Care.com
Reviews and Complaints

These people are unbelievable. I registered and was made to pay for a background check myself. Even if you had a speeding ticket 12 years ago, it shows up. There is no date so the person that may want to hire you, doesn't know if this just happened. No misdemeanor should be disclosed. If it is, they should disclose more details. They should pay for the background check. I would have been happy to submit a resume, references, college transcripts, etc. Don't bother with this company.

We paid for one month of service on care.com and they continue to bill month after month now for several months. Even after calling and cancelling their recurring service they continue to charge even though they provide you with a confirmation number.

I would not trust this company with your credit card as they use it at will.

I already applied more than 50 applications for a pet walker job. Care.com (fake people) did write back to me, and I did ask them to meet with me, but they won't meet with me..Obviously, it was Care.com who faked to advertise their dog walker ads...Care.com can read my messages which violate my right as well as they try to block people from reading my messages.

They wasted my time and energy and would have wasted my money had I paid their exhorbitant rate $40+ dollars a month. How ridiculous, what's wrong with these people? I need that money to hire someone not pay a whacked out company who by all accounts I can find is a ripoff and worse, possibly a complete scam. Now, tell me how I can post this for the low price of all my money continually over and over.

I apply to at least 20 posts a week for caregivers. Not ONE bite on my applications. I went back and looked over the last 2 months and the names at the end of the post are all the same! There might be 3 legitimate posts out of 30. And forget getting ahold of anybody at the customer service number! This company really needs to be looked at by the BBB.

I did nothing and they closed my account. People tell care.com about you and I never even met these people and my account is closed. I called care.com and they told me that they have the right to close anyone's account. I'm hurt and they are as bad as the scammer that got me blocked.

I got several calls from clients who were moving to my city from other places who needed someone to take care of a loved one. I accepted 2 jobs and we talked through emails or texts. One client mailed me a check one sent me a cashiers check. The first one insisted that I deposit the check into my account instead of cashing it which drew red flags for me. The other sent me a cashiers check in which the last name was spelled differently on the check then the name I was given. I took the first one to the bank and discussed it with a bank manager who confirmed it was fraudulent. I did the same with the cashiers check, it to was fraudulent. Please beware of people who mail you checks. I dont know who to trust in dealing with this company.

I wish I had looked up reviews before creating an account on care.com.

The site interface and experience seemed okay, but as you sign up, you are prompted over and over to join their premium service, which will run up a bill of $40 a month minimum, and renew automatically.

I'm not sure on what planet a person needs a constant roster of potential babysitters emailing them with no end in sight, but the company seems to think this is how childcare works.

I had chose the most basic access that was 30-days long, but in order to post a job I had and respond to sitters, I had to upgrade to premium a few more steps in - for what I assumed was the 30 days I had initially purchased. There is very fine print that this premium membership will renew automatically to "make things easier on customers" in an email that comes afterwards - one of four emails I had post-sign up.

I hadn't seen this fine print, and low and behold, the company charged me for a few additional months until I finally noticed this bill on my credit card statement.

I alerted customer service, and they were like - whoops, too bad for you! Even though I hadn't logged into the account for months, they would rather have a couple months of mistaken cash than a customer for life. Very disappointed in their short-sighted service and disregard for their clientele.

Beware this shady company! Go with another service!

They initially offer their services as free but ask for a credit card number. What they don't tell you, and you have to go through the entire site to fine, in small print, that the credit card will be continued to be charged monthly without any notification whether or not you use their services.

This was discovered when I went to my bank account only to find it was at a negative balance.
As I live on social security and get gov't support for food and electricity, this was a cost that has put me in a bad financial situation.

I hope someone, or some agency will due a class action against them as there are many people across the USA that have gotten scammed in the same way. Interestingly enough despite complaints the BBB gives it a good waiting.

Is there any agency in the State of Maryland or the US that a can investigate this company? I would sue them if I had the money myself.

