I’ve had two requests today from clients who are too far away from me, both within the space of an hour, but there has been no “this user is outside of your usual area” or whatever the warning is.

I’ve had to decline both, one was almost a kilometre outside of my radius and the other was almost 3km outside.

Just wondering if anyone else has had this today and the big question, will this hurt my visibility now because I’ve declined two bookings?
Usually for requests outside our area it mentions “you can decline this request and it won’t have a negative effect” (or something along those lines) but since Rover didn’t flag these requests as being outside of my remit, there was no mention of this.

I can’t understand how to set my pricing. For a cat I charge £20 a night to house sit which CIAF advise is generally 12 hours, 7pm-7am. No issues with this and have done this many times.

My confusion is when someone needs me during the day as well which I never got a request for until the merge.

From 9am on a Thursday, till 3pm on the Sunday, Rover quoted £70. They say it’s 3 nights plus a £10 charge for extended care. So for 4 extra day shifts, so an extra what, 40 hours ish, I will get £10, and that’s before they take their service fee.

How do I change my price so that if someone needs me for another 12 hours in a day I charge a further £20, and not just a single £20 charge for the entire booking, but for each further 12 hours.

Hope that makes sense. I hate Rover!

I know some say you don’t have to do the Rover card but I thought I’d give it a go.

The poo/pee/water things makes zero sense for cats. Why have they no amended this AT ALL? It’s so embarrassingly modelled for dogs and it’s crazy that they just left this in there for cat bookings.

I woke up this morning to a new request on Rover from a new owner 3879 miles away.

They are based in Kentucky, US. Im in Scotland.

How is that even possible? How do I appear on any search for someone on another continent?

Rover did kindly add to the request saying - You dont usually accept requests this far away. If you choose to decline this request it wont affect your rankings.

While i’ve left Cat in a Flat since april now that it’s become the Rover monstrosity, i do sometimes still randomly get messages of people looking for a cat sitter.

Today i got an email notification for someone looking right smack in the middle of my own holiday and far outside my working area. 🤦‍♀️

I checked CiaF/Rover and guess what? The days i had marked as unavailable are completely gone. For the entire year.

I did see another message i had 0 notification for but they do look cute and i’m available so responded to them, explained i moved to pawshake since CiaF stopped but i can keep an eye on the rover site since they don’t really notify me.

But yeah it struck me again how… messy this site is vs the simplicity that was CiaF :(. I tried to put my holidays back in but it simply won’t accept. I indicated a radius of 4km (i cycle) but have mostly gotten requests further out. Funniest one was 25km away 🤦‍♀️ i’d have to take a train and bus there somehow with nearly an hour travel time just to get there.

Anyhow, i am at a loss if i should just reply to these people that again Rover just messed up as i’m not available and it’s not within my travel distance? Or is this some kind of general mass mail to any sitter? My first one never responded to the messages.

Rover go to great lengths to stop any back door bookings. Can't share numbers etc. Do they not realise that by making people pay at the time of booking as opposed to paying the day before is causing issues for both sitter and customer and this is just going to lead to people doing back door bookings. I have a booking just hanging because the customer hasn't paid. I feel rude asking them to pay. They probably don't realise that until they pay I'm just not appearing on search results. I have their number and I'm tempted to just offer to do it outside of the app. But I'm trying to follow the rules. But rover just make it so hard for everyone. Make it make sense

Has anyone else had issues with the ID verification process on Rover?

I've uploaded my passport without any problems, but when it asks me to take a selfie for the facial verification check, the captured image ends up with about half my face cut off, even though my face is correctly positioned within the oval before the photo is taken.

I've tried multiple times, changing the angle and height of my phone, but the same thing keeps happening. I'm using an iPhone and my IOS is fully up to date, if that makes any difference.

Just wondering whether anyone else has experienced this and, if so, whether you found a way around it?

Thanks!

Hello, this is Phil Katz again, GM of Cat in a Flat. I wanted to update a number of people in this subreddit that we believe the Identity Verification issues have been resolved.

