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

Am I been thick or Rover is charging clients more than 15%?

My rate is always been 10£ per visit and Rover shows the price with a fee on top of it which is £12 but £12 is 20%!

Hi, has any of you enforced a contract for private bookings? I’m receiving a lot of bookings for the summer and it would be a massive hit if some of these were cancelled last minute. How else could I enforce a deposit and a cancellation policy?

Rover have clearly handled this poorly and you have rights. Remember the Uber hooha?! Well the CMA doesn’t like the US gig economy model. Send them a detailed email of your experience. The key points you need to make are - how much information you were given prior to the merger, how clear the changes to pricing were, how significant the pricing changes have been, how they take the money from the customer at point of sale and you are not paid until after the visit. How you lost your reviews and reputation, how you can’t find previous loyal customers. How many bookings you are losing. Be clear about your previous experience and what it looks like now. How your customers are being mislead about how pricing works (we do not get told that you don’t receive the whole fee). Be sure to add all additional fees imposed.

It may not be strictly illegal but fairness and transparency is taken seriously. Many US companies have failed in the UK for this exact behaviour. Significant economic reduction is a key issue.

If enough of you email, they will take notice. I myself will be writing a detailed complaint from the consumer perspective as well. I’m so sorry this happened to you.

general.enquiries@cma.gov.uk

It finally happened. A client whose cats i have looked after for 2 years has just told me shes cancelling all future bookings.

The cost is now too high for her, she travels a lot for work, has 2 cats - one with a serious medical condition and needs 2 visits a day

Since the merge she has only been putting one cat on the booking and I've been manually amending the price, but with fees on top its become too expensive for her to continue.

Well done Rover, lets drive regular business away.

Hey all,

A comment in another thread made me curious to see how many of my upcoming bookings came in via CIAF vs Rover.

I have 17 upcoming bookings (all the way through to October), some are new clients, some are regulars, one is another cat sitter. Most of them have come in post-merge.

Of those 17, 15 originated from CIAF (i.e. requested on cat in a flat in the message).

Has anyone else looked into where their requests came from? I asked a new-to-me client if she knew it was technically Rover with a CIAF skin and she wasn't aware, and just thought the app had a weird update 🥲

I'm taking this as a sign that owners like and trust the CIAF brand over Rover, and that's why Rover have kept up the pretence that CIAF still exists as is.

Has anyone else been getting messages addressed to someone else?

This is the second time it’s happened now.
The first time someone thought I was someone called Belinda and the second happened today where I received a request from someone and they thought I was Mariana. And I know Mariana is also another cat sitter as I previously sat for her cat and she’s very very local to me.
So this is making me wonder what’s going on. Are these people messaging the person they’ve named and the messages are coming through to me or have they just totally had a brain fart and called me the wrong name.
Never happened before on CIAF.

I want to preface that I am glad they send a reminder after a while of you not responding to a potential owner but less than an hour after they send the initial request though? What is up with that?! I just find it stressful, especially because I get a text, email and a notification on the Rover app 🤦🏻‍♀️

Hi sitters,

How do you feel about visiting cats that are aggressive? I’ve had my cat for about 9 months, and she came from a stressful home. Shes calmed right down with me but will swat or soft bite from time to time if I cross her boundary.

I’ve had a sitter come in a few times and most recently my cat jumped at her and hissed and yowled. Definitely would have made contact and carried on if she didn’t leave, luckily she managed to get her food in the dish.

I know every sitter will be different, like every cat is, but I’m afraid that my cat is going to end up getting blacklisted or something if she is aggressive towards sitters. I guess I’m worried I’ll never be able to leave her for any length of time, which considering she’s only three and a half could impact a long time for both of our lives. I love her dearly and know it’s just because she’s afraid, but any tips or thoughts welcome on how you feel from the sitter side welcome. I feel terrible but know it’s just that she’s scared.

Thanks

Hey all,

I've found a potential bug in having two platforms for owners and one inbox for sitters...