EJ

I posted an ad looking for someone to walk my dog in my area. I had 10 responses within a couple of hours. These poor young people who go to school looking for some extra money. These people who all love animals who deserved a reply back. I could not reply back unless I paid care.com money. You must upgrade = pay money to reply to someone about someone you wish to hire.in a nut shell to post an add, this should be fully disclosed on the first screen when you put your ad information in there. They tease you lie to you. I spoke to so many people who have waited for a job, who have never been contacted feeling degraded, probably because the owner of the ad, did not want to pay to respond. The ones that do respond are scamers wanting to hire you. Very sad site that probably started with good intentions. Help warn people! Thank you

I ordered a background check on a care giver and it came back clean. Then after about a week my wife insisted I do another check with another company and her background came back with several arrests for prostitution and drug arrests. I reported it back to Care.com and was kicked off the website. I looked into the background check company that issued the bad check that was given to me.. THIS SHOULD BE ENOUGH INFORMATION FOR PARENTS NEVER TO CONSIDER USING CARE.COM

Google: NBC Investigates caregivers sites approving sitters with arrest records AND Google: NBC 5 Chicago/Criminals pass background checks on sitter sites ( A very informative news video on Care.com)

I wanted to just say that my nanny friend, she worked for the same family I did for many years. Lost her job with a wonderful family because of a Care.com employee. My friend was hired from a reputable nanny service Nanny pro. The reason she was let go is because the child died while in care of a last minute Care.com babysitter that filled in for her. The Caregiver was arrested and let go on bail. Her blood came back with a variety of drugs and alcohol. The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the abdomen and internal bleeding. Care.com cancelled the parents account when they called the customer service center to report that the 2 year old had died. Care.com then sent out this auto generated email to the parents computer. WE AT CARE .COM RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REMOVE ANY MEMBER FOR ANY REASON OR NO REASON AT ANYTIME. Refer to section 5 in the disclosure for further information..very sad.

Misrepresented caregivers, fake checks, fake reviews, unauthorized billing, unsupported background checks. I looked into this after realizing the caregiver I hired was a homeless drunk/drug addict living in her car. I reported this to care.com and they terminated my membership 15 minutes later.. I just opened my credit card statement today and realized they billed my for another 2 months after they closed my account. I called care.com said they did not bill me and to take it up with the credit card company? What? I have the statement right in front of me! Its not a credit it is a charge. It says care.com (Not care. Pet. Or care.org) for $39 billed last month and this month. I was terminated 3rd of april and billed twice.

I spent some time yesterday on a investigation on this company and this is what I discovered:
Care.com is essentially an appalling scam.

Auto renew billing buried in a lengthy disclosure in very small print in light grey font that can be barely seen. Any company that needs to do this is not a reputable company. Care.com provides no statements or e receipts. Reputable companies have clear and transparent billing and give monthly receipts to the customers email if requested. (This is illegal in some states.)

Termination of both parents and caregivers accounts for no reason. This is because care.com will not allow for any issues or complaints. If anyone should call the customer call center, use the report button or write a negative review on a caregivers page the account is closed 15 min later and an auto generated response it sent out to the email that the account was terminated with no explanation. Only complaints of little importance are let through. Like no call no show. It is much less costly to close an account than investigate one for legal reasons.

Unsupported and unverified background checks on caregivers. Care.com uses an outside cut rate.com company for background checks. This company stated to me. "we are no responsible for any accuracy or completeness of any background check since no id is seen by anyone. The caregiver can punche in any dl# she wants from her home computer.

Unverified qualifications and unverified references from caregivers. Qualifications on caregivers are not verified on caregivers what so ever. After many emails from care.com and questions this rings to be true. No cards from cpr or first aid or verified education is checked out by care.com. A caregiver can present her page with whatever information she chooses. References are said to be verified by care.com. However this is also false because the caregiver forwards the references her self over the computer and can forward any email or phone # she chooses and verify the information herself. One phone call attempt is made by care.com to contact a reference.. Many parents do not answer the call because its automated with the long pause like a sales call.

The fake check scam is a daily occurrence at care.com. American caregivers are being scammed out of million of dollars from scam artists. Care.com is in 16 counties and apparantly has over 43 million accounts open. Care.com will hire anyone in the office for low pay and this has snow balled in to americans personal information being sold from country to country by dishonest care.com employees. The fake check scam is now the most popular scam in american with most of the money lost coming from care.com.

Fake review boards and the bbb. Many 4 and 5 star review boards at the top of the pile when googled along with mom blogs sponsored by care.com are fake review pages. They are owned an operated by care.com and will not allow anything bad to be said about the company. If you put in your 2 cents on any of these boards they will terminate your sign up. The bbb will also not allow for many bad reviews or complaints to be forwarded. Care.com pays the bbb $500 a year for membership which allows care.com to hand pick reviews and maintain an a rating. Sitejabber and reviewopedia will not be bought off and have accurate reviews like this board.

