet sitter ever since Sitter 4 Paws stopped accepting clients who have insulin needs. We were interviewing a few different sitters in the area to see who was most likely to fit our needs/made us most comfortable and so I reached out to LA pet sitting for a consultation. It took them a few days to get back to me, but eventually Brooke did and sent me a bunch of new client forms to fill which I did thinking that they were mostly for information gathering purposes/so that the sitter could come prepared with questions. She also told me that she would be in touch the following day with an invoice for the service. Everything went fine with the visit and I thought the sitter was nice; however afterwards I didn't hear back from Brooke and since it took her a minute to get to me in the beginning as well I figured I may as well reach out asking for a quote. She promptly sent me one requesting that I respond stating, and this is verbatim, "Please note that we cannot finalize this reservation until we hear back from you."
I did not respond as the quote was higher than I'd expected (not their fault as their prices are well outlined, I just didn't add things up right I guess) and if I'm honest it kind of irked me how it took them a while to get back to all my correspondences when other candidates were much faster, cheaper and made me feel a lot safer with leaving my boys in their care. I thought that would be the end of it; but four days later Brooke sends me an invoice for service for the dates we had discussed in the new client forms. I thought that was odd, but it was the holiday season and I was busy so I figured it was an oversight on their part and just ignored it (dumb in retrospect.)
Fast forward to Christmas morning I get a call from the LA pet sitting sitter stating that she can't find the keys. I was shocked and apologized telling her that I hadn't signed up for service and that we had gone with a different option for our needs. I later got a cancellation e-mail from Brooke with a new invoice for our "cancelled service." I responded stating that I did not believe I needed to pay this since I'd never formally requested service to begin with and through a lot of back and forth I found out that the "consultation" is only no-strings attached in that you can cancel it; but they basically treat the consultation and paperwork as a full service request. She also stated that the " Please note that we cannot finalize this reservation until we hear back from you" was part of a boiler plate text that Brooke just pasted into the email (I don't think that absolves her of responsibility in this misunderstanding, but whatever)... Anyway, we then got ANOTHER (barely) reduced invoice email that stated that we needed to pay for the full day of Christmas service (the sitter only showed up for a few minutes in the morning), the medication fees, the holiday rate, the new client set-up fee and two cancellation fees; all which amounted to $135.
I found that rather ridiculous. This misunderstanding was clearly mutual and while I would have been happy to pay for the sitter's single Holiday visit ($45) and the new client fees ($30) I think it's rather bullshit that she wanted us to pay for an extra visit, medication fees (no medication was administered) and cancellation fees when Brooke also had a part to play in this misunderstanding. Also, I say "wanted" because a $13.50 "overdue" fee was tacked onto the total bill this morning. The previous invoice, might I add, was sent on the 26th of December at 10:06 p.m. It had no link to navigate towards where to pay it and I didn't think I had access to their portal since I'd never signed up for it. I had tried to figure it out at the time, but I was with family and all that hubbub and figured it would be fine if I dealt with it when I returned from the Holidays (clearly it was not.)
I find it distasteful that I was charged so much for a misunderstanding that was caused by language both on her website and email correspondences. That said, again, the sitter herself was nice and I'm regretful that she had to leave her home on Christmas morning due to this.
Tl;dr:
-I was charged more than I feel I should have been for a misunderstanding that I don't believe was my fault.
-Unlike other sitting services in the area the consultation and paperwork is not automatically no-strings attached and acts as an agreement to service. Be aware of this if, like me, you're skittish about strangers in your home and trying to feel people out.
-Be sure to respond to EVERY ONE OF THEIR EMAILS, even the ones that say that service will not be continued if you don't respond.
-It takes them a while to respond so be sure to reach out with plenty of spare time. read more