Back on late 2019, when I finally decided to leave the corporate world to pursue my dream of running my own dog daycare, I started running a home doggy daycare with few acquaintances pups coming now and then. COVID-19 made impact by March 2020 for some of us meant the delay of lots of plans, anxiety, loss of jobs…

It was not until summer of 2021 when things started to get a bit more back to normal that I kept going with that dream. I started again spreading the word between friends, neighbours, marketplace, instagram… and I found “ROVER.COM” (American company which operates an online marketplace for people to buy and sell pet care services including pet sitting, dog boarding, and dog walking)

Immediately I signed up, got a sitter profile and a new journey continued; my own daycare with the merge of my new ROVER Sitter Profile.

For anyone that owns pets, specially dogs, should know and understand that is not an easy work;  Supervising ALL time, making sure everyone stays healthy, excersised, safe, busy and HAPPY JUST LIKE MI CLIENTS!
Lots of lacks of sleeping, restless days, being bitten a couple of times, have furniture chewed, etc.. cleaning every day up to 15/20 times, stay at home 24/7… And I¨M NOT complaining at all, I LOVE WHAT I DO, I LOVE MY PUPS AND THEIR FAMILIES!!! I'm just pointing that is a lot of work, not easy at all.

I've been working together with the platform and received tons of good reviews, happy repeated clients, maybe one or two bad reviews due a dog that got diarhea and another one I think there were not sending updates every single hour, but nothing that were a real big deal.

On Monday,  September 19th, 2022,  
I woke up, open my email and got a huge surprise;  An email from Rover Team:

“Hi Diana,

We’re writing to let you know that your Rover account has been deactivated due to violations of our Terms of Service” ”The decision to close your account is final and may not be appealed” ”With that being said, Rover will be considering this issue resolved, and will not be responding to any further replies about this issue.

All the best”

What did I get out of all my time working? A nice email ending in “the decision to close your account is final and may not be appealed”. This totally shocked me; I’ve never had a missing dog, injured, or any kind of issue that could lead to this. YES, I’ve sent back home some pups (3) last minute because parents had been dishonest and sent aggressive dogs and I WOULD NEVER PUT MY PUPS ON RISK!

Several emails sent from my side, calls, trying to talk to a supervisor... just the same answer. It's very unfair what they are doing to me, after all my work, my good rates in the app and excellent reviews earned from over a year.

This decision has a very bad impact on me not only emotionally but also financially. I support my family and have dependents; My Mom is one of them. She has several health conditions like hypertension, diabetes, glaucoma and that's just the beginning. I'm financing my studies as a Vet Tech because I want to be THE BEST on what I do. This has been my full time job, which I made a living off of, and suddenly because of their”policy violation” it’s taken away from me, and I don’t think I really did anything wrong.

All this days I've been researching about other Sitters that had and are passing thru similar circumstances and is ceasing me how UNDERVALUED Rover Sitters are by the Company

I please ask Aaron Easterly (Rover’s CEO) and to all ROVER.COM Team to 
have a look on my work and case and be careful when taking lightly choices like this because this can really affect a family.

To all my very loved Rover Pawrents and Everyone out there :

Please help me and sign and share to add a valuable contribution to my efforts to be heard  and recover my account to keep helping all my pups and families. 

THANK YOU!

Diana Varela