Rude and obnoxious customer call center and minors babysitting.
Many customers have written in how rude, condescending with a broken record like attitude ringing off boilerplate statements is the normal for them."we at care.com reserve the right to remove anyone at anytime for no reason or any reason and not refund money. Refer to section 5 in our disclosure for the same statement. We know there are plenty of minors as well as illegal activity. But we dont care. Care.com allows minors to babysit for strangers in their home. There are plenty of desperate single moms out there that will send their teenager daughter out to make fast cash. No background checks or even last names are provided to caregivers on parents.

When you sign up for a 30 day membership, you think that it expires in 30 days, right? Nope, it's a scam. If you read the very small print, you realize that you are actually agreeing to a monthly subscription, for which your credit card will be automatically charged. This practice is actually illegal in some states. When I finally realized how much I was being charged (Long after I stopped using the website), they stood by their practice of scamming people and would not reimburse me. Being in the business of childcare, I would assume that being ethical and establishing trust with your customer is a priority. Care.com has failed miserably in this domain. Do not fall victim to this scam!

Care.com is an unethical fraudulent company. Many people have their heads in the sand about how far Care.com will go to cover up complaints and erase bad reviews. The is one lady "K" on Jabbersite for instance that has a full time job making rebuttles on comments and apologizing with then standard boilerplate response of "we are not responsible for anything". Care.com will terminate any parent or babysitters account that puts in a bad review (unless it is a not so important review of no relevance) by shutting down the page to cover up all negative remarks... This keeps the caregivers page free of negative reviews. The only catch with that is there are a few boards that wont be bought off and this is one of them..Others are Sitejabber, Pissed consumer, Reviewopedia. the rest of the boards are paid off by Care.com with membership fees. Such as the BBB. The Membership fee is $500 a year to monitor reviews and keep an A rating...many boards charge about the same. This board will not be bought off so the only thing Care.com can do to monitor bad statements is to make rebuttles with ridiculous statements.. They can sign in with whatever name they choose and fire away at whomever they choose. Ex...Jenny Drake. Pretending to be the same person with the same user name is ridiculous and reaching.

*warning*do not use care.com. will sell your personal information. provides false and unsupported information on caregivers. background checks are not verified by anyone with id. unethical, deceptive and sleazy business practices are the new normal at care.com. they will overcharge your credit card with unauthorized billing.. do not give care.com your credit card. do not be foolish!

Care.com is essentially an appalling scam. After reading many reviews about this company on several pages I decided to do an investigation to see how much of this was true. It was all true, every bit of it. I myself was tricked with the bait and switch predatory auto renew billing tactics. Here is a list of issues that many parents and babysitter have.

1- Auto renew billing that is hidden in small grey font. Sign up for one month at $35 and pay for the rest of your life trick.

2-Termination of both parents and caregivers accounts with no refund or explanation.
Many parents find themselves terminated with no refund and banned from the Care.com community for writing an honest accurate review on a caregiver without malice or slander. This keeps the Care.com pages of caregivers free from negative reviews. (Only a few negative reviews are allowed of no importance.) If a caregiver should report a parent they are also removed from the community to remove the issue, which is easier the dealing with the issue.

3-Unsupported an unverified background checks on caregivers.
Background checks are provided by an outside company that clearly stated they are not responsible for any accuracy or completeness since no ID is ever seen by anyone. The caregiver punches in a DL# from her home computer. Anyone can use any Id to pass a background check.

4-Unverified qualifications and unverified references from caregivers.
Qualifications are not verified at all in anyway not even CPR or first aid. References are provided by the caregiver by forwarding the parents email that they previously worked for over the computer. Any fake email can be used then verified by the caregiver with her own computer.

5--The fake check scam is a daily occurrence on Care.com. American caregivers are being scammed out of million of dollars across the country. Care.com is well aware of this. This is happening because Care.com hires anyone to work in the office for low pay. Americans information is being sold internationally. Care.com has 13 million accounts in 16 countries. The scams are coming in from the other countries and all over the American boards. Care.com does nothing to monitor the international accounts as a whole whatsoever.

