How to charge for problems after booking (extra cleaning)?
Edit: see what I’ve learned after a few years below! Hi all, I accepted a request from an owner for a 4 month old puppy under the condition she was house trained and kennel trained. So far neither of these things have proven to be true as she has had 5 accidents in the house despite being on 45 mins walks 3X a day, spending a ton of time outside, and 30 min breaks inside. She holds it until she gets in the house and then goes right on the carpet immediately. She is also very food aggressive and toy aggressive. She's bitten me pretty hard several times. She screamed her head off when she had to go in the kennel at bed time and when I left to run errands today. I am going to have to get the carpets cleaned, and it was suggested I should charge the client for this. I think it's about $30 to rent a cleaner. I only charge $28 for holiday and if I don't charge him for the cleaning I will have basically dealt with a difficult puppy for nothing. However I am concerned about a bad review from the owner for charging him. Can anyone provide me some insight? How do I charge him extra, and what is the best way to approach this?
Hi all! I wanted to come back to this for any newbies like I was at the time since this thread gets a lot of comments and views. Now that I have 2 years experience on Rover this is what I have learned: -ALWAYS meet and greet. If you can’t don’t accept. The few times I didn’t meet and greet things similar to this and worse happened. -Asking after the fact for destroyed property/cleaning isn’t a good idea and I wouldn’t suggest it. I didn’t end up asking this owner for anything. I now see it as part of doing business. I actually don’t take boarding requests anymore :( it’s just not worth it to me. -Charge significantly more for puppies. Even in their own home. -Be very clear ahead of time with pricing. -Ask in depth questions about training at the meet and greet. There are several good meet and greet forms out there. -Learn to recognize the red flags of dog aggression/dishonest parents. This takes time. The above dog bit me so badly I had to go to the doctor. She shook my hand in her mouth and would not let go. Had I paid better attention I would have noticed the several deep wounds on the owners hands as well. I have also declined clients who could not control their dogs on meet and greet.
I hope this helps! Thanks to everyone who gave advice!
Although I have not had this issue and like yourself have been doing dog sitting for several years now, I thought that was a wonderful idea for you to come back a few years later and answer your own question. Hopefully it will help new sitters out. Take care!! -Erica