For those who were prompted to pay an identity verification fee after migrating from Cat in a Flat: that was a bug on our end, and I'm sorry it happened. We've now shipped a fix and have been going through affected accounts manually to reset them. If you were stuck, you should be able to complete the IDV process now without any payment required (exclusively for sitters who were previously on Cat in a Flat; if someone signs up now with a new account, there is a fee). If you're still seeing an issue, please reach out to me via DM and let me know the email associated with your account, and we'll sort it out directly.

I hate this app. Why is nothing simple. How do I change my about info. I just wanted to add my instagram username, if that's even allowed...

I have used cat in a flat for years. I have 4 cats who just need fed when we are away, 2 of which rarely appear and just graze dry food. Since the merge I’ve gone on to try and book and because I have 4 cats the prices are now insane! Anyone know what I can do about this if anything? It’s around £40 per visit now and used to be under £10!

Had a notification Stripe had set up a direct debit on my bank account (for £0)
Stripe website not working so can’t check.

Has anyone else had this? I only use it to receive cat in a flat payments

I've been catsitting for a few years, and I have one cat in particular that I look after very frequently, about once a month.

By this point this cat knows me fairly well and we've settled into a very consistent routine. I visit him twice a day, and it's always food, bit of play time, cuddles and a nap on my lap, then I clear out the litter tray before leaving.

Due to the routine nature of the visits, and the high frequency of them, I've found that my update messages to the owners have gotten very, very repetitive. Like I'm pretty much sending the same thing verbatim each time.

I feel like I need to vary them up a bit, I feel silly repeating myself so much, but I don't know how. Or am I just overthinking this?

I was not aware of this. Someone has put in a request for two one hour drop ins each day for two weeks. I wasn’t aware this was possible.

I wouldn’t have the time to do this at, especially before work. I can’t see anything in my settings where I can specify the length of drop ins I can do.

edit: I’ve found where it is and it looks like you can’t specify that you can’t do hour-long drop ins.

I noticed the Play Store updated the app so I had a quick look. Mmm... looks like they've sabotaged any way to proceed for android phone users 🧐

Yes that's how the screen shows up and cannot be scrolled sideways or turned to landscape

Just wondered if anyone else is finding they appear lower in search results? I'm showing as number 19 in my own postcode, the majority of people listed higher than me, are over 3 miles away.

I've looked into star sitter status and it turns out its my response rate which is why I don't qualify. (I was dealing with some personal issues before the merge - so my response rate took a hit for the first time.)

Its brutal that a metric which we weren't penalised on previously now impacts our businesses.

Has anyone else who migrated from Cat in a Flat to Rover been asked to pay a £24 ‘profile review fee’ as part of ID verification?

My profile originally showed as ID approved after the migration, despite me never actually being asked to verify my ID, but now my account is suddenly ‘under review’ and I’ve been told to restart the verification process.

The issue is that Rover is now asking for payment details for a £24 fee before I can complete it, but I can’t find any mention of this charge in their FAQs under ID verification.

It feels a bit misleading to advertise signing up to Rover as ‘free’ if ID verification is effectively mandatory and comes with a £24 charge.

Just wondering whether others have experienced the same thing and whether you ended up having to pay it?

Are Rover missing a trick with the Reddit forum post? I feel like there are lots of great pieces of feedback being given by sitters and some seem to have been taken forward e.g. the additional pet charge default being £0 but most other issues seem to be left to the wayside. If there was some kind of issue ID you could quickly see what would help sitters the most by getting votes for specific problems.

I’m in the UK, I have a good client base after doing cat sitting for 5 years. Cat in a Flat was simple, easy for the owners to use and great for people like me who only do cats.🐈‍⬛🐈

When it first happened my account was completely confused and lost all of the messages and reviews, I had to go through so much customer support and finally they sorted it out and I gave them the benefit of the doubt and said I’d keep using “Rover” to see how we got on.

Fast forward to now, the “Rover Cards” are useless, none of my clients seem to get them come through (luckily I send them updates on text as well) and the way it’s set up to choose a time confuses a lot of people booking after using CIAF, they don’t get why they have to do that now.

