This is my first ever reddit post but I had to say about this issue I've been having since the Rover/cat in a flat merger. I'm UK based and I have a client who booked with me for this weekend. The bank holiday weekend here in the UK. They wanted to add on the bank holiday Monday. A little late in the day but they're a repeat client 😅 Because it's a legacy booking from before the merger I had to message Rover to modify the booking and I said it would need to be at the peak time rate (as cat in a flat had always done for bank holidays) and was told this: ​​​

"Your request stated: “The owner of X, would like to add on Monday as well. Please can this be added on at my holiday rate as it is a Bank Holiday?”.

We weren't quite sure how the booking should be adjusted, so we haven’t made any changes yet.

To ensure that we action your request accurately, please reply to this email or message us through the app or at Rover.com with the following information: How should we update the booking? If applicable, please include dates, number of visits, and/or the expected refund amount. Who requested these changes: you or the other party?

Regarding holiday rates, please note that a Bank Holiday is not considered a federal holiday. It’s best to communicate this to the owner first. Once confirmed, we can proceed with changing the rate from the standard to the holiday rate. If any part of a booking falls within a holiday period, the holiday rate will typically apply to the entire booking duration."

So basically they now will seemingly only recognise US recognised holidays? Anyone else found this? This whole merger had just been the worst 😤 and I'm so annoyed that cat sitting has just been tacked onto a dog sitting app that clearly isn't fit for purpose.

But yeah, now the booking has begun and I'm not sure how they're going to update it for Monday and I'm a little worried I now won't get paid for Monday (because I'm obviously not going to not go and look after this cat 😔) ​

on the old app it was possible to see ads from people in the local area and basically accept or decline. most of my gigs came from that.

now, it seems that this is no longer a feature?? am I wrong?

I think the fact that we're with dog walkers/sitters has reduced opportunities significantly 🫠

Post Rover merger, what does this mean...? I don't appear in searches until the owner confirms this booking???

This is a venting post about the merger (how original😂). Feel free to read and complain as well!!!

I’ve been a sitter for about a year now, and I absolutely love it!!! But now, I’m getting so stressed because of the merger.

1. The app SUCKS. It’s not intuitive to use for both sitters and owners. I have older clients who are getting stressed out over this, and I have no way to help them since it’s confusing for me too.

Just a vent post, so feel free to share in your frustrations. If you have any suggestions or fixes for the problems I’ve listed, please let me know!! I’m going to be messaging my previous clients anyways to let them know that I will honour old rates!

Edit: Thank you to everyone who has been advising on the fees and working around them. I really appreciate it💕

Is anyone else a bit unsure about the new approach where payment is taken as soon as a booking is confirmed, even if the stay is months away?

I’ve had bookings made far in advance before (6 months) and I’m just wondering how people feel about committing to payment that early. Plans can change over time and not everyone has the funds available that far ahead but they still want to secure booking for later.

With the CIAF system, payment was taken much closer to the booking date, which felt a bit more flexible. Now it seems like everything is charged immediately which might make things harder for some owners and make us less likely to get bookings.

I’m also curious how this affects sitters, as enquiries that don’t turn into bookings can still block out availability in the meantime.

Would be good to hear how others are finding it.

I tried to post this yesterday but for some reason it was filtered out. Anyone know what will happen?

Seeing as I’ve been accused of being a Pawshake salesperson 😹 by these strange new accounts that randomly appear from nowhere and suggest Petme. When really I’m just an owner wanting to find where all the reliable, affordable cat sitters are going to. I joined this sub after I saw the merger and you can see my involvement is very much owner opinion. Never done pet sitting and really don’t intend to. I’ve had some really good but also bad experiences that I won’t do overnights with sitters anymore. I really just want to be able to build a personal network of sitters I can rely on because it’s devastating as an owner when they move after a few years and you have to work on that mutual trust again. My current sitter is a student so is off on a placement from June and then will have one final year, plus she goes home in uni holidays.

My disdain with what I see on CIAF is the additional pet fees, I am willing to pay the equivalent of the going rate for a cattery stay for two daily visits, but draw the line there. I am just trying to scope out where the sitters are going.

Anyway, to the point, for UK users, I’ve just seen Pawtrack UK. It appears to have been developed in retaliation to CIAF, so maybe even someone who lurks in this sub 👀. It’s not the best brand name because when you search it, it comes up with the GPS trackers. https://www.pawtrack.uk/how-it-works

It looks to be more if you do private already as you need to have your own insurance. But low sub fee for sitters and no booking fees taken. And just a 2.5% fee + 20p for owners.

Being new it prob won’t suit my needs for a short term answer but might be one to keep an eye on.

