We have used Gianni's services on & off since me & my ex split up in Jul '21 whenever our 2 regular, permanent childminders have been unable to look after our son.
Gianni is always late, appears uninterested in her job, will not send photos or report progress during the day, will not return all the bits you send your child with (think missing socks, tops, bottle parts, the one toy your child cannot go to bed with).
In Aug '21 in my then new home Gianni looked after my 1.1yr old son. Several weeks later a downstairs neighbour approached me & told me that he & his family had heard my son cry for a long period & sounded so distressed they had buzzed my door but no one let them in! He said he knew I wasn't home because my car wasn't there-i had only left my son with Gianni but as he had waited for so long to tell me & I had no reason to think anything else, I tried hard and dismissed it.
Fast forward to last monday: my now 2 yr old became started crying hysterically on the mere sight of Gianni's car. He couldn't be consoled but I put it down to time passed and kids act up. His reaction on Tuesday was even worse, so I said to myself that if it's like that the 3rd time something has to change. ofcourse 2 days later on a Friday my son was the same. So I asked Gianni if she could look after him at his dad's house who works from home 5 minutes away to see if it helps my son not get distressed? That was on a Saturday, and I sent 3 whatsapp messages (our mode of communication) later & she didn't respond despite having seen & read the messages. Now unsure if Gianni would be able to change her place of work, with work pending the next day and no clear childcare plans, I had to find another nanny but my son's sun hat (there was a heat wave), bottle bits, comfort toy were with Gianni!! So i contact her again to atleast let me collect my son's hat but still no response. We ran around some shops on a Sunday but couldn't find a suitable hat as most don't come with a fastening to keep the hat in place. we eventually got an emergency one in tkmaxx.
On Monday I received the following text from Gianni:
'Hi this is Gianni's work phone, she has been surprised with a weekend away so has not been with this phone for the past two days as she is not expected to be on call on her days off.. she was supposed to be retrieving this phone before work tomorrow. I believe you are the 8am-4:30pm for Monday and Tuesday, and from your attempts of contact today that I have just had a look at I have notified her that you have cancelled. She will respond once she retrieves the phone'.
I responded with the following:
'Hi Gianni's phone. Thanks for finally getting back to us. We are so sorry to have contacted you in your out of hours, the confusion came from the fact when you were accepting the job we communicated with you on both a Saturday and Sunday and got prompt responses. Our sincere apologies. Going back to the matter at hand, can you please provide us with a suitable time to collect our son's belongings including a yet another missing pair of socks (he again came back with no socks and there was just one dirty one in the bag from the previous days), his toy cars, bibs and bottles all items which ordinarily would be packed in the child's bag ready for collection. Please also let Gianni know that our son is so petrified of her to the point that if we mention her nane he gets distressed that we will understandably not be needing her services for fear of safety of our son.
Please wish her a good day'.
Since then, I have not heard from Gianni but instead she has been texting my ex with paragraphs of texts until she started ignoring him when he pushed to collect the boy's stuff but he finally got them today.

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