Our Au Pair

Since I started to coach again, Danny and I looked into the different options for child care.  Last summer Rebekah took care of our kids most days.  She was awesome and would bring them to the pool, watch the baby and bring them back home until I was done.  With starting Aquabears, I realized I needed someone in the fall as well.  It gets a little more tricky since the kids are in various activities and I need someone to drive them to their sports and pick them up.

There is always a surplus of teenagers, but not all of them can drive and that is really what I needed.
Danny and I looked into getting a foreign au pair through cultural care au pair.  A couple of our friends have used the au pairs and it seemed like it would be a good solution for our family.  We thought it would be good for the kids to have someone who they were totally comfortable with and was almost like an older sister.  Especially Kira who seems to get the most anxiety when I am not around.

I called them to look into the company.  I spent over an hour talking to them about the company, screening, my needs for a driver, etc to see if this would be a good fit and of course everything they told me sounded like it would be a goo fit.  We started looking through profiles and talking to nanny's without any obligation.  We found the sweetest girl from Mexico who seemed like she would be a good fit for our family.  Really sweet, outgoing, personable, responsible and genuine love for the kids.  She was referred to us because of her excellent driving experience.  That was the thing I told the agency was the most important thing, which they reassured me they screened for.

We picked her up in San Francisco and she was so nice!  She came with Danny to a meet the first weekend and I had her drive home and it was SCARY!  No driving experience.  Going through stop signs, driving 15 mph, veering off into other cars, not able to merge.  About the equivalent of 1 week of driving experience.  I called the company so upset.  It wasn't something that could be fixed.  She wasn't safe to drive by herself and probably wouldn't be for a couple of months.  After that, who knows if I would be comfortable with her driving my kids.

Turns out what I was told over the phone was not the reality of the company.  They told me I would get any of my money back, could get another au pair.  I at this point didn't want to have anything to do with this company.  After many phone calls and emails showing several things they failed to do, they said they would reimburse my money as long as I signed a contract stating the company didn't do anything wrong.

So now I decide whether to sign it and get my $ back or bring them to small claims court and get my money back that way.  Of course signing the paper would be way eaiser for me, but it is the principle of the matter.  This company is totally misleading and putting kids and au pairs in danger.

I felt so bad for our sweet au pair.  She got rematched with a family in Washington DC.  I think she is doing well.  It was a very stressful two weeks when we had her living her and were fighting with the company and didn't have any way of getting our kids to their activities except hire another babysitter to drive.  The whole thing taught me a lot.  I can go on and on about our experiences.  It made me realize the importance to document things.  The company told me conversations I had via email never occured and then I would show them the email.  They took down pieces of my profile which I made sure to save.  When I showed them the saved copies, they didn't have anything to save.  The whole thing was one big joke.  When I looked them up on yelp and better business, it was 50 stories that replicate our story.

So we will not be using an au pair in the future or be able to endorse these companies. Some things that their employees told me shocked me about the agency.