I assume you are reading this to figure out whether you should use EurAupair for their services as a host family. Perhaps you are reading because you are thinking about becoming an au pair. I'll tell you about my personal horror story as a host father and the extend in which this company is helpful when things get complicated.
I have to say, the beginning part was very efficient and easy. They have a robust system to match you with an au pair and collect money. Our au pair arrived in August to take care of our 1 year old son. I will not write a review about the au pair experience here since it is not relevant. Let's just say things were going ok and we were trying to improve the relationship and thinking long term.
However it all came to an end in December. As you might have heard, au pairs have a mandatory meetup which apparently they charge the au pairs some amount of money (crazy thinking how little these girls make). For December meetup, the over the top genius coordinator decided that she should take ~30 au pairs taking care of small children to the ice skating ring. When I heard about this I raised some questions as to the inherent risk of the activity especially for a first timer, assuming most of these girls probably haven't done it before. It is unfortunately easy to sell the idea to a ~20 year old girl, they think they will be skating like the olympics before the day end. That was what our au pair thought anyway.
Needless to say I received a call around 10pm that night from the coordinator saying that I should come immediately and take our au pair to get some xrays. I wasn't sure how serious the injury was so I hoped she sprained an ankle. I arrived in about 30 minutes to find out that her wrist was completely shattered in 2 pieces. Instead of calling an ambulance to take her to the hospital, the coordinator decided that it is better to make her wait 1 hour there with one of the worst fractures I have seen in my life. My first instinct was to help her, so I got her in the car and drove to the ER. Looking back, this was a blatant attempt from the coordinator to play hot potato as she hasn't driven to the hospital or came back later to check up on her. We spent that night in the ER, me and the au pair, without any help from the company.
Next day I started making some calls trying to figure out the situation since both me and my wife work and we needed somebody to take care of our son. I was stuck at the hospital so both of us had to use our days off to figure out the situation. I called the coordinator next day to figure out how to remedy the situation. She offered more or less no help, saying that she was doing this job voluntarily and that for help I should call the area coordinators. After a lot of yelling, she agreed to spend 1 hour of her time at the hospital so that I can go home to get my stuff, the only hour she spent at the hospital. That was the last hour she spent time with our au pair.
For the next week, I tried to reach the area coordinator and the region coordinator regarding the issue, trying to learn how to handle the situation. At the same time, I was working on scheduling the surgery for our au pair, handling issues with insurance, hospitals and doctors. I received no call, nothing, from the company during this period. Company completely ghosted. They effectively dumped the au pair's situation onto our laps and let things be.
This last part is important for the girls thinking about signing up as au pairs to read as well, if something goes wrong during your time as an au pair with this company, you are on your own. You are at the mercy of your host family and your friends if you have any. Probably non of your friends can realistically help you in this type of situation.
After the surgery about couple of weeks into the incident, the region coordinator contacted to see how things are. Later in the call I realized that the only reason why she was calling was to make sure that in case our au pair is not going to perform her job, she would have to leave the country since her visa status is no longer going to be valid. Talking to other au pairs I noticed that they did in fact reach out to one of her friends during the time I was asking for their help, trying to explain the situation that she should leave the country once the surgery is done. They were describing how she can book her tickets back home during the time she was high out of her mind from the pain killers.
So their only goal during this time was to kick her out of the country.
I don't know how this situation would have panned out with other companies. But my suggestion is to definitely not acquire the services of this company since you would be exposing yourself to great risk, both as a host family and an au pair.
tl;dr During my two weeks from hell after our au pair broke her arm at a mandated company event, I received no help from the EurAupair. They dumped her, and later worked to kick her out of the country. read more