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We contacted Au Pair in America to help us find an Au Pair. We were so excited at the thought of bringing a girl into our family who could teach our children another language and help with the children so I could take classes one night a week. This experience was one of the worst nightmares we have ever been through. After being "matched" with this girl from Germany, we started the process (they could not get our 8000.00 fast enough) and began corresponding with this girl. We all fell in love with her immediately, she said all the right things to us, including that she had experience caring for children with autism. LIE! After insisting she come two weeks earlier than planned, we agreed. We spend hundreds of dollars on her room, took her shopping, let her go wherever she wanted with our car, she decided in the first three days that she was not close enough to her friends, and wanted a more wealthy family. She would constantly stay on her computer, neglect the children, take un-earned time off, sleep late and generally had a terrible attitude. Not once did she play with my one year old, and she left my non-verbal three year old alone outside and he wandered into our neighbors yard. They were so concerned because she wouldn't answer the door that they called the police. It was so traumatic for the kids, my nine year old is still upset. The local coordinator took THREE HOURS to get to us, which is against the law, the local coordinator needs to be at the host home in 45 minutes of an emergency or urgent matter. The Au Pair left that night and we never heard from her again. We found out she has been placed with another family in New Jersey, and are horrified that she was not sent back to Germany. She would take the kids out of their car seats and set them down and just turn around...in a parking lot. We had to threaten to call the Attorney General's office to get someone to return our phone calls. I am heartbroken over this experience.
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Hi I am the host father of 4 former aupairs from Aupair In America. We are currently with cutural care. Although we Have no problem with the Cultural Care Aupair I have found My families expirience with aupair in America to be much better I am planning to go back to them after Our current Aupair is Done her year. She has already indicated she wants to go home due to the way the LCC has treated her.
Aupair In America is a terrible agency. Please, for your own sake do not join. They will not help if you are having trouble with an Aupair who becomes a problem in your household or with your children. I had an Aupair was constantly out drinking, hungover to work, asked to borrow money all the time, expected a car exclusively for her, free cellphone, food, was always late getting up. Forgot to do many tasked asked. More importantly was hungover quite a few times, crashed my car twice, one with my kids in it. Too many things to explain . Trust me this agency has. No regard for your family and will do nothing but buy time for you Aupair to move elsewhere. They are unethical and leave you with very little options to control your decision if you want your Aupair replaced.
Please do not subject your family to this service! We contacted Au Pair in America to help us find a care taker for our new born daughters. We selected a girl and she moved into our home. Within a matter of 2 months she had come on to my husband, violated our privacy, and took naked pictures of herself on our personal phone. She was an awful nightmare. When we contacted the agency for assistance with the girl they stated that we can re-match but we would have to notify the Au Pair and then she would have to continue living with us for 2 weeks. Given her instability, the fact that my husband traveled all the time, and we had an infant, we felt that was not a safe option. After several weeks of putting up with her we ended up kicking her out of our house. It took Au Pair in America 1 month to find a replacement. In the meantime, I had to take a 1 month leave of absence from work in order to care for my infant daughter. The new Au Pair was ok, but she refused to help with anything around the house including cleaning up after the baby and cleaning her bottles until she was almost ready to go home. After we ended the time with that Au Pair we ended the service with Au Pair in America. After that they sent me an email stating that I still owe them $1000. I paid the service fee up front. When I called to dispute the charge, I received resistance and they refused to send me a paper detailed bill. After about 2 months of receiving no paper billing or further communication, they sent me to collections for the $1, 000. This is a nightmare and really really really not worth all the headache and fear that was created by this organization.
Avoid Au Pair in America at all costs. They mistreat the host family and aid the au pair in taking working the situation to their advantage. We invited a woman from South Africa into our home after she went into rematch with her first family. It become clear soon after her arrival that she was quite the partyer and on the lookout for a rich American guy, staying out every weekend clubbing and drinking with her friends and dumping her fiancé back home for the rich guy she met here. We tolerated the situation given she was reliable about her work. However, she started asking to get off work early to take off with her friends for the weekend and it was clear our family was not rich enough compared to her buddies' host families. She started complaining to the agency that we were abusive to her (which we were not) and they aided her in rematching with a third family while living in our home and WITHOUT letting us know so we could have found alternative childcare. Apparently it made sense to conclude we were abusive AND let the au pair stay with us until it was convenient to both the au pair and the LLC who didn't have to put her up if she had left our home early. We were shocked at the callous treatment by Au Pair in America and how we were neither consulted or informed by what was taking place despite our request for our LLC to look into her welfare given what we saw as homesickness as it got close to her birthday. So a few lessons we have learned as a host family. These au pairs really compare notes and not being as wealthy as other host families will count against you. The hefty agency fee is ONLY the start to the monetary and time investment you will have to put into hosting the au pair. The cultural exchange is a myth -- they are interested in getting the car for personal usage, getting off early to start the weekend, and partying with their friends. NOTE that as of summer 2015, there is a major shift within the Au Pair in America agency, any expectations that you may have about the agency working with the host family or being marginally honest and fair in the treatment of the host family should be left at the door if you decide to go down this route. For us, we feel grately that the woman is out of out house. We are happy to have our privacy back and found a local caregiver who is entirely reliable. Please, please don't be blind that there is an actual cultural exchange taking place or that the agency will earn the $8000 you paid.
*** Breach of contract because the au pair was NOT infant qualified. ***
The au pair that we were matched with was NOT infant qualified (did not know anything about caring for a baby and had no common sense as a care taker despite 3 full weeks of training by us -- didn't know that you need to support a baby's head, never bathed a baby, etc.), lied on her application (said she watched many babies at an orphanage, when in fact she said that she worked in "fashionables" when she arrived) and once in America (told her counselor that we were forcing her to work more than 45 hours per week and forcing her to clean the whole house -- both 100% false), stole cash from us (cash gifts that we received for baby's birth), and filed a false police report against us (claimed that we stole her iPad -- though we don't have one and never saw her with one either).
Despite all of this, we could not get a refund for the big upfront fees paid to Au Pair in America. The counselors are shady, blamed us for the entire situation after hearing the au pair's lies without hearing both sides of the story first, and company/representatives stopped responding. What a scam.
After much back and forth, we were finally able to get a partial refund of $5, 885, and then another $1, 200... leaving us $1, 295 short of the amount paid for contacted services.