Rover—Dog Sitters & Walkers reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
A marketplace for pet walking and sitting that users love for specific warm sitters, yet slam for rising fees, a glitchy app, and indifferent support.
What users love
A specific sitter is the real reason for the five stars
Praise almost always goes to a real person, not Rover: Connie, Pratik, Stephen, Julie. They send photos and videos every couple of hours, and the owner finally relaxes on vacation.
Connie is amazing! I have a very skiddish rescue dog. She's scared of new people. It takes her time to establish trust. She took to Connie immediately!
Bobbi; my dog sitter kept me informed every few hours with photos and videos. I felt like I had no worry
We were able to enjoy our vacation knowing Zach was taking care of Bruster. Zach is very caring and responsible
When it works, it's an easy way to find care fast
Complaints aside, many value the core: profiles with reviews, last-minute booking, check-in/out notifications. You can go where the pet can't and still feel at ease.
Love! The sitters on Rover are fast to respond. Booking a last min sitter was surprisingly painless.
Super helpful that you can browse sitters and see their reviews and experience. It just gives me a better feeling to know who I’m leaving my dog with.
Great for finding a local pet sitter. Great communication, providing check in and out notifications and photos of your pet being cared for
For a sitter it can become a real career and income
Those who commit reach the top of their city, get so many requests they have to turn people down, and make substantial income. The platform genuinely brings clients and pays out.
I started it off slow, but now I actually have to turn people down because of the amount of requests I get. So glad I found rover.
Never had a problem, had plenty of clients and became #1 sitter in my city. Great app!
I can make a substantial income as well! The app is easy to use, navigate and modify the types of bookings
What users hate
Paid entry: $49–79 for a profile review with no booking guaranteed
Sitters are hit with a non-refundable profile-review fee (from £15/£24 up to $52 CAD / $79), and only find out about it after filling in every form. Many pay and get zero clients for months.
They wait until you fill out all the paperwork to tell you there's a $49 charge to review your profile.
You have to pay them $80 to apply. Imagine paying $80 to apply for a job.
I've been signed up for 9 months, live in a very busy city, have plenty of availabilty - but have never had any bookings.
20% off the sitter plus a fee off the owner — double-dipping
The cut went from 10–15% up to 20%, while the owner gets charged another 11–15% on top. In practice over 30% vanishes from a booking, and the dashboard total never matches the actual payout.
PURE GREED! I learned today that not only does Rover take 20% from sitters but that they charge Pet owners 11% fees.
Rover is double-dipping. Client paid $184, I got $128. Rover pocketed $56 (over 30%!) while claiming they only take 20%.
They increased the percentage they remove from the sitters posted asking price! Mine had been 15%. Now they are taking 20%.
The walk card glitches and eats photos — and no photos means no pay
The Rover card crashes mid-walk: the camera stops working, photos and notes vanish, and the tracker keeps logging the route after the walk ends. Since pay is tied to photos, sitters lose money for work already done.
This rover card will often glitch out, you can get back in HOWEVER the camera no longer works and you can no longer upload photos. You NEED photos to get paid.
Walks will glitch out and delete entire records, the tracker will keep going after the walk is finished still recording anywhere I go
It also frequently deletes photos and visit notes.
"Ruff patch": the app is constantly down and won't load screens
Every day the "Rover is experiencing a ruff patch" screen, endless loading, server errors. The only fix is reinstalling several times a week — and it's been like this for over half a year with no fix.
it constantly has an error of having a "ruff patch" it says. Can't get my messages, can't chat with their support.
I have to uninstall and reinstall it on a weekly basis just to get it to work
So many "ruff" patches, inability to load screens and allow communications with owners or view upcoming calendar.
The Cat in a Flat takeover broke life for cat sitters
Sitters were force-migrated from Cat in a Flat without consent, data and all. Regular bookings and saved settings were lost, and the app is dog-centric — there's no cats-only filter, so clients drift off-platform.
terrible switch from Cat in a Flat, I lost all my regular bookings.
