RoverReviews 622

We have used Rover in the past, but have always struggled with finding someone we can trust to house sit our dogs. Rover claims that you will get photos and updates, but does nothing to ensure that sitters actually provide these. My fiance and I went on a 5 day trip and have never been more stressed about our dogs well being. The sitter was hardly home and only stopped by for 7 minutes on one occasion before putting our dog back in his crate. She lied to us about her work schedule, despite coming up in a search as "sitter is home full time". The sitter left our dog in his crate for 12 hours one day! We constantly had to ask for updates and noticed that she would only go to our house after messaging her. Luckily we have a security system that logs when the door is open and closed so we were aware when she was and wasn't home. When we got home our dog had thrown up in his crate and she just left it, our throw pillows were chewed, our Chuck It stick was completed chewed and broken, both balls were nowhere to be found! The sitter did not tell us about any of this. We ended up having to ask friends to check on our dogs 2 out of 5 of the days she was supposed to be house sitting. We will never use Rover again, they do not properly vet sitter and do not guarantee the service you will recieve.

Rover does not care about pets. I had to leave town for a family emergency, and the rover hotline refused to even look for another sitter for a cat that needs daily meds while the owners are in another country with limited cell service. The woman on the emergency line screamed at me repeatedly and finally said I needed to either skip a family member's funeral or neglect the cat and face potential legal repercussions (although she screamed again and said it wasn't her job to know when I asked what they laws were in my state regarding sitting companies and emergencies). Not only is it apprehensible to scream at an employee (albeit, a freelance employee you've never met) who is in a state of emergency, but suggesting I might "just neglect the cat" goes against every single thing a pet sitting organization should stand for. Thankfully, I was able to contact the owner's fiancé who was able to contact his friend so that I could give him the keys on my way to the funeral so the cat could eat/get her meds. Please do not work here or use this service if you have any concern for the safety and health of animals. I have multiple repeat clients with 5 star reviews and I have since messaged every single one of them saying I am leaving Rover for another platform. There's a reason there are so many stories of pets being neglected by rover sitters; clearly the company condones that, and therefore all decent sitters will eventually work elsewhere.

I was forced to move to Rover when they purchased Dogbuddy, and within one month I lost all my clients.
The notifications for bookings take up to 6 hours to reach my phone, this is terrible and makes being flexible and reliable impossible. Payments went missing, sometimes customer service never get back to you and when they do it's up to a week later. The whole system is flawed and you have lost me as a trusted sitter with many repeat clients.

I did extensive interviews and did background checks. The girl we hired had 50 5 star reviews (FYI rover hires a third party to remove the bad ones we found out later). She had references that we checked(I think they were friends or relatives now). Well our cameras literally caught her in our house for just 10 minutes. She didn't give our kitten any attention (her cat had surgery a few days before) and I think she just wanted to hurry back to her house. Oh and she sent us pictures and videos (ya right we saw on camera when she left our house). She made it seem like she was still there by texting us later that "she just left" and how much fun they had playing. We did our homework and this was a quick money grab. The sitter seemed sweet and responsible when we interviewed her but she wasn't exactly honest. We cut her loose and used a neighbor. Never use Rover

Booked a stay for my boy Max a month in advance with Reilly of Lakewood, OH. The dates from June 6th-22nd. Had the meet and greet the week earlier, all went fine and I explained we were going for a 16 day dream European cruise vacation. Confirmed drop off time (4pm) the next day. At 12:47 pm I receive this message I went to the hospital and was admitted last night for a bowel obstruction and will be here until at least Saturday for a colonoscopy ´ That was it! I had also explained to her that we use rover because my 14 yr old senior dog does not do well at all in kennels or shelters. So we were left with 3 hrs to find a sitter in June for 16 days. We ended up kenneling him for 3x the price as they had to move him around different suites according to availability. Also had to get a friend cover 4 of the days adding to the confusion. Contacted rover for them to say they would be happy to cancel and refund the booking! Adding insult to injury they offered 20 bucks towards a replacement stay but that it would not be valid outside of the booking dates. Understand that had I cancelled within a week of the booking i'd of had to pay 50% of the booking fee. Does the sitter have to pay me?! Nope. I can't even leave a review because the booking was cancelled. I received a courtesy call from a supervisor... other than an apology I got nothing. So now... happy to copy and paste this to every review site possible.
BEWARE booking... you are not protected as the boarder. Reilly of Lakewood OH is NOT reliable or responsible for her actions.

I see many people, almost all of the reviews. Owners upset that their dog didn't receive the care that was expected. This is very unfortunate, and I feel sorry that this has happened. With that being said, I have over 7 years experience in animal care, and dog walking/sitting, and have never had one complaint. I do think that Rover does not take responsibility for their "employees" which feels like a scam, but they are technically private contractors. Call references, call past employment, and if you get a bad vibe don't hire us! Anyone can use this app if they pass a background check, that doesn't mean you did your homework on who you are allowing to care for you pet. I understand the frustration, but would you leave your child with someone who simply passed a background check? No. Do your homework, know who you are dealing with. Not all people who work through Rover are negligent, or untrustworthy.

TLDR: Rover sitter lost Dog. Rover has been disrespectful and has offered zero help.

This is a fairly long story so I apologize. We were going on a vacation from the USA to the UK for about 10 days. Due to our dog being a little anxious we wanted her to be at home and not boarded for such a long time.

