Care.comReviews 12,031

Care.com CAN provide a useful service. I did find decent employees to do cleaning for a rental property for me. However, BEWARE!. By its website design, this is clearly a legitimate business that intentionally tries to trick limited users into ongoing payments for service they do not use. I would've given them 2 stars except for the following: They are thieves. Iff you are not vigilant they will reactivate their draw on your credit card EVEN WHEN YOU HAVE CLOSED YOUR ACCOUNT! I had to block them via my CC.

The site offers in big print, $39 for one month of searching, 2 months of searching for less per month, I think $26, and 3 months of searching for still less per month. That misleads one into thinking you are signing up for a one time thing. As a previous reviewer notes, in the small print, whatever you sign up for is renewed automatically by draft on your credit card. I discovered my renewal drafts 4 payments after my last use of the site, a total of $156. I did get them to credit my CC account one month's worth.

It is difficult to deal with deactivating your account, but they did that for me over the phone. I reactivated it briefly this spring to see if there were other applicants i might want to contact or would contact me. I then, to be sure, canceled the account completely, which took a while to find on their website. I checked to make sure I could no longer log in and I could not. I checked my CC and had no withdrawal the next month. Problem solved, right? WRONG. I discovered in July that they had charged me another 3 months worth of $39 charges, EVEN THOUGH I DO NOT HAVE AN ACCOUNT OPEN WITH THEM! I emailed a complaint to them, but also contacted my cc and had the charges disputed (only the last two months per cc policy) and had Care.com blocked from my account.

Bottom line is this is a totally unethical operation. If you use their service, be vigilant and prepared to take the steps I did. I am $156 ripped off by Care.com. And this review is my only recourse.

IF YOU ARE A NANNY ON CARE.COM, READ:
As a nanny on Care.com, I can provide a complaint of a different sort. After filling out 40+ applications in a week only to get two responses, I knew something was wrong. I was very qualified, and my application/resume was sound. So what was the issue? Why wasn't I getting more replies?
Well, my friend (another nanny on the site having the same issues) and I decided to find out. We made a fake account on Care.com posing as a family looking for care. We posted a job and waited to see what would happen.
After receiving nearly 20 responses in less than a day, we decided to read some of them, and here's what we learned:

1) If we didn't pay for the membership, we couldn't even respond. That's right. Nothing. We could read the application and view the profile but could not contact ANY of the applicants. This shows that (since probably 75% of people don't pay) that the lack of responses wasn't even their fault!

2) We decided to apply to our own job, this time adding alternate ways to contact us by providing our email and phone numbers. Once we checked them from the other end, we learned ANOTHER astonishing fact: You have to pay to see phone numbers! Care.com will automatically block any phone number AND email on your resume (including for references you may have listed). So *******123 comes out on the parent's end as XXX-XXX-XXXX. This is just plain ridiculous.

3) The only way to make sure you can be contacted is if they have paid, you have paid, or by spelling you phone number out with words (which I have gladly done for jobs I was extremely interested in). I. e., EightEightOne-TwoFourTwoFour or whatever.

This is just plain ridiculous! Parents shouldn't have to pay for a phone number that I have willingly included in my application! NANNIES BE WARNED! If you're not getting a response, it's not your fault! Either pay for the membership (because if you do, they can respond!) or figure out a way to get your information across!

Goodbye Care.com! I've deleted my account, and I'm done!

The Care.com scam is what is termed a "continuity campaign" in industry parlance. What they do is set up a carefully structured system wherein you're billed without notification. Their entire model rests on "breakage" where they actually plan for you to forget about the subscription. For example, try to find a way to receive a bill or payment email when they ding your credit card. You won't. That would screw up their revenue model. They'll make a big show of customer support, etc. but anyone who's found hundreds of dollars in ghost charges on their account can attest: their customer care is a joke. They don't care. Their business is not finding care for people in need, or linking providers to those who need it. Their business is billing your credit card as quietly and infrequently as possible. Disgusting.

I have already written one review about this company and I just happened to finally come across the companies response to my review in my email. Now they are trying to say that I could not apply due to criminal charges. How would u know weather or not I have criminal charges when I NEVER TURNED IN A BACKGROUND CHECK! I am a veteran of the US Navy I have no record and I have been working in child care on a military instillation for three years. I think this website is a false front someone created to take money from american citizens. I have never heard of anyone hiring any of their employees nor have I seen anyone ever work for them. And if one more fradulant thing is posted about my supposed backgroung I'm going straight to my attourny generals office.

Like many of the other people on this site, I signed up for a three month membership to Care.com. I was completely unaware that my credit card would continue to get charged every three months after that for $84! I missed one charge but caught the next one. I called care.com and they removed the most recent charge but refused to remove the previous charge stating that in their terms when I signed up, I agreed to have my credit card automatically charged until I cancelled. I escalated my case to a supervisor who sent me a "no reply" email response stating the same thing and they refused to refund my money. I called again and they told me they can't do anything about it and that is their policy. Based on the number of complaints I have read here and elsewhere online, there are several people who have been deceived by this company that were also unaware that their credit card would continue to be charged after their initial membership timeframe expired. The company obviously does not make it clear on purpose. Why don't they send out an email telling you that your membership is about to be renewed? They send me plenty of other emails about their company, but none regarding any sort of reminder about my membership. They just kept charging my card until I noticed. This is a deceptive business practice and in my opinion, a class action lawsuit should be pursued against this company due to the number of complaints about the auto-billing practices.

