Response to Trustpilot review by 'Kat'

This is a full response to a Trustpilot review written by 'Kat' on 4th April 2023
 

Dear Kat

It's very disappointing that you have chosen to write a public review that is wholly false and defamatory. 

You failed to supply any information to Trustpilot, when requested, at the point of leaving you review that would allow us to identify you as a customer and locate an account for you.

We will respond to each part of your review in turn:

> The website has 0 services without premium

This statement is wholly false.  We offer lots of entirely free services and it is possible to find childcare or childcare work without paying anything.  Free members are able to receive, read and reply to contacts from paying members.  Further, free members are able to initiate contact with paying members.  Over a million parents have found childcare via our platform without paying anything. We are the largest and most successful childcare platform in the UK, operating for nearly 15 years and with nearly 3 million customers.

> I was looking for a childminder and tried to use this website. I found someone I wanted to contact and it said I had to make a profile.

This is false.  Completing a profile is completely optional for parent members. There is no requirement to 'make a profile'.

> I made a profile and only after filling it out it said I had to pay premium to use mobile, homephone, WhatsApp or messaging on the site.

It is completely free for parents to telephone, WhatsApp and send messages to paying members.  The vast majority of our childminder members pay for our premium service and therefore you can contact most of them without paying anything.

> Obviously I could pay the premium if I chose to however I feel they should be more upfront that you can use none of the service for free before making you create a profile.

We are very open, honest and transparent about how our service works.  No where on our website or anywhere else does it suggest that all of our services are entirely free. We have very detailed information on our website about what is free and what is not. For more details see our FAQ page at www.childcare.co.uk/faq which is linked from every page of our website.

> I am now struggling to delete the profile because I don't want to pay for premium at this time.

It isn't a struggle to delete your profile or account. We provide 24 hour customer support, 365 days a year with an average response time of around 15 minutes. If you need any assistance, simply reach out to our team at www.childcare.co.uk/contact and we will be delighted to delete your account for you. To date, you have not made any attempt to reach out to us for assistance.

We wish you and your family all the very best for the future

Childcare.co.uk

UPDATE

In relation to your 'Edit':

> When I clicked on any link prior to making a profile it took me to a make a profile page or back to the "complete profile" page instead of allowing me to contact them. Perhaps this was not what the website is supposed to do but that is what happened to me through multiple attempts. Therefore I was in fact directed to make a profile before I could access the information.

You are confusing 'making a profile' with registering for a free account.  Clearly, to contact another member and use our service, you need to have an account with us and it is free to register at www.childcare.co.uk/register - There is no requirement for parents to have a profile.

> On the website it indicates with a free profile you can message gold members or reply to messages the gold members have sent. The majority of people I have attempted to message have come up with not being able to message and requiring gold to do so. I imagine these people also have free profiles so therefore cannot message me either. Therefore the purpose I was intending to use the website for is not possible in the majority of cases I come across. Again I acknowledge it would be possible with premium membership as I said originally.

You stated that 'The website has 0 services without premium' and this is false.  As we have already stated, free members are able to contact paying members and paying members are able to contact free members.  Free members are not able to initiate contact with other free members and at no point do we state that is possible.

> I wished to delete my profile however there is no link to do this in the profile and I could not personally find it in the FAQ (although it may be there) so I had to contact the customer service team who are reviewing it and have replied that it may take up to 14 days. I found this process not straight forward and a struggle.

It is possible to close your account and delete your profile at anytime using our self-service online cancellation page at www.childcare.co.uk/cancel - No where does it state that we take 14 days to reply to customer support requests. We publish the real-time average customer service response time on our Contact Us page a www.childcare.co.uk/contact and it currently shows the average response time to be 23 minutes.

> They have claimed I did not provide further information when asked. I only received the request to provide further information a few hours prior and was busy at the time. I was intending to complete it when I returned home but was not given the chance to do so before the company responded so I am using the time to add this instead.

When you left your Trustpilot review you were asked for the email address of your Childcare.co.uk account but you purposely chose not to enter it. The specific wording on the Trustpilot form is: 'Include your Email address so it’s easier for Childcare.co.uk to identify you and reply to your review'.  As you did not provide this information we used the Trustpilot 'Find Reviewer' tool which causes Trustpilot to contact the reviewer to request their account details.  To date you have still not responded to this request and we still do not have your account information.  We are obligated to request this information as soon as possible, if the information is not provided by the reviewer, as otherwise Trustpilot penalise us for not responding to the review in a timely manner.

> Without allowing the time to clarify or provide further information they decided I was lying in my post and replied saying it was untrue and defamatory. They even stated deleting the profile is not a struggle. Whether I found something difficult is a subjective experience and I do not see how they can state this to be wrong.

Your review is demonstrably grossly false and defamatory and nothing that you could subsequently state in any additional response would change that.  We reserve our legal rights in this regard.

> My view of the company has even further reduced by their response as if they had allowed me time to provide the information the situation may have become more clear and I would have adjusted the review accordingly.

You are welcome to your own subjective opinion of our company but we have demonstrated that the majority of the claims made in your review are false and defamatory. We do not believe that at any point you would have 'adjusted the review accordingly'.  You were very quick to make claims that are proven to be factually incorrect.  You have chosen to write what is, in effect, an anonymous review, failing to disclose who you are to us. We have asked you to get in-touch in order that we can delete your account for you, as you have requested, but you have failed to do so.  Our offer to help you still stands and our team are available to provide assistance at anytime at www.childcare.co.uk/contact

Kat has now provided the email address of their Childcare.co.uk account to Trustpilot and they have in-turn shared that with us.

Kat's account has now been deleted.