Absolutely horrible experience with my Tamarin. See below the email we have sent. To which we have been offered, not a refund but the possibility to extend our search for 4 months. As you can imagine it is not really possible for full-time working parents to take care of 2 babies on their own until Mytamarin finally finds a candidate. Extremely poor value for money. We have spent 6k on a nanny that 1/ traumatised our babies 2/ quit after 2 weeks 3/ had not been properly referenced checked.
e appreciate the terms and conditions have been created to protect MyTamarin from abusive use of your time. However, we would argue that the present situation is slightly different and does not support the spirit of both the conditions and good service, or ‘The myTamarin difference’.
While X’s departure was indeed inconvenient, there have been further issues during her time with us which have left us extremely uncomfortable, to say the least. We have had for example, a toddler refusing to wear a jumper or anything covering her head or to eat hot food for weeks after her departure, due to accidents directly caused by her lack of care. I must say, I take partial responsibility for not questioning the fact that one of her references refused to speak to us, as I should have understood that something may have happened there as well.
To address your point that we have been sent 7 candidates, the following is the reality:
A: great experience, barely available for a chat unless we were free after 9pm – proved too difficult to pin down in the time required.
B: Came as a temp, accepted a permanent role after 4 days, refused to work unless offered a permanent position, having appeared keen to do so. Left us with nothing at the start of week 3 of no nanny.
C: Told us during the interview that parents shouldn’t work from home and we should be talking to a specialist (?!) if we didn’t agree with her.
In parallel, due to your inability to source a suitable candidate and the fact that the Temp didn’t work, we have had to reach out to another agency. As you will know, it is not possible to hold multiple nannies in waiting whilst trying to maintain work; as one candidate proves unsuitable at trial or interview, the next is not automatically still available at the time needed. In addition, multiple trials with multiple nannies is not sustainable for the children so we were forced to seek more suitable and accessible options whilst assessing those provided by you. Furthermore, due to the number of days off we both had to take to ensure care of our daughters and trials/interviews, we both started having issues at work and the children have been extremely unsettled. We would like to point out that the boutique agency sourced amazing candidates (all more than 15y of experience) in less than a week, many of which were immediately available and close.
Again, we do understand the T&Cs but it is obvious that the amount paid for X (around 6k) is completely disproportionate considering:
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Her incompetence and subsequent lack of professionalism coupled with the fact that she only worked for 2 weeks.
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The inability to source a suitable replacement in a reasonable amount of time.
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The failure of the temporary nanny to cover the time required.
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The fact that in the 4 weeks that we have not had a full-time nanny, those provided by you have only been able to cover 4 days and only one has been able to trial.
Coming back to the ‘myTamarin difference’, we do not feel that we have received ‘value for money’ (a ‘success-based fee’ should reflect actual success for example), it is obvious that ‘curation for attitude’ is not as good as it should be, as is ‘matching based on lifestyle and values’ and the ‘availability check’ seems to have been incorrect for several candidates.
While you may not be the right person to take things further with, we would appreciate if you could direct us to someone who can do so.