Au Pair in America
Reviews and Complaints

I am contacting you after Amy Allen, and two local child coordinators seem to not care about what has happened in my home.

A little bit of background I switched to your agency from cultural care as I wasn't happy with the au pairs and my current au pairs experiences in terms of making connections. We had no issues with cultural care as an agency. In my area there are more au pairs through au pair in America so I decided to make the switch. It has been nothing but a disaster and a headache.

I was very close to a match with someone from Brazil and on December 2, 2022 Patrycia sent a spotlight email about Janae Simpson (578815). I really liked what was written there, especially with 9000 hours of childcare. However, I am not sure who vetted that because she has been a 100% a disaster since she has stepped into my house.

We had some issues with the food, which you can see in her rematch profile. To me that is a respect issue, but her response "well i don't like any other food" was quite telling. If that were the only issue maybe things could have been repaired. Her comments and actions of:

1. I wish I would have matched with a black family or

2. You guys are Jewish I thought you were nothing or

3. Her always having her earpiece in and being on the phone or

4. I really only like boy babies, girl babies are so annoying or

5. leaving my 14 month old outside alone or

6. leaving my house to take a phone call and leaving my 14 month old alone

are enough of a liability for not only me, but this is neglect. And she admitted to leaving him alone (text attached). But yet you as an organization made me keep her for 2 weeks and pay her.

You as an organization have a huge liability of neglect here. But yet no one seems to care and you are placing her with another family? What is wrong with this picture? Do you honestly think someone who walks outside to take a phone call comes with 9000 hours of childcare experience.

Since she has been here I have asked her to do so little as I had an overlap au pair. However, she is now gone and yesterday I needed help for 1 hour as you can see in the text message and she couldn't even do that. My 14 month old likes to open and close my oven, and put things in his mouth. Do you know how quickly a child can get in trouble? Would you honestly trust your kids with this person? But yet again you are placing her with someone else?

Yesterday I had to take care of something and my 15 year old was going out with her father so I need her for 1 hour. when my daughter came downstairs and told me that Janae was outside and Michael was by the door trying to get out, I told her to sit downstairs and watch him. Then I called my ex husband and told him Emma can't leave until I get home and told him what happened. He was annoyed, but understood and let her watch Michael until I got home. Can you explain why she had to take a phone call in that hour, there are 23 other hours of the day? Do you typically call an ex and ask them for a favor? But what was I supposed to do? I trust my 15 year old more than a 22 year old, but does that even make sense?

As I said to Amy in an email and I am saying to you now. I have nothing good to say about your agency and how you handle things. And. you pretty much drove me back to your competitor, but yet no one seems to care about that or me or my kids.

In addition I specifically said no international calls, but yet those were made as well. attached is the call log. You can see how many minutes she was on the phone. How could she possibly be doing any work. I am so frustrated and done.

In my email to Amy yesterday I was crystal clear with my expectations, but I am letting you know them as well. You have a huge issue on your hands as it pertains to what has happened. So I expect every dime I paid to your organization refunded. I expect every dollar refunded immediately either in a direct deposit to my checking account, which is how I paid or a check mailed to me and I expect it to be processed by the end of the week.

*** Breach of contract because the au pair was NOT infant qualified. ***

The au pair that we were matched with was NOT infant qualified (did not know anything about caring for a baby and had no common sense as a care taker despite 3 full weeks of training by us -- didn't know that you need to support a baby's head, never bathed a baby, etc.), lied on her application (said she watched many babies at an orphanage, when in fact she said that she worked in "fashionables" when she arrived) and once in America (told her counselor that we were forcing her to work more than 45 hours per week and forcing her to clean the whole house -- both 100% false), stole cash from us (cash gifts that we received for baby's birth), and filed a false police report against us (claimed that we stole her iPad -- though we don't have one and never saw her with one either).

Despite all of this, we could not get a refund for the big upfront fees paid to Au Pair in America. The counselors are shady, blamed us for the entire situation after hearing the au pair's lies without hearing both sides of the story first, and company/representatives stopped responding. What a scam.

After much back and forth, we were finally able to get a partial refund of $5, 885, and then another $1, 200... leaving us $1, 295 short of the amount paid for contacted services.

We contacted Au Pair in America to help us find an Au Pair. We were so excited at the thought of bringing a girl into our family who could teach our children another language and help with the children so I could take classes one night a week. This experience was one of the worst nightmares we have ever been through. After being "matched" with this girl from Germany, we started the process (they could not get our 8000.00 fast enough) and began corresponding with this girl. We all fell in love with her immediately, she said all the right things to us, including that she had experience caring for children with autism. LIE! After insisting she come two weeks earlier than planned, we agreed. We spend hundreds of dollars on her room, took her shopping, let her go wherever she wanted with our car, she decided in the first three days that she was not close enough to her friends, and wanted a more wealthy family. She would constantly stay on her computer, neglect the children, take un-earned time off, sleep late and generally had a terrible attitude. Not once did she play with my one year old, and she left my non-verbal three year old alone outside and he wandered into our neighbors yard. They were so concerned because she wouldn't answer the door that they called the police. It was so traumatic for the kids, my nine year old is still upset. The local coordinator took THREE HOURS to get to us, which is against the law, the local coordinator needs to be at the host home in 45 minutes of an emergency or urgent matter. The Au Pair left that night and we never heard from her again. We found out she has been placed with another family in New Jersey, and are horrified that she was not sent back to Germany. She would take the kids out of their car seats and set them down and just turn around...in a parking lot. We had to threaten to call the Attorney General's office to get someone to return our phone calls. I am heartbroken over this experience.