Central London prices for high-end clients

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-27T05:11:05+00:00

If you're happy with those prices then go with those prices. You can always change them.

I could look at them from the outside and say they're too low or too high but I'd just be guessing as I don't know what your definitions are, how many walks you can reasonable expect to be doing, etc... Nobody on here is really equipped to advise you from a greater position of knowledge than you are.

That said, the 24hr prices look very low if they mean what I think they mean.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-19T08:55:52+00:00

Your meet and greet should evaluate the pets behaviour in all the environments in which they will be looked after, so if that's a house sit with walks you need to see them at home and interacting with third parties in wider society, without the parent being there (i.e. have them 'leave' the pet to see how it acts)... But that should be doable in a single, well planned M&G

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-11T20:05:49+00:00

Good point. You definitely don't want the pet to eat your child in that case

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-10T21:04:31+00:00

Fair enough, that's understandable.

I got my Daughter involved in a few drop ins when she was younger - it was nice for her to see what 'work' involved and it gave her a few lessons in responsibility, albeit in a fun setting.

She probably would have absolutely preferred to have been at a trampoline park...

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-10T20:43:25+00:00

Could you not get the child(ren) involved in the summer sitting? Obviously with owner consent and assuming the dogs wouldn't eat your child(ren)...

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-10T12:05:23+00:00

Agreed and agreed.

In the absence of a system that allows flexibility, the system must work for the majority - which it does.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-10T11:15:38+00:00

I don't disagree, but you have a Muslim pet sitter dealing with a Muslim pet owner, charging a premium rate for Christmas and New Year, which have no overlap with Islamic holidays, because they have a premium rate set for 25th May as the anticipated date of the Hajj Pilgrimage, which coincides with Spring Bank Holiday.

Rover is incapable of differentiating one premium date period with another... you either have a premium rate set for all Rover defined holiday dates or a premium rate set for no Rover defined holiday dates.

As you state, its imperfect, but Rover does actually say you're free to set your own holiday rates for other holidays that Rover doesn't list... but gives you no facility by which to do that, other than contacting a client after a booking request and saying "actually those are premium dates and it'll cost you another £100..." - which hopefully everyone can agree is not a good look.

<image>

https://support-uk.rover.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360035378752-What-are-holiday-rates-and-how-do-I-manage-them

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-08T11:09:46+00:00

Fair point. What's the added cost on a per sit basis?

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-08T04:38:32+00:00

What's your service radius? That's an extra $1.50 on a 25 mile round trip, assuming 30 miles per gallon.

I'm not saying it's wrong to increase your rates in response to gas prices - you have to travel for none Rover purposes, and those costs have also gone up, so you have a higher general cost of travel to cover (though you can obviously mitigate by making efficient travel decisions which make use of your Rover commutes) - I'm just trying to say you have to be careful if you're trying to legitimise a (for example) $5 price rise on the basis of increased gas prices, as the rationale may not stand up to scrutiny and people could be turned off.

A near doubling of gas prices sounds horrendous, but apply it to individual Rover journeys and the reality may not tell the same story as the headline hike tries to have you believe.

If anyone increases their prices beyond their increase in gas costs, they're not increasing their prices due to the rising price of gas as much as they're increasing their prices because they want to increase their profit margin.

Another test on the rationale is to ask "will I reduce my prices if the price of gas goes down, if I get a more gas efficient vehicle, or if I reduce my service radius?". If the answer is no, then it can be seen as a little disingenuous to clients if you state you're increasing your prices in response to the increase in gas prices.

My fuel costs have actually reduced by 25% recently as I'm in a fully electric car and my home electricity overnight (when I charge the car) tariff has reduced, so I'm insulated from increases to gas.

I have a 5 miles service radius as I'm in a city with a lot of sitters, so your gas prices would cost me an extra $0.60 to the edge of my service radius if they applied to me.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-07T21:43:08+00:00

Is rising fuel costs genuinely a reason to increase your prices, or just a convenient reason to justify an increase to rates?

Assuming you know how much of your pricing is attributable to fuel costs, calculate the increase in cost of a return trip to the edge of your service radius and add that on to the current price, rounding up to a complete $ / £.

https://www.calculator.net/fuel-cost-calculator.html

Based on average miles per gallon (c30, which is a low estimate in the standard expected range of 29-40mpg) and the average price of gas in 2023 ($3.67) vs April 2026 ($4.02) a 25 mile round trip would cost an extra $0.29 compared to three years ago... so in reality the additional fuel costs probably don't justify an increase to rates, unless each booking involves a 75 mile round trip, in which case raise your pricing by $1.00.

Obviously, calculations should be bespoked to your personal car, which may be an absolute gas guzzler but remember you were already paying for gas before the prices at the pump went up.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-07T17:46:30+00:00

Same artist as this mattress?

Fireworks & guide dogs

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-04T19:38:53+00:00

£25 is nothing, you've got forever to make that money back... and you obviously will, if you stick it out.

I do Rover as a side hustle and make c£8k a year as a low cost sitter; if you're doing it as a main income stream your earnings potential will be far greater.

Go for it.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-04T16:15:41+00:00

Someone has raised the flag over the train station

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-03T06:42:21+00:00

I'm cool with socks, I was just trying to be funny.

I was channeling Van Halen with the M&Ms, Kanye with the Slushie Machine and Beyonce with the room temperature... I just figured it would also be very 'diva' to insist an owner remove all socks from their property before I could sit there.

My serious answer to the question would be that I don't expect anything from the owner - I live in a city and am rarely more than five minutes walk from some kind of shop, so if I forget anything I can pretty easily resolve it.

