Cultural Care - Host Family

Better but still a ton of room for Improvement

The App has been improved since the initial debacle at launch, such as the ability to hide au pair candidates. However basic functionality wasn’t well thought out from the beginning. For example, the fact that chats are not tied tightly to the candidate’s profile, like every other social app, is mind blowing. If you are actively chatting or a chat is terminated, there is no indication of this on the profile or search results. You need to go back and manually remove them from favorites and hide them from showing up on future searches. I’m constantly cross referencing who I initiated a chat with when searching profiles. Additionally, once a chat is terminated and archived, the link to the profile is lost, you are left only with a small picture and first name to figure out who the candidate was. I’ve also seen significant delays in chats and chat notifications where they don’t show up for hours or days.

Beware of non refundable fees if your match doesn’t work out

We had an unfortunate experience of separating with the Au Pair less than 2 months into the program. We decided not to bring another au pair to avoid having children adjust to another caretaker. The deposit paid is non refundable however which means we’ve overpaid substantially for the short period of having an au pair (as compared to hiring local help for example). I’d advise you check payment terms and conditions with other agencies before proceeding with one.