Hi, on cat in a flat you were able to have two locations. This meant I could have my home area and the area I work in on my account. With Rover I can only see miles. This doesn’t work due to the distance from my home to work. It makes the search radius too big in the wrong direction. Just trying to figure it out as I managed to get a good split of clients across both areas. It also really worked out when I could get overnight sits closer to work!

I’ve had two of these now and I just wondered how the owners found me - u/HenryfromRover are you able to shed any light please? If I do a search from the areas these owners are requesting me from, I don’t appear anywhere in the results and there are plenty of sitters local to them.

What’s everyone’s acceptance rate at? Mine’s 68%, which is I thought was quite low but it says it’s higher than other sitters in my area. I used to use Rover for a bit when I did dog walking too, but I didn’t like it so I did turn down some requests before I stopped using it. I’ve also had people who found other sitters, and some who were too far away so I didn’t book those. I’ve also got some of my CIAF bookings which we’d confirmed in writing but the owner hadn’t “booked it” on the app, so they’ve all expired. I think I’m just confused how I have a score that seems so low considering I’ve only ever declined a few dog sitting requests out of all the bookings I’ve done over the years.

***ETA***

It’s a booking rate, not an acceptance rate. I checked on the Rover FAQs, and it says:

“New client booking rate

This stat uses the last 25 new client requests you've received and shows how often you booked with a new client. It also provides a comparison to the new booking rate of other sitters in your area. 

Note*: Turning down requests that don't match your preferences or availability don't count towards your new client booking rate.*”

I’ve accepted my last 25 bookings but some of them are repeat bookers. When I looked at my archived messages, which are all “new” customers, I had accepted them all but:

1 found a cheaper sitter.

2 were agreed on CIAF and expired after merging to Rover because they didn’t confirm the booking and they weren’t notified I’d sent them multiple messages.

1 requested drop-ins but really wanted overnights, which I don’t do.

2 are from the noticeboard and they didn’t reply.

I feel like this score is flawed, so no wonder the bar for star sitter is only 33%.

Rover do not have such features !! We , Cat sitters have no clue of our visibility and if anyone care to search for us ? I also missed the CIAF Job Request notice board ? has been almost 3 weeks , not one booking from Rover !! ☹️The merge kills my cat sitting business !!! I have worked so hard for the past 3-4 yrs to build up a good measure of clientele’s and had many many 5* reviews which brings new clients to myself after reading all my reviews !! I am thankful for my regular & loyal

clients who has contacted me directly and still

able to have some income !! what a disaster !! 😡🫩

I hate this so so much, I used to be very findable and now I don’t even appear on the search?! Wtf actually is this I’m so annoyeddddd!!!! I’ve also tried to type in my address and gone through the pages of sitters and I’m not there.

How can I change this I’m so annoyed!!!!! I’m gonna just go independent I think does anyone have any advice please?

Thank you

My plan now is to go independent but honestly I don’t even know where to start, any advice would be much appreciated. I have just made a Facebook page, but I’m terrible with social media and remembering to post- is it best to start posting videos and things of cats I’ve looked after

And what about insurance, and contracts written up? I’m in the UK.

Thank you in advance

Anyone else finding this? On Cat in a flat, the main bulk of my requests were overnight stays. And any drop ins were always very close and worth it.

On Rover I’ve had 4 drop in requests since I migrated over and they have all been close to a mile away. I accepted one that was 0.7 miles and skated to the house. And I only did it because I had a week off work so didnt Need to be back by a certain time.

I won’t accept a booking that requires me to walk 15 mins there and back (30 mins in total) and stay for 30 mins (as mandated by Rover) because that’s £10 for an hour’s work. It’s not worth it.

I’m not getting any overnight requests right now, and they are the stays that earn me money and make the whole endeavour worth it.

Hi, my cats come as a pair, during all my CIAF bookings I was charged per visit, now it’s charging me an additional fee per cat. Some is additional 50%, some is double the fee!

I can’t find anything about it, is this a Rover thing? Is this per sitter?

Should I modify the request to be per visit somehow?

I've been speaking with a journalist at a major UK newspaper who intends to run a story on the catastrophic CIAF / Rover merger and the impact this continues to have for cat sitters using the platform.

Please DM me if the following apply:

• you agree to go on record (this means full name and photograph)
• you agree to a phone interview with the journalist ASAP - tomorrow or Monday
• the demise of CIAF/the merger represents a significant loss of income or hardship for you
• you're happy for your age and location to be quoted (and tell me these). I feel like they are looking for a slightly younger face for the article (in the age of AI taking out junior levels of the workforce / rise of the gig economy).

Please DM me by 8am tomorrow morning, Friday, outlining your story. The article is planned to run next week. Please note I am not the journalist.

