Nobody likes when things are changed, especially when it concerns money. And especially when it's last minute. One woman found herself furious when her dog sitter doubled her rates out of the blue, just days before the woman and her husband were supposed to leave for their Thanksgiving vacation.
The woman took to Reddit to figure out if she was in the wrong for calling out her dog sitter for raising the rate she was initially charging the couple without more than a few days notice.
The woman gave background about herself and her family.
The Reddit user is a 35-year-old woman. Her husband is 33, and they have two dogs, 5-year-old Pip and 17-year-old Skip. "We both work and live below our means and this allowed us to purchase a home and have some savings. We enjoy travel with the strategic use of use of miles, promos, & reciprocal travel friendships. I budget carefully and pre-plan everything so we have enough to live, enough to save, and enough to enjoy our lives."
The couple are also dog sitters.
The husband and wife, aside from their regular jobs, also watch dogs on the side. She explains that due to how inflated dog-sitting fees are nowadays, they do it for a below-the-market rate, sometimes even for free if their family, friends, or regular clients are in a financial bind. Their normal price is at $30/dog a day. "We love animals and we are very understanding of other people’s means. This has built us a small network of people we could rely on to watch our pets until recently."
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They had to find a new sitter for their own dogs.
Some of the couple's friends moved away and others got too busy for them to rely on to sit their dogs. They started going to a friend of the woman's sister-in-law, whose name is Betty. Her normal rates were $30/day for Pip and $35/day for Skip. For the two previous times she's dog sat for them, she stayed at the couple's house and charged that rate "with no issue."
The woman told the dog sitter they're taking an extended vacation.
"In Sept, I informed her we were taking a longer trip to visit my husband’s aunt for Thanksgiving as she has cancer. We told her it would just be Skip. After doing the math, it made sense to pay the fees & fly with Pip. She agreed."
The dog sitter ended up flaking on plans.
A few weeks before the couple's trip, Betty explained that her mom had booked a cabin for Thanksgiving and Black Friday that didn't allow pets. "So we scrambled to find someone to take Skip for those days. Although he does not have major medical issues and takes no meds; he is deaf, blind, has doggy dementia, and is incontinent. The incontinent part is usually puts people off taking him so we were very anxious. But after some time, we found a sitter willing to take him those days and Betty agreed to pick him up for the remainder of the days."
Betty raised her price.
Four days before leaving for their trip, the woman said that Betty decided to keep her rate at $65/day because of the fact that she had to travel from the cabin she'd be at in order to pick up Skip. "I called her out on this because we only needed to get an additional sitter because of the change in HER plans. For reference the other dog sitter was going to charge us $50/day. I would have booked her for the whole thing but Betty said she would charge us just an additional day for the pickup. My husband and I both assumed it would still be at our regular rate because she had not informed us otherwise over the 3 months we had planned this."
The woman called the dog sitter out.
"I told her it was not cool that she is doubling our rate right before we are about to fly. I didn’t tell her I wasn’t going to pay the extra rate. I asked for a compromise and for her to be more upfront of any extra charges in the future. Betty then grew very 'uncomfortable with our interaction' and basically backed out of watching him entirely. Thankfully the 2nd sitter was free to watch him the days she bailed on. AITA?"
Redditors don't seem to think the woman was in the wrong.
"NTA, whether people believe this to be a fair rate or not she increased her rates after already agreeing to a price," one person wrote.
"NTA," another user commented. "Pet sitter is TA for taking a job, then making plans during the same time she committed to a job."
Some believe the dog's medical problems called for the higher rate.
"YTA for going about this the way you have," one user commented. "All of it. You’re also WAY underpaying people for taking care of a dog on his last legs. Professionals would be charging you $100+ a night for both."
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
