Care.com: Hire Caregivers

From “caregivers” responding to my ad to them say their not available. To “caregivers” ask for more than what they have advertised. Unprofessional headshots, spelling errors, and canceling once I mentioned meeting in person. This app is a fraud BEWARE!!!

The company I work for gives us a $1000 childcare benefit and this year has contracted Care to administer it. They make it extremely difficult to use our benefit and look for any reason to deny the claims First of all they can never find childcare providers to meet the need and they don’t tell you until the night before you need coverage for work. So you scramble at the last minute to find someone yourself last minute. If for whatever reason you receipt doesn’t match the times you requested (like say your sitter that u had to find last minute was available until 7and you normally start at 6 but because you had no one to watch your kids because Care didn’t let you know until the night before so you had to go in late) they will deny your claim for reimbursement. Not only do they look for any reason to deny your claim it also takes them a whole month to tell you they reviewed and denied your claim and that you need to resubmit because you’re is about to expire. And it will take another month for them to review the claim again. When you call, everyone has such a thick accent you can’t always tell what they are say and it’s hard to tell if they even understand you because their responses are often strange. The company we used before understood how to be more flexible and as long as the chaildcare ours lined up with our time clock schedule for that day it wasn’t a big deal and they were much faster. I’d give negative stars if I could. Hope we can these guys next year

I used care.com to find a babysitter when I was going back to work after having a baby. Through the app, I was able to find one great babysitter, but I had multiple babysitters accept jobs and then cancel at the last minute. Having to let your young baby scream in it’s crib while you take a meeting because your babysitter didn’t show is wildly stressful, particularly for a new mother. There’s no penalty for the caregiver to cancel last minute, but I would have had to pay a penalty fee if I would have cancelled last minute. Also, I’m not willing to leave a negative review for someone that has my home address. If possible, I’d suggest finding reliable childcare outside of care.com.

Tricky way of presenting pricing to make you think it’s $25 but they really charge you $78 for all 3 months at once with no refunds. No availability in my area. I wrote to every single option in my area and no one was interested (some didn’t even reapond) in an ongoing gig for my infant. I live in a touristy area so the caregivers are interested in 1-2 weeks gigs at a resort. Not a reoccurring gig at my house with my infant. I wrote them to tell them of my issues and they offered to close my account and not give me a refund. Super annoyed I wasted money on this.

Takes $ but application is blank

Getting charged for sitter that is MIA and no real support. I’ll have to contact credit card company to correct.

Tried to get a maid or someone to help clean. Went through the whole search process to be prompted for money after favoriting some housekeepers. Then I had to pay just to reach out and have no response. Additionally my listing apparently wasn't approved but I didn't know I was even submitting a listing

I didn’t end up finding care on this service (which I haven’t used since 2022). I got applications from applicants who literally never responded after I reviewed their applications and sent them a message. SitterCity was a better service overall with more serious applicants. Finding care is hard, so whatever, that wouldn’t be the reason I rate them so low. Now here’s the one-star part: Today (April of 2024) I have a charge for $155 on my credit card. Apparently I was enrolled in an annual membership, but I haven’t received a single email from Care.com since May of 2022. I also DON’T have a charge from a year ago for this service, so none of this makes sense if I was enrolled for an annual subscription. I had to contact my CC company to figure out what this mystery charge was because it was labeled as “CCI” on my statement, rather than Care.com or something similar to their business name. When I reached out to customer service, they said it’s their normal business practice to not send notifications or receipts for any charges they run. What business doesn’t send receipts? I get not notifying your clients you’re about to charge them, because then they have a chance to cancel it. But I have zero emails from care.com in nearly 2 years, so I have no idea what they deem to be ethical business practice at a time where childcare expenses are more than most people’s mortgage, but this isn’t it. I just read through other reviews and see I’m not the only one who has been scammed by a convoluted app, designed to purposefully make purchasing things easy without realizing you have done so.

With what I'm paying per month, fix your bugs guys.

I recently had a deeply disappointing experience with Care.com. As a platform that claims to prioritize safety and trust, my expectations were shattered when they failed to provide me with a background check for a caregiver I was considering hiring. Despite multiple requests and assurances from Care.com’s customer support team, I was left in the dark about the caregiver’s background, qualifications, and criminal history. This lack of transparency and accountability is simply unacceptable, especially when dealing with sensitive matters like childcare or eldercare. The whole process felt like a runaround, with Care.com offering vague excuses and delaying tactics instead of addressing my legitimate concerns. Their negligence and disregard for safety have left me feeling extremely unsafe and hesitant to use their services ever again. I strongly advise anyone considering using Care.com to think twice and explore alternative options that prioritize customer safety and provide transparent background check procedures.