Review Time
My wife and I travelled from regional nsw and have accommodation in Woolahra with our small dog.l booked a female from Madpaws to mind our dog while we were to attend our daughter's wedding tomorrow Saturday 5 October. Yesterday, the sitter cancelled the service. We are left in a quandary now and all we got was a refund, no substitute sitter or apology.
The sitters do just enough on a short term stay to convince you to book again but then weeks out from your overseas booking, that you have had with the sitter (sudden vague reason and cancellation). It forces you to scrape the bottom of the barrel, invite someone into your home at a higher premium and then of course you have no idea what they are going to do. There are several instances where sitters offer a service only to find out that they dont really provide the service. Like pet sitting is overnighting with the pets at your residence but then some sitters offer that in their profile but tell you they can't do it. Then you have sitters that try to make out that they are confused about things only to find out that they are trying to double and triple stack bookings and work around system constraints. To say I am livered that a 2 week booking that is a repeat booking with a sitter that did a short stay with my pets, that suddenly cancels a couple of weeks out - is an understatement and quite frankly unacceptable. Dont believe the fluff and advertising.
The site has a a good idea/concept, but needs alot of work and refining to make it more appropriate practically.The biggest issue is that the pricing model is terrible and deceiving. The payment the app shows as final is never the amount you are getting in your account. As a sitter, there is no breakdown of the payments (ie holiday season surcharge, long stay discount, the fee MP is taking). Not to mention, after speaking to many of the dog owners, the double dipping Madpaws is doing. They take 20% of the sitter fees + 10% of the owners' fee. However, we are still not sure what this is for or what this is covering? If you read the MP T&Cs there is no insurance or cover of any sort to cover damages (physical or death) to the sitter, sitter's home or the pet. The only insurance mentioned is to cover "public liability". Another major issue is the single pricing option for all dogs, regardless of size or needs. Large dogs, for instance, often require more maintenance, exercise, and cleaning—especially if they shed a lot or slobber. In contrast, smaller dogs need less of these things. It doesn’t quite make sense to charge the same amount for both, considering the differences in care required. This is something that should have been factored into the user experience design.Finally, the lack of reviews for dogs and their owners. Currently, only carers can be reviewed, which makes it hard to get a full picture of what you’re signing up for.From my ongoing experience with Mad Paws, it can be quite unpredictable how a dog will behave or how transparent their owner is about the dog's level of training and needed care. The meet-and-greet isn’t always enough to fully understand a dog’s behavior or the level of discipline and training they’ve received. We've encountered issues such as dogs crying throughout the day and night unless they're right next to you or on in bed with you, being unable to be left alone, barking throughout the night, and accidents inside the house. Many owners are not as transparent or knowledgeable about their pet’s training and care, which can make looking after their dog more challenging.Introducing tiered pricing based on the size and needs of dogs and allowing reviews for both dogs and their owners would significantly enhance the experience for everyone involved. And the way pricing works needs to be reviewed ASAP
I have to say at this point that my experience of MadPaws has been very hit and miss, with only one success and two abject failures. The first booking I tried to make was accepted, confirmed and paid-for. But the sitter who accepted the booking never replied to a single message, phone call or text message after accepting the booking. The second (who was back up to the aforementioned first; stepping in at the very last minute) was hugely successful; looked after my dog with fantastic care and at very reasonable rate on five or six occasions in the past eight months. I’m just very sorry that they moved away from the area. The third was when I started looking for a replacement for the second sitter. I found two suitable possibilities and just happened to meet-and-greet one before the other. Despite being considerably more expensive than the other, we agreed to have a first try. Then at the very last minute, without warning without reason, this sitter raised her advertised daily rate by $15/day. When I complained to Madpaws about price gouging and false advertising by this sitter, they stated that the sitter was perfectly within their rights to do this and advertised prices are there as a guide only. THIS NEEDS TO BE MADE VERY CLEAR ON THE MADPAWS WEBSITE.They also refused my request to accept and display a one-star rated review of my experience with this sitter.This third debacle of an experience makes a one in three hit rate of my experience with the MadPaws website. Not exactly a roaring success, is it? Potential users of the site need to be made more aware of these types of failures before putting their faith in such unreliability. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the bias of the site leans towards the interests and profits of the pet sitters and certainly NOT the pet owners.
Good concept poor implementation.As a repeated pet sitter, minding and pampering the pet is easy. Keeping the oner happy is easy.But getting paid from MadPaws sours the experience.For such high fees, the level of customer service and battles to get paid, despite good reviews is absolutely not acceptable.Zero Communications from Support, they just continually cancel payment.
Our pet sitter Maina has been amazing from the first visit to going extra mile to send me pictures of my babies when I was overseas and unable to access the website.The customer service was also amazing and screenshotting all messages from Marina to reassure me them comfort.I was and still am very grateful for their help.Thank you 😺😺😺🥰
Claim your business profile now and gain access to all features and respond to customer reviews.
Mad Paws is Australia's #1 go-to Pet Sitting community. With Mad Paws, Pet Owners can find trusted Pet Sitters near their homes. With nearly 20,000 trusted Sitters, Pet Owners can find a range of pet-related services such as Pet Sitting, Dog Walking, and Pet Daycare.
jobma.com
backtothefuturetrading.com
beerdrop.co
advisedskills.com
ausomstore.com
makinmattresses.com.au
lumorae.co
pkbtrade.co.uk
joblogic.com
ubersuggest.com