I've only had two bad experiences with New England Nanny, but when you're charged with caring for…read moreother people's children...two negative experiences (one that could have cost me my job and the other that killed my cat) in the span of less than a year is more than enough to severe ties with a company. They're great for parents who have an ever-changing work schedule and for whom daycare might not be the most ideal. They're generally pretty good about fairly last minute assignments and changes and the sitters we've had have, for the most part, been pretty good, although some are inexperienced college kids. They also don't have an emergency line to reach out to the company outside of business hours and the line they always use when something goes wrong is "in all the years we've been around, we haven't had something like this happen!" Except, I doubt I'm THAT unlucky to have all this crazy stuff happen to my family? Don't think that's plausible.
Now for the bad:
The first incident was over the winter. There was an impending snow storm, but it hadn't started yet. I get a phone call from our assigned sitter asking if I still needed her because she didn't want to drive that far in the winter (don't effing accept assignments in Albany if you live in Glens Falls then!). I explained that I had a class to teach that couldn't be cancelled and I had no sub coverage so, YES, I did still need her but if the weather got terrible, I would try to figure something out. She got to my house on time, I went to work, it was fine. At 10:30am (still no snow yet), I got a text from her, frantic, because she was watching the news and apparently there was going to be a travel ban at 2:00pm for the Northway because of the potential storm we were expecting and she was afraid if I didn't get home by noon that she wouldn't be able to make it home. It didn't sound quite right but why would a caretaker lie, especially about something so easily fact-checked, right? WRONG! So, I left work extremely early (I was supposed to be there until 6), lost wages, risked losing my job by leaving so early unexpectedly, rushed home by noon (still no snow!), paid her and she left. Suddenly, it dawned on me how strange the whole thing sounded and I googled it! No, no! Travel ban was actually issued at 8AM (not 2pm) for trailer-style transport vehicles. Not some dumb B's 2001 Toyota Carola! So I call the agency, furious. They apologized and refunded my fee (but not for what I'd paid the sitter, which they should have done, given the fact that she didn't do her job, lied to me, risked my own job, and lost me quite a bit in pay). Also, fun twist to the story: it didn't start snowing until 4pm and even then, it was only flurries. Also! She is still currently employed by them.
Incident two occurred yesterday. The sitter showed up, made a joke about how she's not a fan of cats but mine were cool because they were small. I didn't think anything of it. She was really nice, my one year old son clearly liked her a lot and throughout the day, I checked on them via text, no problems. I get home and am told that my strictly indoor, one eyed, 3/4 blind young cat ran out of the house while I was gone and she "didn't know if he was supposed to" but that she "wasn't going to go after him." Well, he's rushed the front door like that before I doubt today was a different story. He runs out the front and then freezes, slowly exploring the porch. I mean, he's missing an eye and has some damage to the other, he's not going anywhere strange very fast. He's easy to catch if you just step out the door and grab him. So i ran to pick my daughter up at school and we come home to look for our boy. We look around the perimeter of our house and under the porches for about half an hour before we hear some woman across the street scream, because she found a dead cat on our across the street neighbor's lawn, clearly hit by a car. OUR DEAD CAT, who couldn't even make it across the street on his first try, poor buddy! My seven year old is utterly devastated. I called them but it was around 5:00 so no one was there. I found their Facebook page and messaged them but after a half hour, I hunted down the company owner's personal pages and messaged them. I finally had someone call me back and they apologized, said "nothing like this has ever happened" and when I explained that after this I was DONE with the company and that this may have been a "mistake" but that it's not like a "my bad" can change the reality that my daughter's cat is dead, she should have instantly offered me a refund on the membership fee I'd paid in February since I will no longer be using their service. Or offered to pay the adoption fee on a new cat when we were ready to do so. Or offer to pay cremation fees for our young, perfectly healthy cat who died a completely preventable death. I also own a small local business, so I know what I'm talking about. They didn't handle this appropriately.