What should I do about receiving a 1 star review?

That's disappointing that your first experience on Rover didn't go so well. Although that one star review doesn't help, at least she didn't write scathing comments, so that may actually be overlooked by potential future clients.

You're not offering Boarding, which is Rover's most requested service - though I understand why, I wouldn't suggest it because you work away from home full time with a kitten and Pittie puppy (not ideal environment to welcome pet guests). This may be why you're not getting much contact for other services. From the perspective of the pet owner, if you work full time and have two pets of your own to care for, when will you be available for theirs and how much attention can you provide. In order to grow your pet care business, I'd suggest you may want to address this on your profile - adding the hours you're available to dote on theirs (lunch break? _PM evening through _AM morning?).

That's the thing about reviews...if the sitter could have the unfavorable ones removed, the results would not be an accurate representation of how clients feel. Unfortunately that means you're stuck with it. The only caveat I can think of is Rover's policy on what is NOT allowed in a review, as listed here: https://support.rover.com/hc/en-us/ar...

If you really feel confused about it, send them a text thanking them for the opportunity to care for their pet, that you noticed they left a 1 star review, apologize and ask for suggestions on how you can improve. If nothing else at least you may find out why they left it.

In the meantime get some new testimonials in so that the 1 star doesn't constantly pop up in Search Results.

Don't fret too much, this isn't the end of the world and you CAN recover. I would first reach out to the client that left the 1-star review and say that you enjoyed caring for their dog and are wondering what you could have done to improve the experience? 'A one-star review greatly hurts my business so please let me know what I can do moving forward.' There is still a possibility that there was some confusion on her end and she didn't mean to leave a bad rating or might feel bad about hurting your business after speaking with you further. She might have left the 1-star in the heat of the moment and feels differently now. You can also contact the husband and ask what you could do to improve if the wife doesn't respond.

Do you have friends or neighbors that have dogs? See if any are going away or could use walks for their pets, book them through Rover and ask them all to leave reviews.

Sorry to hear you were bitten and also about the 1-star review. Looks to me the wife wasn't happy with the overall care provided compounded by the biting incident. As you aready know Rover will not remove the bad review and that will hurt your potential for a long time, fingers crossed your business recovers.

What can you do? Take and pass the Rover 101 quiz and get the badge, it is important https://www.rover.com/rover-101/?fbcl...

Your testimonials are out of date so ask a few more people to leave current ones for you

We cannot see how large you set your service area so I would consider making it larger if you have it set less than 10 miles. Without clients you may have to travel further to get some clients, then some good reviews to help off set the 1 star and bump up the average. Best of luck to you

I completely agree with all of the suggestions from Walt, Cindy & Stephen, and Deb. It also looks like you updated your calendar 14 days ago. Even if you haven't had any changes it's good to go in and click the "calendar updated for the next 2 weeks" button every few days. It shows that you are actively checking Rover. So in a nutshell, take the Rover 101 quiz (link from Walt), update your profile to directly address when and how much time you can devote to other pets and maybe what happens with your pets when you're taking care of others, and ask for some more up-to-date reviews. I would also remove the photo of the bite from your profile.

The good news is that you don't have scathing comments on your profile. The bad news is that the 1 star is unfortunately very glaring and because they didn't leave comments you can't put in a nicely written, non-offensive response. If you're comfortable contacting the client and asking about the 1 star, kindly and with the attitude of apology and wanting to know so you can improve (as Cindy & Stephen suggested).

I hope it works out! Good luck!

This is all great advice, but keep in mind that reviews and testimonials are completely different (reviews are Rover confirmed clients, testimonials can be anyone you know). For instance, you can have 20 5-star reviews and 1 bad review, but that one probably won’t effect your stars. So you most likely will recover. But if you have 1 review that is 1-star, but have 20 testimonials, you will still only have 1 star. Your rating is based off of verified stays and all comments on your profile show whether they are or not.

I'm sorry that your first booking went so bad but I commend you for keeping at it! My mind can't comprehend how on earth this person felt compelled to write you a 1-star review when it sounds like you didn't do anything wrong and it was HER dog that bit you while you were helping her out. Hope you're doing okay.

Have you tried Reaching out to Rover to fix this? I'm unsure if reviews can be removed but with a compelling case like yours I'd hope they could do something for you or at the very least hear you out and warn others of this client. There's a section under "help" for feedback when you contact them so I'd try that if you haven't and explain your case as detailed as you possibly can. Be sure to send them any paperwork medically if you got the bite looked at.

From there, just making your profile look as good as possible is probably your best bet. Make sure your "about me" is detailed, include lots of photos from all the happy animals you've helped with (and your own). and have some friends write some reviews for you that you have helped with beforehand! Probably about half my reviews are from clients that are my co-workers, neighbors, and people I've met outside Rover who were happy to help out. Just be sure to ask them first but since they still count toward your overall rating it should even things out. Lastly, be sure to complete "Rover 101", it's just more training but since its so easy and adds another badge to your profile its a great idea if you haven't completed it.

You don't need to board to succeed here. Things are slow at first for pretty much everyone and even now I'm not a perfect match for every client. Just do what you can. Lower your rates, expand your radius, and do things aside from sitting for awhile to expand your customer base (if you do even one walk for someone and they see how good you are they'll be much more likely to consider you when they need someone for a stay). Rover is definitely "on the side" for most people but if you set realistic expectations you can totally have a great experience here!

That sounds like a really unfortunate situation. My personal recommendation is to just keep trying and ask future clients to please offer their honest rating after your visit in hopes of raising it again. You might have better luck promoting yourself in person for a while if you are having difficulty picking up clients via the site alone.