I've been in health care for many years I'm a caregiver and very well qualified I find it suspicious I've put many applications in only to receive no replys! I do work for health care agency's but thought I'd try to find a private duty case thru care.com but there's something not right about this site. I finialy received one reply but the man didn't share his number just collected mine and made a phone appointment for next day but never called! Very odd! I find from my 3 weeks on this site its a waiste of time and from reading other reviews I haven't read not one good review. Sounds like a lot of scams going on so be careful that's my advice.

I found a nanny for my two children through Care.com. It was a very pleasant experience finding a sitter. I hired an experienced 20 something year old who seemed great at first and then suddenly began demanding cash rather than checks. I never signed a contract with this sitter to specify cash only. She was paid weekly since March and said she claims she believes open communication is important with all of the families she helps. But then I couldn't pay her cash one night and the next thing I know is that she is dropping Mondays shift to sit for someone else and questions if she needs to return the remainder of the week! Open communication? No not at all. I would recommend hiring a nanny and setting a payment contract at the start of the assignment so open communication is truly open.

My daughter was sucked into a scam through care.com. A person e-mailed her, even hired her without meeting her. Then this person send a cashiers check for 3850. 00 to my daughter asking her to put it in the bank so my daughter could purchase a wheelchair and kitchen utensils. A couple of days after the check was deposited my daughter was then told to withdraw the money and meet a man at a certain location. My daughter then notified the bank and police. Good instincts saved my daughter from losing a large sum of money.

Beware! I am a nurse, who was scammed this company. I had a family who never paid me after a month of daycare. There was no recourse or support by Care.com. I cancelled my subscription in 2012 to no avail- they just keep billing you. And despite editing and canceling my account you can see it is still up on their site "loving nurse for kids"! They continue to bill me despite my downgrading and canceling every month- their ploy is a scam bot that suddenly closes your progress of cancellation by a window that pops up stating the "Care.com site is temporarily down". Regardless of my cancellation and attempts to delete my profile, I constantly get texts from strangers to my phone number! It's been a huge nightmare getting out of this trap! So many tragic stories. Only option is to change your bank card number :(

I joined care.com over a year ago to find help for my parents in Central Alabama. I ran an ad on their website and got a ton of contacts. When I asked for references I got a couple of responses back but not many the references were friends of applicants. When I asked for work references only I got NO ie... not ANY responds back. Due to illness I move both my Mom and Dad to Birmingham. Hopefully they will be moving back to Central Alabama soon... but we will see.

I enrolled with care.com over 2 months ago looking for employment I applied for many jobs and never heard a thing back from any, so I finally thought is the reason I'm not getting replies because I have not paid for a subscription but mind you every CSR I spoke with assured me oh no you don't have to pay for he subscription to get a job anyways I thought I would go on and pay for the month subscription to see what happens and once again no results what so ever care.com sends me emails daily for jobs in my area I apply and still nothing, so I decide to call and ask what the problem could possibly be I'm still not getting any replies to the jobs or to the emails that are said to be going direct to the employers but still nothing, upon calling back to care.com the Rep told me that if the employers don't pay for the subscription then they can't respond back to you.
So my take on care.com is that they are just trying to make a buck on people, while the families think they are doing the right thing by going to care.com they are still in need of help and I'm not even sure if care.com tell people that when they open an account. I thought oh this is a great company making sure people are somewhat suitable to go into some ones home but boy was I wrong. Sheila and her company is just about making money the same thing when I tried to add my references to my page they want there email address and make them open an account just to give you a reference I don't think it's right and I will start my own blog in regards to care.com.

I have been a member of care.com on and off for about 6 years. Last week I reported a profile I stumbled upon while job searching. In the job description the person was looking for a "sexy, caring woman" I reported it as inappropriate. A week later I get an email/text/care.com app message saying someone messaged me about a job, but when I went to log in to respond, the message was missing! And when I found the profile through the search function it said I had to "upgrade" to contact families directly. I am assuming this means I was taken off the site? How ridiculous. Luckily the woman that messaged me left me her phone number so I was able to contact her directly. Not very happy with care.com right now

BE CAREFUL... care.com charges you every quarter whether you use the service or not. Not sure if I will get a refund but the man on the phone *******115 said he would submit my request for REVIEW. I haven't used care.com since Sept 2013 and have been charged $59 every quarter without noticing (my spouse usually pays the bills). I only asked for a refund of the most recent charge in June 2014. It will be interesting to see if they refund the charge. If not, I would NOT recommend this service to anyone in my area. I usually initiate a task on my calendar to cancel a subscription if I dont' use it. I'm sure I did this, but maybe not. It would have been nice to at LEAST get a reminder if one hasn't used the website in over 9 months. Just not worth the trouble.

I like many have a auto billing complaint. When I noticed a "pending" charge to renew for a the next quarter I immediately went online to close my open status then recived an automated email it would be closed the next qtr three months from now. In other words keeping my current $79 renewal. Then I attempted to call and found out they no longer take calls, only automated system. I sent another email requesting someone to call me to address.

I have tried several times to delete my debit card info and the site will not allow that. That should be illegal to retain my card number and not retract upon my request.

My point is if you have an automated website then why not use that automated features to send me an email mail of notification one week in advance of charging me then I can choose to stay or cancel. But obviously that is how they make money.