Paws and Purrs Sitters

I’m giving P&P two stars, not one, because we never had the chance to utilize their services. Here’s why:
We had a consultation set up a week in advance for 6:30pm on a Thursday evening. The owner called to push it back to 7pm on the same day. Fine, we’re flexible and we know things come up. 7pm comes and we get a call from the owner saying she just got to Center City to do one of her cat sits and wouldn’t be back to Delaware County until past 8pm and would have to reschedule… okay, again, we know things happen so we wanted to give her one more chance.
We reschedule for the upcoming Tuesday at 6:30pm. At 6:45pm I called her, my patience running thin, to see where she was. She frantically answered her phone saying she was just about to call us, and that she had (wait for it …) completely forgotten about all of her pet visits and client meetings for the day… and can we reschedule for tomorrow. NO. Absolutely not.
I’m not condoning lying, but at least make something up and don’t tell me that you forgot about all of your appointments for the day! I feel bad for the dogs and other pets that didn’t get their visits that day. We will NOT be moving forward with P&P Sitters. Very unprofessional. It seems that the owner is spreading herself too thin with her service area (bad business decision) and doesn’t have enough staff to run the company smoothly. Narrow down your service area so that you’re not covering 3 counties over SW PA and focus on the quality of your service. This was very unprofessional and really disappointing. Not to mention a waste of two of my evenings in one week.

This review is all about expectations.
WHAT WE’VE COME TO EXPECT about dog owners is that sometimes they can be thoughtless. Today, while walking around my neighborhood at 10:00 AM, I saw a dog whose owners left it locked in the car. It’s is March, and this year has been particularly cold. The temperature today only reached 48 degrees.
WHAT YOU DON’T EXPECT is that when you come back to the same car, hours later (around 2:00 PM), and investigate the car further, to see a sign in the back window for «Paws and Purrs Sitters», a pet-​sitting business. Of all the people who should know better, a pet-​sitter should be on that list. My girlfriend called the number listed on the sign and talked to the owner, who was apologetic, and made sure to tell us that she would take the sign out of the car asap. Of all of the things that should be taken out of the car, the identifying sign should be the last since THE DOG WAS STILL LOCKED INSIDE. We were told the owner would be contacted.
WHAT YOU DO EXPECT is that, after the calls had been made and people had been notified, that 7 HOURS AFTER INITIALLY SEEING A DOG LOCKED IN A CAR that the dog would be let out and taken home to a nice warm spot beside the radiator/​fireplace. Instead, at 5:00 PM THE DOG WAS STILL LOCKED IN THE CAR, in the cold, by itself, with no access to food or water or a chance to go to the bathroom. After ringing all of the doorbells in the area, we finally found the owner, who had told us that «he had been working longer than expected».
Which is coincidental, because the dog that was in the car was locked inside for much longer than it expected, too.
With that in mind, you should probably avoid Paws and Purrs Sitters. I’m going to assume that this was the employee’s pet, and not a client’s dog (not that that makes the behavior any better at all). If an employee chooses to treat his pet this way, I don’t even want to imagine how that employee would treat a dog that he isn’t emotionally attached to (like a client’s dog.)

Fran, Betsey and Scott have been taking care of our pets for 10 years. Most recently, they’ve continued to care for our pets flawlessly when a 6 day vacation turned into a month long marathon when we were unexpectedly marooned in Jacksonville, FL due to an injury. Yay, all.

Fran and Betsy did a great job of looking after my two cats while I was away for six days. Betsy came over every day to check up on them, making sure they had enough food and water and clearing the litter box, and even putting in some play time.
I will definitely use them again.