I have been forcibly moved to this app as a cat sitter without consultation and it is simply not appropriate for my or my clients needs. this includes moving all our personal data over
Following the Cat in a Flat buy out it's pretty impossible finding cat sitters in amongst all the people offering dog services. Rover haven't even bothered to apply a filter.
You only see the price after messaging — no filtering by cost
There are a million filters except the one that matters — price. The total only shows after you message the sitter, so with multiple pets you can't budget without messaging people just to cancel.
has a billion search filters except the one we actually want: price.
No price filter while booking a sitter why did you remove it. Please use Ai and fix your app
I hate that I can't see the total cost until after I message the sitter. That's a huge contributor for me. I have multiple pets so I can't budget
Support is an AI wall of copy-paste replies
On any problem support is either a "real person" who turns out to be a bot, or the same canned reply on a loop. Cases get closed, future emails get ignored, and reviews get identical boilerplate responses.
I tried contacting support about this but was palmed off to a supposedly "real" person that was actually an AI chatbot.
they are next to useless and sit behind a wall of text
"Leadership" support told me the case was closed and they would ignore future emails.
Accounts get banned for no reason — and income vanishes
A profile suddenly disappears from search or gets blocked with no explanation, sometimes before setup is even done. Be honest about a bite or a sick pet and the whole account is closed; appeals hit a wall of "it's our policy".
As a sitter, I randomly stopped showing up in search results for whatever reason. I think after one of the updates.
I requested training from Rover to be safe. Rover asked for details about the bite, I gave them the details, and they closed my entire account.
My account was flagged and banned without clear reason before setup was completed.
When something goes wrong with the pet, Rover washes its hands
The advertised "Trust & Safety" collapses in a real emergency: a dog gets attacked, a sitter extorts money, a pet is left caged. Sitters are deemed contractors, claims go unpaid, and the ability to leave a negative review is removed.
Rover's 'Trust & Safety' is a myth. A sitter gave a fake address, left my puppy locked in a cage in its waste, and extorted me for a $200 off-platform fee.
My dog was attacked by another dog while at a rover for 5 minutes.
They consider sitters independent contractors and Rover has no responsibility if something goes wrong.
Can't log in, and the app is "incompatible" with an older phone
Login works in the browser but the app loops "invalid email or password" on every device. After updates the app declares older phones incompatible, cutting the sitter off from bookings and earned money entirely.
Can sign in on web browser fine but app just keeps throwing "invalid email or password" error. Tried different devices and uninstall/install. No dice.
I got a new phone and am not able to install the app so I can't get any new or repeat bookings. I am screwed! It says this version is not compatible with my phone
The app doesn't let me log in on any of my devices and is now holding my pet walking money hostage!
Calendar and bookings can only be edited one day at a time
Availability has to be set day by day — you can't apply the same hours across a week or different dog sizes per service. Once a booking is accepted you can't change it, or it flips into a "host cancel".
Have to put day-by-day which services you can't provide because you can't select multiple days in a row.
Editing/updating availability has to be done day by day, or on consecutive days (for ex: can't switch all Wednesday hours).
Once you accept you are screwed to make any changes.
Deleting your account is deliberately made nearly impossible
There's no delete button in the app — only a multi-page quest on desktop. Removing card and personal data is just as hard, and it reads as a deliberate trick to keep users from leaving.
I tried to delete my account and found that they use every dirty trick in the book to stop you from leaving by not including a delete account button in the app
They make it impossible to delete your account.
it is very hard to get off the app and remove your info.
Sitters bail at the last minute, and the calendar lies
Sitters marked "available" agree and then cancel right before the date or go MIA, leaving the owner with no pet care. There's no way to gauge real reliability from a profile beforehand.
I have tried 3 times to get a sitter, each time the sitters have agreed and then canceled just before the date leaving me with huge issues.
Hired a dog sitter and she went MIA. Everyone has an excuse to why they don't want to dog sit, even though they are marked as available
Sitters cancel last min, don't have updated availability, or can't keep track of their own schedule.