Time For A Walk

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I'm disappointed to be writing this review. Bottom line: we had a horrible experience with TFAW, and I would not recommend them to anybody. Long story short: they cancelled our dog walking services with less than 24 hours notice leaving our dog with no care, broke our front door lock, and were rude and hostile when we attempted to reach a solution.



For seven months, we had been loyal customers of TFAW, paying $500/month for dog walking services. In late July, our regular dog walker quit working there, which is when the problems began. The new dog walker came and left without incident on Monday. On Tuesday, he apparently tried to force the key to turn in the front door lock, causing the key to actually break off in the door (you can imagine the level of unnecessary force that must have been used for this to happen). With the key snapped off in the lock, the dog walker had no way to get into the house, even using the other spare key that TFAW has. For approximately four hours of my work day, I was repeatedly interrupted as TFAW called me, attempting to use our hidden keys to get in the back door with no success, eventually able to get our dog back inside, after having her out in the heat for several hours.



We returned home to the snapped-off key still in the front door lock, and it became clear that a locksmith would be needed to fix the problem. We asked TFAW if they would like to hire and pay for a locksmith to repair the damage that their employee caused, or if they would like use to hire one and send them the bill. The owner of the company emailed back a very hostile response, saying that our "sticky" lock was a "maintenance issue" and somehow his employee was not responsible for the fact that the employee snapped a key off in the front door lock, despite the fact that our previous dog walker had no such problems for 7 months and of course we ourselves use that very same lock every day without snapping any keys off. We asked that the employee that snapped the key off not walk our dog any more.



At 8 p.m. that night, we received an email from the owner of TFAW declaring that, since we asked that the employee that destroyed our property not walk our dog any more, TFAW would be unable to provide us with dog walking services any more. Apparently, in their entire company, there was not one single other employee available who could walk our pet for 15 minutes in a 2 hour window. I shudder to think what would have happened if this employee called in sick to work--apparently TFAW is so leanly staffed that they are unable to call in substitutes for their dog walkers. Or they were lying and being spiteful and nasty.



Either way, at 8 p.m. at night, our dog was left without anyone to walk her while we were at work the next day. Our options were to either leave work in the middle of the day to let her out ourselves, or leave our dog in her crate all day long. For anyone who does not want to be put in this awful position, I suggest that you NOT use TFAW. If you dare you speak up and disagree with an element of service they provide, such as when one of their employees destroys your property and you want them to be held accountable, they will drop your dog with no warning.



TFAW obviously has no customer loyalty, no pride in service, and not even any common decency. I recommend using any of the many other dog walking services in NoVA and stay away from Time for a Walk.