SACRAMENTO — When choosing a house sitter to watch his labradoodle Milli for a week, Dave Harmon found someone with a five-star review through the Rover App. The caretaker will stay in his home and look after the dog.
“The expectation is that he works from home, so he’ll spend most of the day there,” Harmon said. “That’s what we talked about when we met, and the expectation is that he’ll take Milli at least one walk a day.”
She listed in her care instructions that Milli could be left alone for 1-4 hours, but she returned a week later to find an upstairs room full of Milli’s poop.
“The smell was horrible. I mean, I could smell it from downstairs. It was really bad, and it was really obvious that it had been sitting there for days,” Harmon said. “The poo has hardened. The pee spots have hardened. Isn’t it? It’s not soft, it’s carpet. It’s been a few days, at least, it’s just the scent of the smell. It’s bad,” Harmon. said.
“What surprises me is that I don’t know how he didn’t smell it.”
Turning to her home security footage, Harmon discovered from the time stamps, the housekeeper left Milli alone for more than four hours on some days. One day he was shown leaving home at 3:22 pm and not returning until 11:55 pm. That was eight hours and 33 minutes Milli was left alone.
On another day, the housekeeper is seen leaving the house at 6.30am and returning at 4.46pm Milli can be heard barking in the video after being left alone for 10 hours and 16 minutes.
“I was very angry, to be honest,” Harmon said. “Milly is part of our family.”
And those walks that Milli loves so much? The video shows several very short walks, including one that is six minutes long.
Harmon now understood why Milli was behaving the way she did when she got home after a week of traveling.
“You can tell just by the way that she greeted me. She was kind of a whimpering and she was actually scratching at the garage door. She’s never done that. She’s never scratched up the garage door like that,” he said.
The video also shows the caretaker of the house with a stranger.
“We don’t know who this person is,” Harmon said. “We don’t know what he’s doing in our house.”
When Harmon pointed to the smelly, filth-filled room, the housekeeper replied, “I don’t go upstairs with him but stay in the house all day and leave the screen door open for him. I think there’s a chance. attitude.” , sometimes when their parents miss a dog, they show it [in] such ways.”
But Harmon said the video shows what really happened.
“I have video right showing these things that happened that shouldn’t have happened.”
Dave spent 2-hundred dollars to clean the carpet. But the smell remained. So, he changed it.
Rover’s site promises that your sitter will take care of your pets and your home. Your pets can get all the attention they need without leaving home which is said to be backed by the Rover guarantee.
But if you look further it says, “generally, injuries caused by a pet owner’s dog on their own property are not covered.”
He said Rover initially reimbursed the cost of housesitting and covered the carpet cleaning, but he wants them to cover the $1,500 to replace the carpet.
He also wanted to remove this administrator from the platform.
We contacted Rover who immediately said it would pay for the carpet.
“We are very disappointed that Mr. Harmon had this experience on our platform. Following our investigation, we have decided to remove the pet care provider from our community. We have also granted Mr. Harmon’s request for a replacement carpet, in addition to the full refund we previously provided.
As pet parents ourselves, we understand how important peace of mind is when you trust a pet sitter to care for a beloved pet. Before booking any service, we recommend pet parents conduct Meet & Greets with several prospective sitters. We also encourage pet parents and pet sitters to have detailed conversations prior to any service to determine expectations for pet care as well as boundaries regarding personal spaces, such as inside a home.
We are very grateful for the trust placed in our community, and we work every day to continue to earn that trust. As I mentioned, these types of experiences are truly rare – in the Sacramento area, over 255,000 stays have been booked on our platform by pet parents, with 98% of reviews receiving five stars.
At Rover, safety is at the heart of everything we do. To learn more about this commitment, please visit our website. We are very disappointed that Mr. Harmon had this experience on our platform. Following our investigation, we have decided to remove the pet care provider from our community.
These types of experiences are truly rare – in the Sacramento area, over 255,000 stays have been booked on our platform by pet parents, with 98% of reviews receiving five stars.”
Harmon says Milli is back to normal now, but she’ll never trust Rover again, saying the whole ordeal made her feel guilty.
“And that’s on me as the dad in the family. So yeah, I definitely feel guilty about that,” he said.