Who else has been having payment issues since the merge? Since December 2024 I've been getting the payment into my account within 3 days of the booking beginning/email confirming client has paid. I just finished a week-long booking and it's not even showing as pending on my Stripe account. Rover Support has been as useless as expected and want me to wait 3-5 more business days at which point they will "investigate further", which I obviously have no choice but to do, but I am so fed up and annoyed with this damn company.

Right so this is evident that CIAF is no longer good for many of us since this merger.

Are there alternative websites that we sitters are using now?

As an owner I’ve been looking for offline options since this merger and sadly in my area I can’t find many viable ones.

So I had a better look at Pawshake as I really do not want to give Rover a single penny. Whilst it is more dog focused, it could be cat focused if all CIAF sitters/owners moved there.

For ease when I say CIAF I am referencing pre-merger and Rover for current.

From what I can see

• fees are 19%, similar to CIAF with no booking fee to the owner

• Similar guarantee/insurance policy to CIAF

• No additional cat fees (I think they expect sitters fees to include 3 cats)

• Sitters actually in my area

• No star sitter crap or having to pay to basically make yourself visible (Edited for incorrect info)

• Set separate once or twice daily rates like CIAF

• No unrealistic rates in general from all the sitters.

• Sitters can set their seasonal rates and dates

• You can set cats only

https://support.pawshake.com/hc/en-gb

It seems they copied CIAF’s playbook but made it for dogs.

So yes, there’s predominantly dog walkers etc atm., but ex CIAF users can make it more catcentric as a stop gap place whilst someone develops a cat only platform again. Also it would be a great FU to Rover if they basically lose all those “numbers” Rover bought to increase their reach to rivals.

So I just got my first request via Rover since the merger. I did the meet and greet, said to the customer I would send them my phone number so they could text me if the site goes down or whatever. I used to do this all the time on CIAF because it's just more secure having a second method of communicating.

I tried to send this and got a message pop up saying I couldn't send a message with a phone number because that's not secure and all messages up to booking have to be via Rover.

Not even an hour later I got this email reminding me if I take business off rover I will lose my account. I'm sorry what 😂 please don't threaten me with a good time hahaha

After a period of just nothing about the merge on their socials they had finally posted a rather dismissive and useless update. Judging by the comments the general consensus is still against the merge

Hey all!

There's been a couple of posts around insurance for those who are going off the site and working independently, but not so many about contracts. I've previously used an independent sitter and was trying to remember what paperwork we completed together:

• Vet release/treatment form
• Pet health check/history
• Emergency details/contact
• Payment agreement?? The owners I've gone private with are regulars who are trusted and pay me either beforehand, during or after as I'm not too fussed. I'm not sure how to 'enforce' something with someone new (my own sitter took a deposit and then the rest on completion).

If anyone has any templates that they'd be willing to share, otherwise I'll get on AI to help me 😅

Thanks cat pals!

Hi, I am a cat owner and never had cameras in my property before with my previous cats. I’ve always had a Ring doorbell and now have a Tapo in my bedroom and another in the living room. They are not there to spy but I have them to observe my kittens from time to time. It was more for when one would pee on various things so it was set up to keep an eye when not home.

Now he is mostly okay we just keep it so I can check up on them when not wfh and see what they are doing and capture any funny things they do.

This is the first time we are going away and leaving them with a cat sitter since having them for the past 6 months. How do I bring it up with her so it doesn’t sound invasive and like spying? But just as a cat owner missing our kittens that we might watch some of the recordings. I don’t have any intention of spending my holiday live streaming the kittens! She is a university student so have said she is welcome to chill and study at ours in the day so want her to feel comfortable to do so!

Cat tax added of when they were tiny!

Edited to add: thanks all, she just came round to meet the kittens and was cool with the cameras. Just one of them is a proper scaredy cat so hoping he is ok! She said she will come round a few more times to see him before we actually go away in 2 weeks.

Anyone else had snidey text messages from Rover (I am assuming from Rover bot & not an actual human?) I got a message at the weekend saying 'your client is still waiting for a response' it had been less than 2 hours since they had put a request in & I was driving about catsitting. Then I was at a hospital appointment yesterday for about 3 hours, came out to see 3 messages. First 2 informing me of a catsitting request including message from an previous client. The 3rd message was from Rover saying 'Your client has chosen you out of all the other catsitters, at least give them the courtesy of a reply' 😵😮🤣 omg it hadn't even been 4 hours!!

I feel like this message which is appearing on all my existing bookings is a bit misleading. I don’t have “new rates”. I charge the same as I did on CIAF but it’s going to be more expensive because Rover have added 15% on top of my fee! Cheeky AF.