Caution: this is an extremely frustrated rant.

If you don't care for that just have a look at the silly cat pictures and have a good night ✨

I didn't think I could get any more frustrated with this stupid merge from hell, but they still manage to surprise me after all these months!

For context: I live in germany and have been on CIAF for about five years. I have always been frustrated with the CIAF-App since my inbox glitched a lot! Messages didn't get send at all, others went out twice, no notifications for new messages. Then the Rover nation attacked.

The whole two-accounts-thing is so incredibly dumb, especially since we as sitters can't really use the CIAF-App anymore, even though our old messages were supposed to be accessible there! And the Rover app actually manages to be an even bigger mess than CIAF! You have 12.000 boxes to check, but all but three of them are dog-exclusive. And the ui is the worst thing I have experienced since 1999 edu pc games.

Customers have told me that their accounts were transfered to Rover... And suddenly - according to Rover - they had a dachshund instead of a cat! And that dog even had a completely new name! Where did that data come from? Is anyone missing Orlov the dachshund? We'd like to trade him for Kola the cat.

The whole pricing scheme is beyond rediculous! At first I was kinda happy because Rover "only" takes a 15% fine instead of CIAFs 19%. And then you try to put your prices in and nothing makes sense. Why would I charge extra for additional cats?! Easy: because Rover thinks that a "cat" is a breed of dog. Everything is a dog! I'm surprised the "can take care of reptiles" - option didn't somehow create the option to walk "scaly dogs".

Now. I have put my Account on inactive. I have two remaining bookings on this hellsite until I can ditch it completely. But those two...

Of course one is with the dachshund-lady. We sat down and tried to conquer the new booking system together. She clicked things, I clicked things. And suddenly - even though the bookings was still three months off at that point - she was charged the entire ammount immediately. About 350€ gone three months in advance! You can't do that! That's half my rent! You can't just take that and sit on it for months! What if something change or someone cancels? That's nuts!

Since that whole debacle about two months ago the app has done other "funny" things, some of which are:

- told me they deactivated my account for not filling out my profile and by that somehow REACTIVATED my inactive account (twice)

- activated different varieties of dog-related sitting services on my profile by itself (at least three times)

- sent emails to my customers claiming I have deleted my account (I wish, but no, not yet)

I am currently unsure if my account is frozen or inactive or active or how many dogs I am allegedly offering to walk. I hope someone documents this merge and uses it as an example on how to successfully run a working business into the ground.

Okay, rant over. Now you can look at the derpy kitties and be on your way, friend ✨

Okay, so this is a rant but it’s my first time trying to book a cat sitter since the merger between Rover and Cat in a Flat, and it’s only because my usual sitter isn’t available (who I had found through Cat in a Flat). My usual sitter is amazing, she would come and hang out with my cat for at least 45 minutes to an hour, bring toys along to really tire him out and keep things interesting so my cat who is a grade A clinger would be stimulated and tired out in between visits. And because, he’s a grade A clinger, I would get her to come in twice a day.

But since the merger, there’s not a lot of local sitters around anymore. And the ones there are there, are prohibitively expensive. A 10 day trip (including travel days) will set me back an easy £500+ with the nonsense of additional fees for a 60 minute visit and the service charges. This is a 30-40% bump on costs of what I would pay my normal sitter or what sitters on Cat in a Flat would cost.

It’s my first break this year and I am genuinely bummed out. Can I afford to pay? Sure. But if a 10 day holiday costs this much, I dread that in future I would not be taking anything time off any longer than a week in total and just not go away much because it all adds up quite quickly. I also don’t know where to find a decent sitter anymore (I did try CatsOnly but not a lot of options there either). I don’t have friends and family either who would support cat sitting cause my cat does tend to get stressed out in unfamiliar locations and they don’t live close enough to just pop in.

Thanks Rover for ruining this platform - there’s a reason I didn’t use that site pre-merger and you have ruined a good thing.