6-Fake review boards.
Many parents and caregivers try to forward accurate reviews to boards like "care.com reviews" top of the pile when googled. Only to find out that the review will not post.This is because Care.com owns and operates these boards and will not allow any negative reviews. Glassdoor, Indeed, are also fake review boards.

7- The BBB.
BBB will accredit any company that pays $500 a year for a BBB membership. The BBB will not post many bad reviews and award an A rating to any company that pays the fee. Care.com gets to monitor anything written in by customers to the BBB for that fee. The BBB is also a fraudulent scam organization.

8-Rude and obnoxious customer service center.
Many people have written on many of the complaints boards that if anyone calls in for any reason other to forward a payment they get the snarky rude, condescending sing songy voice with an boilerplate response. We At Care.com reserve the right to not refund your money and have the right to remove anyone at any time for any reason or no reason. We do not Care about any issues anyone has.

9-Care.com allows minors to babysit. Do I really need to say anything more about that?

10-Care.com misrepresents its self on TV as a safe and verified community of parents and caregivers by advertising background checks and reviews. Many parents ad babysitters have written in about how deceiving the commercial is. This should not happen not be when dealing with children lives.

Care.com steals money from hard working parents then lies about it. The bait and switch auto renew billing buried in a light grey font seems to be how they are scamming the public. NO E receipt is provided when billed. Care.com advertises as a free account then quickly wants a credit card..Now most people know this is common practice these days however Care.com is making millions by scamming parents. Very deceitful, very unethical and highly illegal. Some busy parents have signed up for one month trial and end up paying for 2 years not knowing. That is just the start to this dirty, dirty business.
All of the positive 5 star review boards are fake and operated and owned by Care.com. If any parent should write a review on any of these boards that has a complaint it will not post. Only this board, Jabber, Reviewopedia, Pissed consumer and some privately owned pages like "the Doll house" and "one nannys experience" will post real reviews. All of these boards have 100s of 90% nasty one star reviews mostly about scams, losing money, and terminated accounts with no reason or explanation.
Care.com will terminate any parents or caregivers account that writes a negative review or forwards any complaint ( only no call no show or not important bad reviews are allowed) All the issues are thrown out the door that very minute. This keeps the caregivers pages free from too many bad reviews..and looking good.
The BBB is lying about Care.com. Care.com pays the BBB a membership to rent space..in other words Care.com is directly running the reviews and rating for a membership fee. Care.com gets to pick and choose reviews and complaint ratings at the BBB. like I said this is an unethical, dirty, dirty business..
Background checks provided by Care.com are actually provided by an outside .com company that clearly states they are not responsible for any accuracy or completeness. Background checks are most often wrong and not complete with no records found. Many criminals coming out of the detention center find this a convienient way for fast cash. The Background check is done by the caregiver herself by punching in a DL# from her home computer. Anyone can use anyone's ID. None of the info provided by a caregiver is verified by Care.com. Not even CPR or references. References are said to be verified but they are not. The caregiver forwards the so called parents email they worked for in the past. Any fake email is used and the Caregiver will verify the reference herself with her own computer...same can be done by phone. Dirty, dirty unethical business.

Care.com is abusing its own customer service and office employees with low wages and long hours. This has snow balled in Care.com hiring low rent criminals to work in customer service. These American criminal employees are selling babysitters information to the other 15 countries that Care.com hosts. The other countries call Americans by phone text posing as fake parents.."The Fake Check Scam" is costing Americans millions of dollars. Care.com is well aware this is going on but its too costly to do anything about it. Care.com is well aware that pedophiles, minors working as babysitters and prostitution is running rampant as well. They choose to look the other way. THIS IS A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE TO WORK OR FIND A CAREGIVER. PLEASE STAY AWAY IF YOU LOVE YOUR CHILDREN.

I am appalled at the lack of qualified caregivers on Care.com. Most are stay at home moms or college kids that have no interest in being a caregiver or qualifications at all. I have asked several so called nannies now for proof of citizenship, the CPR Card and even just a legit photo Id or a drivers license and most could not produce even one of these. Care.com clearly does not pre screen anyone. I have found out the hard way that more illegals and criminals are posing as nannies and babysitters than legit caregivers. This is a disaster is the making. I am dumbfounded about how any parents would even consider using such a negligent service for childcare.