Hired a sitter with great reviews and multiple repeat clients. She came in for the meet and greet and was great with her.

Day of the trip she is suppose to be there at noon to sit more with the dog and get more use to. She doesn't show up. I text her what is going on she said she stopped by for a bit and she was fine (which was a lie because we have a door monitor and no one unlocked or opened the door). She says she will be back there at 3:00 pm. She doesn't get there until about 6. No more communication until the next day, when she tells us she lost the dog. We drive 9 hours to an airport and fly 8 hours to NYC then drive 4 hours home. We find the dog after a few days of searching.

We find out from animal control she lost the dog the night before she told us she did (the first night) lied to us and Rover about it.

Rover offered to print flyers for us (at a store that is not in our area), but informed us we could only print a limited amount of flyers. Offered to request Rover sitter volunteers to come search (no one did). They initially refused to refund the first night of pet sitting but after much complaining they finally did. They refused to pay for a vet checkup to make sure the dog was ok after we found her. They refused to pay for any of the costs associated with finding the dog (travel expenses to get back to the area or to reimburse the trapper we hired to get here back, which did work thankfully). They were condescending and purely money oriented in everything they did.

Please avoid Rover if you think their guarantee is anything. Read the fine print they have a loop hole to get out of almost anything and they will use it.

The sitter I got from rover completely ruined my dog. Malibu is unable to walk and is currently very ill. She just had surgery, a surgery that cost me 2500 dllrs, none the sitter or roger cared. Rover treated me horribly, they pretended that they would help and make you pay everything with the promise that they will eventually take action and help but is all lies and now that I have read all the reviews I can confirm that they are absolute right. They do not check their baby sitters, don't get references, don't ask for their identifications, criminal check. You are truly leaving your pet with a total stranger that could be a really $#*!ed up person. What the sitter did to my dog and to my family is devastating and one of the worst situations I have ever been at, I can't even talk about it. I never want anyone to go through this or feel this way. I'll beg you to not use this company or any ever. Get a family member or a friend always because they will truly care. Rover is by far the WORST OF THE WORST. Don't trust it please, if you love your dog never use them. Pet sitter couldn't even learn my dogs name, Got one sick from something she ate in her house or from stress and the other one broke her leg. Do you think at least Rover gave me back the money from the pet sitter? Do you think I ever got an apology or anything? Honestly my heart is broken everytime I think about this situation.

Never ever use this site. Rover doesn't give a crap about the pet owner or the pet. I went to California for a few days and I got a rover pet sitter. First off I am pretty sure the sitters don't even watch the dogs they are baby sitting. My dog was attacked by another dog they were watching. Stupid rover tried making me pay for the surgery and still wanted me to pay the rover sitter. This a terrible website and they don't care one bit. Don't use or you will strongly regret it

If I could leave a -1000% I would. I hired a person through Rover.com. First thing when I got home I received a call from the local police that a bag of my garbage had been found in a local drug store garbage bin. The store wanted to file an illegal dumping charge. Luckily for me I had been gone and didn't think that my dog sitter would do such a thing. I found out later she had done it. I should have known right then and there something was terribly wrong. However, because of all the assurances I read on Rover, I went a head and hired this person to help me with my dog and to do some chores around my house. I have many health problems and cannot always be up and about. I could not watch her every move. She started small, then about a week before she disappeared from my life she when shopping in my home and took whatever she wanted. I contacted Rover.com and got nothing. Zero. Do not trust the people they present, their vetting is a joke. If you do, be watchful, be careful and do not leave anything that might be of any value any where in your home.

Everyone is talking bad about rover. I have had a mixed experience. First of all, people have lives, things happen, so Yeah we are going to cancel on you sometimes. Sometimes your dog's are also very very bad dogs and bite people too. I have met my best friend who's a dog using this app, but the other 3 dogs have been BAD BAD BAD. 3 boy dogs, 1 was extremely humpy and couldn't be let into our house with our girl dog. 1 could barely walk because a fused spine and another now is biting and barking like mad for 4 days straight. So, I would meet the dog first and let him even stay one night in advance to meet each other? I feel a lot of these issues would be avoided if 1. They had back up sitters 2. Insurance or even a Pound to call if the dog is bad 3. A vet 4. Everyone LIES and says they have a good dog

4 different carers but all with same poor level of communication whilst attempting to make a booking for an overnight stay in the carers dwelling. When I complained about them, two of the carers suddenly responded with different excuses as to why they could not respond all day. And one even threatened to report me for saying that the level of communication was atrocious. My advise is pay a little more money or in some cases the same money and book a really good doggy boarding place

I will never use Rover again. We had planned a Disney World vacation for over a year for our entire family so we started looking for someone to take care of our dogs a couple of months before we were supposed to leave for the week long vacation. First we had a hard time even finding someone available for the week we were going to be gone but finally we had Renne who had accepted the job to watch our 3 small dogs. We wanted someone to stay in the house with them as 2 are rescued dogs and have anxiety and we thought it would be easier for our dogs if they stayed in their own environment. Everything was set to go a month before we were supposed to leave and then the day before we were supposed to leave to catch our flight for a vacation we've been planning for a year she text me and canceled. We now had no one to take care of our dogs and we were supposed to catch our flight the next day. She didn't help us find someone to replace her, rover did nothing to remedy the situation. Thank God we did get a refund but I think that's because she never came over. We had to scramble to find someone else to take care of our dogs and after reading some of these reviews thank god we did!