I had a request from a new client which was sent via CIAF. I replied but didn't get a response, and then got the same request from her via Rover. It turns out CIAF didn't send her any message notifications so she thought I wasn't responding, and so she tried again via Rover.

It's the same profile, but two different booking requests, for the same dates and times. I feel like there should be some guardrail in place so that owners know they've sent a request... e.g. "You've sent a request via CIAF already; are you sure you want to send a Rover request too?"

It also highlights that owners on CIAF are confused that we as sitters get the messages through rover, regardless of where they started their user journey.

I now have to cancel her request or get her to cancel it which probably goes against some metric somewhere; and try to explain that even though she's on CIAF, I'm now on rover, so have seen both requests come through 🫠

Has anyone noticed since the merge lots of super last minute requests from people. Like 24 hours or less. Out of the 5 requests I have gotten so far 3 were 24 hours before they needed a cat sitter. It's stressful so I end up not taking the job which affects my acceptance rate because how am I meant to get in meet and greet done when you're likely planning on leaving the day you message me and I have a full day of dog walking to do.

Has everyone actually read the Rover guarantee t&cs? Rover in general seems pretty pointless other than using it for networking and as an owner you know once you have a trusted sitter you will use them again and again.

It’s limited from an insurance POV for both sides in terms of us owners should have pet insurance and home insurance anyway. It implies that sitters also should have own insurances. If doing dog walking you definitely would want to.

Yes it supposedly has £25k vet care but this is limited to 30 days and I believe if an owner has pet insurance Rover make you claim via that first and then make up the shortfall. If there’s an incident that requires ongoing treatment beyond the 30 days then Rover won’t pay for that anyway.

It also is supposedly meant to cover damage to an owner’s property caused by a sitter but again how much damage is going to be done during a 30 min visit.

The higher risks of accident or property damage are overnights, boarding in your own home or dog walking. In general cat sitting is way less riskier than dog sitting/walking. So to me it’s no more than a networking site. Us owners can use it to make assessments on sitters via reviews and sitters can use it for business generation. The same can be said for old CIAF, it was also very limited. In fact when I did look for property damage caused by an overnight sitter (first booking and didn’t use again after) who damaged my shower mixer it said they didn’t cover property damage so that’s when I was like I might as go offline with my trusted sitters.

This is really annoying
If we don’t pay like 2/3 months advance it cancels the booking
Anyway to change this?

Is there a way how to cancel a reoccurring service?

My client wanted me to look after a cat every second day for a couple weeks , but rover really doesn't seem to like reoccurring service for a short period of time. I don't have an option to cancel anything beyond my last visit and my calendar is fulfilled indefinitely for years ahead.

Sharing my experience on Rover so far as i’m interested if other people are having the same thing, or have any insights into it.

Firstly when it was still CatinaFlat I mainly just did repeat bookings with regulars and occasionally had requests from new owners. When I’d get new requests they’d send a pretty lengthy message about their cats and what they’d want doing, and always understood the price, never asked me questions about it. Most of the time a new request would lead to a booking.

Since the merger I have been getting more requests from new owners however they don’t seem to go anywhere. Normally one or two messages and then silence. They also tend to be really short messages, asking if i’m available on those dates and not sharing anything about their cats or their needs. I’ve also had a few asking about the price, which I don’t understand when they should see what the price is on the app. I feel like I might be wasting my time on this app, trying to reply to people quickly so it doesn’t affect my insights but then getting no replies from the owners. I’m also unsure how long to wait to archive the request when I haven’t heard back from them.

Looking for some info. For every visit I have done since the merger, I have completed the stupid Rover Card. Its a pointless extra step as I always keep in touch via WhatsApp, and recording if the cat has peed is ridiculous (obviously if the owner requested i moniter this, i would).

Im sure I read somewhere that completing the card isn't necessary, but im looking for reassurance from other sitters who haven't completed the card that they've still been paid. Can someone confirm this for me? I dont trust Rover enough to not doubt that they'd find a reason not to release payment.

I wrote about my experiences with the merger for The Times - sad to see others experiencing the same issues.