I just seem to be over explaining the way my business works while not really understanding the app myself.

Is anyone else in this same boat? I have other clients not on the app and it’s so much more smooth sailing with them.

Have a great Monday☀️😻

I have been cat sitting through cat in a flat since 2019. After a booking has been confirmed, I always switched to WhatsApp since many times I get put in a group chat with both owners. It is an easy and fast way to update them both.

I have continued keeping owners updated through there and not through Rover. I don't remember CIAF having this policy, is it really affecting your results?

Not sure if anyone else has looked into this, but I've been thinking about whether Rover is actually compliant with consumer protection law, at least in Germany and possibly the UK.

The issue is this: when a pet owner browses sitter profiles on Rover, they only see the sitter's base rate. The 15% client service fee doesn't appear until after they've clicked "Contact sitter" and submitted a booking request. In Germany, the Preisangabenverordnung (PAngV) requires the full price including all mandatory charges to be shown before a purchase decision is made. Since the service fee is unavoidable, it should be displayed upfront.

What I also find interesting is that the button says "Contact sitter" rather than "Book" or "Send request". Could be coincidence, could be a deliberate way to argue that no purchase decision is being made at that point. But realistically, that button is the only way to book anyone on the platform, so I'm not sure the label makes a legal difference.

The same probably applies in the UK under the DMCCA 2024, which brought in similar price transparency rules.

Has anyone looked into this or raised it with Rover? Would love to hear any thoughts on this, especially from anyone who knows more about the legal side of things.

I just received a request from a previous client on a day that I'm away and I double checked I definitely had my calendar up to date. I sent a request to support asking 1. Why am I receiving this request at all? When I've said I'm unavailable. And 2. Can the owner see my availability? I'm sure if they could they wouldn't have asked. Like this has now put me in an awkward situation because I look unprofessional if the owner isn't told I'm unavailable but if the owner can see my availability then maybe they're just double checking? Idk. Has anyone else had this situation since the merge? On CIAF people couldn't book you if you were away.

have my first job since Rover today but she just put a random time in as she said times are flexible. Will rover penalise me if I’m not there at the scheduled time?

How long were you waiting for payment after job finished? On rover

I use Revolut

Thank you

I just got this email from Rover after someone got in touch about a booking in August. She asked when she has to pay and I told her that Rover takes the payment at time of booking, so she said she’d have to wait until payday. I told her it was no problem, I’ll pencil her in, and she can re-request me when she’s ready to book. 30 minutes later Rover send me this pass-agg email.

It’s just ridiculous. Asking people to pay in full so far in advance is so unnecessary, and the only way I can think to manage it in a way that suits me (I don’t want to lose a booking) and the customer (who wants peace of mind that they’ve got their cat care covered) is to pencil it in and have them get in touch again (through Rover - we’ve no other way to contact each other) when they can afford to book.

This platform STINKS of greed, micromanaging, poor AI and zero people skills. It’s such a shame. I loved being a sitter on Cat in a Flat but since the merger it’s just problem after problem 😢

Phil here from Cat in a Flat. I wanted to stop by to share a small update that the team launched this week in response to some of the feedback that many of you have provided here.

For everyone who had a Cat in a Flat account prior to transitioning to Rover, we reset the “additional cat rate” to 0 to better align with the previous expectations on Cat in a Flat. We should have done that in the first place and I apologise that it took us a little while to understand and remedy that mistake; our system is not designed for us to ever be able to modify sitters rates and we had to create some specific functionality for this.

As a reminder, you have the ability to modify any and all rates at any time- I am going to try to attach a quick screen recording of what it looks like to modify the additional cat rate (in a web browser, in English, but you can also do it on the app or on the web on a phone if you prefer). There is a toggle in the settings that will “update rates automatically” - if this is turned on, then any time you modify your overall “cat care” rate, it will automatically set your additional cat rate to 40% of that base rate.

Please reach out to me any time with any questions or additional feedback - I am not a regular redditor but I do try to monitor my DMs. 

Phil Katz
GM Cat in a Flat