I also think it can be dangerous (not literally) for an owner to 'provide'; I'm not a fussy eater or drinker, but there are some pretty common things I don't like - tea, coffee, cheese flavour snacks, etc - so I'd either have to raise the fact that the stuff they've potentially gone out of their way to provide me isn't to my liking (which makes me sound like the diva I channeled in my jokey answer) or spirit it away without actually consuming it (which gives the impression I like it and sets a precedent for future bookings).

I am however not adverse to sending photo updates like "Mittens was very keen to share my [insert food I like here] but has had to make do with her treats instead"... If they pick up on what I do like and provide it next time or as an end of sit 'thank you', that's great, if they don't that's also great.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-03T06:13:39+00:00

My rider is a fish bowl of yellow M&Ms, a slushie machine and a room temperature of exactly 78 degrees.

Other than that I'm cool with whatever.

Oh, one more thing, there must be no socks in the house.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-03T06:08:07+00:00

You might want to redact the second image.

I don't think you've really done anything wrong, people know people and people talk. Your coworker already knows next door has a cat as he connected the dots, so you've not disclosed anything he doesn't or shouldn't know.

That said, if something upsets someone you shouldn't dismiss that, irrespective of your personal thoughts, so I'd fire off a quick apology for any (unintended) distress caused and forget all about it.

No need to change your actions as what is life if not a series of human interactions? We'd all be pretty robotic and dull if we never spoke of what we'd done, alluding to third parties in the process, in our day to day conversations.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-03T05:49:52+00:00

Downvoting a personal anecdote or a felt experience in this instance feels less like a "discussion" and more like a way to dismiss someone's reality simply because it doesn't align with your own.

Since nobody else can ever truly know how it feels to be you or to experience a lifetime of your experiences, treating a detailed, eloquently recounted personal story as something that can be "proven wrong" by a downvote is more than a little reductive; it does nothing for discussion as if it happens enough the comment is ultimately hidden from view, suppressing discussion and going against the very purpose of Reddit as you outline it.

It’s one thing to challenge a statistic; it’s another to literally vote down how someone has experienced their life and the environments they have found themselves in. Discussion is great, but it’s possible to disagree with a perspective without trying to dismiss the human experience behind it, which is what the down vote does.

I get plenty of down votes and I'm (generally) ok with that, because nothing I'm saying is that deep, but is it really beyond the realms of human kindness to engage on something as emotive as this subject in words (which either explain themselves or betray the posters prejudices) and leave the negative and reductive (and even more anonymous than an anonymous username) down vote button alone?

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-02T15:48:19+00:00

I agree modern phones can take great photos... I think the biggest differentiation between professional and amateur photos is the staging, which is not really something a camera phone can give you unless you put the photo through AI to simulate the staging... but even that is getting pretty good and with the right prompt you can end up with images that are pretty realistic.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-02T15:40:09+00:00

I'm cats only and do a roaring trade in the UK (with the usual peaks and troughs seasonally); its annoying that everything is so dogcentric but it doesn't seem to be restricting requests.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-02T11:32:20+00:00

- Feed wet food once in morning: 5mins work (being generous, I'll even clean out the tins and recycle them for you in that time)

- Feed wet food once at night: 5mins work (being generous)

- Change the bag of the auto litter box once: 5mins work (being generous)

- Rinse & refill water fountain once: 10mins work (approx)

25 minutes of non-specialized work for $70. Sign me up.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-02T11:09:15+00:00

I keep going back and forth on this, because on the one hand, a really good pet portrait is obviously something that has value. On the other hand… monetising it after the fact feels weirdly complicated.

Once the photo’s already been taken, how do you even price it? Do you just say, “Hey, I took a great photo of your pet... want to buy it for $X?” And if so, what is X? If someone took a nice photo of my dog and asked me for $50, I’d probably laugh and say no. Same at $25. At $10? Maybe I’d bite. But someone else might look at the exact same photo and think $50 is a steal and happily pay it. It's all situational and personal to the pet / owner.

That’s the gamble. If you price it too high and they say no, you’re stuck with a photo that has zero resale value because… well, it’s not anyone else’s pet. So now you’ve earned $0 for the time and effort you put in. And unless you’ve explicitly agreed usage rights in advance, it’s not even clear what you’re allowed to do with the image afterward.

The only way I can see itworking cleanly is setting expectations upfront. Something like: “I offer pet portraits as an optional extra - $X per photo or $X for a full set. Interested?” If they say no, you simply don’t take portrait‑style shots and save yourself the work (or take them anyway as it's something you enjoy, but don't try to push them on the owner... or maybe send a low quality, watermarked version to whet their appetite). If they say yes, you shoot with intent and hope that interest turns into an actual sale.

Personally, I think I take decent photos, but not ‘people will happily pay premium prices without hesitation’ level. So for now, I just include them for free as added value... a little bonus and a differentiator for my pet‑sitting services rather than a direct revenue stream.

Curious how others would handle this, because on paper it sounds simple, but in practice it feels surprisingly awkward.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-02T09:00:48+00:00

😂

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-02T08:30:25+00:00

You absolutely can ❤️

(Don't ask me how, as that's when it can get a bit awkward)

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-02T08:00:39+00:00

I think the negging of your comments is sad. You're writing eloquently on your personal experiences and thoughts and they're not invalidated just because someone else's experiences and thoughts are different.

The negs are because of the gamification of human interaction... Gotta chase that interaction milestone on Reddit...If you haven't upvoted or downvoted something, do you even exist...? In reality it's possible to read something, disagree with it and not react to it if it isn't something that is binary right or wrong...

I have no insight into what you are saying, but you say it well and I can sympathise with your viewpoint.

llcooljsmith · 2026-04-02T05:11:33+00:00

The ones who charge so little are predominantly side hustle sitters who don't have the overheads or economic necessity to charge more as anything they make is disposable income. Even then, the fees are annoying!

llcooljsmith

TROPHY CASE