Cody Wright

Review of Hot Diggity! Dog Walking & Pet...

I booked Hot Diggity to come take care of my cat w...

I booked Hot Diggity to come take care of my cat while I was away. The first visit went fine, with only the litter box being missed. But we got a cute pic and felt things were fine. So I booked a second appointment. That's where things took a turn.

The sitter left my house and didn't properly shut the front door, causing the auto-lock to jam and fail to lock the door. I was not told about this, only found out when I went to check my app. I contacted the company the next morning explaining what happened, and the sent the person back to check the door. This time she closed it properly and locked it, as my app informed me. After fixing the mistake, they sent me a message saying they wanted $15 for a "security check" and that they believe their employee locked the door properly the first time. They proceeded to explain to me how my own lock works, relying on speculation to determine that everything was fine.

When I replied that I would not pay the $15 because they hadn't locked the door properly and needed to fix their own mistake, I got a long-winded response which devoted only one short sentence to apologizing. The rest of the message was about how they believe the employee (which is fine, that's not what I have a problem with) and that my lock was definitely secured properly (no evidence, but hey). They then pointed to the fact that their sitter had marked on the report card "home secured" as further proof that the door had locked successfully (what??).

At the end of the day, companies like Hot Diggity are not only responsible for our pets, they're also responsible for making sure we can entrust our home to them unsupervised. That's very different from taking your pet to a pet hotel. If something goes wrong, it's my entire house and everything in it that's at risk. Based on the responses I got from them, they clearly don't understand that concept, despite claiming peace of mind in their marketing.

I don't mind mistakes, I mind not owning them. If you want to bring a company into your home unsupervised that will blame you, your locks, your phone, whatever they can think of, rather than accepting responsibility (and all over $15!!!), then Hot Diggity is the place for you.