Description
Rover.com is an American company which operates an online marketplace for people to buy and sell pet care services including pet sitting, dog boarding, and dog walking. Rover.com was founded in 2011 in Seattle, Washington and is formally incorporated under the name A Place for Rover, Inc. The company serves as a broker and takes roughly 20% of each transaction booked through its site.
As of September 2016 Rover.com was valued at $300 million.
History
Greg Gottesman, one of the founders, had a hard time finding good pet sitting for his dog, a yellow Labrador named Ruby. In June 2011 he went to the Startup Weekend in Seattle, Washington and pitched the idea for Rover. People worked on the idea over the weekend, including Philip Kimmey his co-founder, and later they decided to start the company.
Rover.com first began operations in Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, expanding to all 50 states by 2012.
On March 29, 2017, Rover.com acquired DogVacay in an all-stock deal. At that time, it was reported that total bookings on the combined sites amounted to $150 million in 2016, of which they kept about 20% in commission fees.
On May 2, 2018, Rover.com announced expansion into Europe.
Rover.com has a panel of pet experts, including vets Dr. Gary Richter, Dr.Rebecca Greenstein, Dog expert and trainer Nicole Ellis, and cat expert Mikel Delgado that assist in giving pet advice and guidance.
Rover.com has been sued multiple times for deaths of pets resulting from negligent care provided by sitters.
A number of news articles have been written and group pages have been started to bring Rover.com's accountability to light. An article written September 14, 2020, on ABC15 Arizona discusses a woman whose dogs went missing during a Rover visit and were missing for 3 months at the time. The sitter who had been watching the dogs was still accepting new clients and easily available on Rover.com while the pet owner was searching for her dogs. Rover.com only referred to themselves as an advertising company for independent contractors. Rover.com's current Q&A Community page has a question posted by a woman whose dog, in the care of Rover.com sitter, escaped the yard the dog was left unattended in and was hit by a car and killed. The Rover.com user was left heartbroken and at a loss, asking for some sort of reimbursement and the sitter be removed. Rover.com's comment back to her was to ask the user to reach out to Rover.com's team to review the case. An article from 11ALIVE.com discusses a woman whose dog also escaped during a Rover.com boarding experience and was hit and killed by car. She has since started a petition asking for Rover.com to review their criteria for sitters and the safety of the pets. The petition, started after her dog died June 4, 2021, is currently above 15,175 signatures.
