Top tips for seamless babysitting

You may have noticed that we have registered quite a few new babysitters this year, 15 to be exact. Not only are new families making use of our service but you are booking babysitters more often which is lovely to see! With this in mind, I thought I would put together my top 5 tips to make booking a babysitter as smooth as possible for you. We do also have an FAQs page and as always, myself or a member of the team will always be on hand to answer your questions. If there are aspects of the service that aren’t clear or if you think we could be doing something better, please do let me know.

Thank you for your support!

Anna

1. Timing is everything: Parents are able to book a babysitter up to 5 weeks in advance or with as little as 2 hours notice. For weekday evening appointments, you’ll often have a choice of babysitters within a few hours but for Friday or Saturday nights or day time appointments, we recommend loading a job request as soon as you know you will need a babysitter, since these are our busiest slots. It’s always worth loading a job request, even if it is last minute as availability can change or we sometimes have cancellations from parents.

2. Hedge your bets: We know that you will have your favourites or gravitate towards babysitters your children already know, which is completely understandable. However, to speed up the booking process, I recommend sending your requests out to all or as many babysitters as you feel comfortable with as this will save you having to cancel and re-load the job request if your usual 2-3 babysitters aren’t free. There is never any obligation to book a babysitter who marks themselves as free but this way, you’ll be aware of the options available.

3. Free the inbox: If you are receiving too many notifications, you can adjust your email settings via your website profile so that you only hear from available babysitters.

4. Communicate: We have an internal messing system which can be accessed once a babysitter has been booked. Make use of this by finding the email booking confirmation and clicking the link that says ‘messaging system’. Alternatively, you can log into your website account, click ‘bookings’, find the relevant booking and click ‘manage job’ (blue button) and then ‘message your babysitter’. The internal messages are sent/received via email so you will know when your babysitter has replied and vice versa.

5. Move with the timings: If you book a babysitter you have not yet met and want the opportunity to get to know them or if you realise you would like to leave earlier/later or return earlier/later, you can adjust the start and end times via your website account. Log in, click ‘bookings’ (top right hand corner), find the booking and click ‘manage job’ (blue button), Click ‘need to adjust the times?’ (pink link at the top of the screen). Add/deduct time to adjust the appointment hours. A time change request will be sent to your babysitter and they will respond to say whether they accept/reject the time change, based on their schedule and if they are happy to work for more/less hours.
Please note: You will need to have credit on your account in order to request a time change as if the babysitter accepts, the appointment fee will automatically be adjusted. If you would like to reduce the length of the appointment less than 24 hours before the appointment is due to start, this would be subject to our cancellation policy of charging 50% for changes less than 24 hours before and 100% if cancelled less than 12 hours before. This is only applied to the time you wish to reduce the appointment by and is to protect our babysitters as they often accept appointments based on the hours they will work.

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