In reply to Sandra Roosna.

Hi Sandra,

Thanks for sharing your experience with them and your opinion.

Regarding for what Rover take so much, as you told: “all they do is run the app and provide customer service”…

Well, as an owner of the dog blog I can assure it that it’s incredibly hard and expensive to run such service successfully. You need to spend a huge amount of money on internet marketing to be able to drive traffic to the site and finally connect dog owners and pet sitters.

In other words, Rover takes their commission for providing pet sitters with clients.

Every week there is new pet sitting site is popping up, but no one finds them and they become abandoned very soon, because, as I mentioned above, it’s much harder to run an online business than it may seem. You can try 🙂

I personally think it’s ok to move away from Rover, when you already connected with dog owners and they’re happy with your service and no one wants to pay that extra commissions and fees, but I strongly disagree that they take money for nothing.

I’m only on Rover because I happen to have a little bit of free time between work and school and I enjoy spending time with other animals, so money is not too imperative to me.
Regardless, I find it absolutely appalling how they claim to have a great 24/7 support, thus they must take a giant chunk from BOTH the owner and the petsitter (because it’s clearly not enough to just exploit one party).
For example, they take 40% of what they charge for on-demand walks (if they owner pays $20, you receive a lousy $12, and you get $18 for every walk that they charge $30 for).
They also take a large chunk of any other service you provide: I charged $240 for a house-sitting and Rover took $48 from that amount (FOR WHAT!!?), ON TOP OF taking a percent from the owner as well.
All they do is run the app and provide customer service (if you can call it that). I can see maybe justifying that if they actually offered proper training for those wanting to sign up as a petsitter. All they do is offer a 2-minute in-person leash test for those wanting to become on-demand walkers – they don’t offer any other types of training and refuse to make it at least a little bit harder for those who are completely incompetent. This whole “certification” to be an on-demand walker is a complete joke!
There should be a written test about dog safety for all sitters signed up for the app (where you emphasize using backup collars/leashes!!) and at least an hour-long basic CPR course.
It is incredibly unsafe and idiotic to have anyone who wants to “work” with other people’s pets sign up and end up killing said pets (it has happened on numerous occasions on Rover, they are just really good at covering those incidents).
Rover is clearly not at all dedicated to making sure that safety comes first (you choose to test a walker’s knowledge on Rover Cards over how to handle a lost or injured dog situation, or how to prevent these incidents to begin with. Priorities?)
For the amount of money they shamelessly take from you, I expect there to be a large office in every big city where they operate, with a team of trained on-call petsitters or certified emergency personel in situations that call for their intervention. Instead they rent a tiny room in an office building to run their lousy excuse for in-person leash training.

The majority of Rover petsitters that I know are booking their services outside of the app after being contacted by an owner. I as well have chosen to use Venmo or PayPal to do my transactions, and I actively encourage other people to do the same.
I refuse to succumb to this kind of corporate exploitation, and I make sure other people get treated fairly as well.

With being so incredibly greedy, you end up losing more business than the high prices can justify, and you fully deserve it.

Hello! I am a sitter and dog owner myself. I signed up to be a Rover sitter recently and have not seen much traction, but I have heard good things about Bed and Biscuits (bnbiscuits.com). Has anyone else used them?

– Colin

In reply to Aldona.

Great point! I too think that you should meet with few sitters through some pet sitting services and then stick with someone who you liked. Just work directly with favourite dog walker/sitter.

In reply to Ed.

Thanks for sharing, Ed!

Rover is the worst, at least in Connecticut. My daughter hired a sitter from them for just a few hours and when she returned home her dogs toys were destroyed and their were empty beer bottles in her trash can. When reported to Rover they did not refund her money but instead offered her a credit for future use, as if she would ever use their service again. Beware!

Another alternative – hire a professional sitter or walker! There are many independent professional pet sitters out there who are insured and bonded, and can do everything you love in Rover sitters, without the middle man there to take their cut from both the client and the sitter. Yes, you have to get past all the Rover and Wag ads in order to see them (sorry, we can’t compete financially with a corporation) but they are there.

Thank you for the very well thought out article though, it was a very good read.