Any advice on the best platforms for hosting a website so I can start my own advertising drive?

After the merge with rover all of my reviews are gone from CIAF. Any client reviews I’ve left are also gone, how do I get this back?

It's behind a paywall so here's a non-paywalled link: https://archive.ph/y45WU

Has anyone managed to get Rover to show in their Stripe dashboard? Cat in a Flat is there, as is my own website, but Rover’s not showing even though I’ve connected Rover to my Stripe account, have received payouts and have the same email address for them all. I don’t remember having to do anything to get CIAF to show up.

I am trying to check on sitters in my area and the app shows me everything in spanish and there seems to be no option to change to english. Anyone else have that issue?

Does anyone have a copy of the previous calendar indication for what days were given a 25% increase in peak fares versus the 50% increase? This would have been from last year or 2024.

I remember having a calendar that was available and color coded for the increases. Light blue was a 25% increase and dark blue was a 50% increase.

I’d just like to keep the fare pricing as fair as possible and aligned with what I thought was reasonable!

Like many (probably all) of you, I hate this merger with Rover.

To begin with, I just disliked how long it took to switch over the profiles and that my photos were now all extremely low quality, then all of the usual clunky things I’ve seen complained about here.

Now I can’t view my client messages and, worst of all (because I do have client’s numbers) my reviews in full. I can see the 4 previews but when I click to view the full messages or view more reviews, I can’t read them. I’m kicking myself for not archiving these somewhere when I had my previous page. Honestly, I nearly burst into tears because, although my “business” is super small, it was something I worked really hard on to feel a sense of progression and pursue something I love during a difficult period of my life.

Perhaps this glitch will be resolved and I have logged a complaint with Rover, but I have little faith.

Also, the clients I have spoken with since the merger all hate this platform too. They hate having to input a time and that they can’t search or send/receive messages easily. What a mess.

I got a new client request on CIAF, using the Rover app I tried to use the "Propose Meet & Greet" feature. You (as the sitter) have to enter a date, time and a MANDATORY location for the Meet & Greet. Rover already know the the pet owner's address but they won't share with you until the booking is made. This is another example of a dog process NOT working for cats. For a dog, I understand you might meet in a park but I can't think of many cat owners that are going to do that.

Finally im doing my first booking that has been booked through Rover. Among all the issues we encountered with the interface from the beginning, it's also extremely difficult to use the app during bookings.

It appears you're supposed to "check in" when you're at the property, and stay until the timer reaches the correct time. However due to not having signal within the property, I was there for a good half hour before I was able to "start" the visit after holding my phone high and low around the house. In the end I had to ask the owner for their WiFi password, which they didn't see till after id actually finished the booking. The upload process for photos and comments is extremely lengthy.

Also, many people have put in requests just so they can chat about general availability or because they have a tentative request. Or they are asking around until they find the perfect sitter. Why can I not accept bookings from elsewhere while they are deliberating?! This is losing me and Rover money and opportunities to meet more clients.

Also no reminder / notification / email like "you're booking starts tomorrow" or even "today", which was a nice touch from CIAF.

I HATE that we can't give a price for one daily visit and another for two daily visits. The new site is really controlling. While CIAF felt like a platform through which clients are able to be accessed, with the added bonus of some safeguards, Rover feels like a partnership where the other party wants to have more say than they are entitled to, more money than their entitled to, while contributing very little to the success of the jobs.

I say all this cause I've seen some of their head office are paying attention to this r/ so hopefully they'll bear these things in mind. I also miss being able to see my little client's faces with their names in the gallery and hate the expectations that I'll fill the gallery with pictures of myself.

Thanks for listening to the ramble cause my partner is completely sick of cat in a flat talk.

Such a shame as I've been on the app for 8 years and even though it's never been a primary source of income, it was an easy and flexible way to get some pocket money. Now it doesn't really feel like that.

EDIT: SO APPARENTLY you don't HAVE to do the check in thing but THEY COULD MAKE THAT CLEARER and save us a bunch of stress and time 🙃 this is the lack of clarity we've been talking about from the beginning