Au Pair USA

Review: We contracted with this au pair service for 1 year of au pair services for 2 children, one who has documented special needs. Due to state department regulations, we are required to have an au pair with special needs qualifications. We paid the agency fees for 1 year of services, and we matched with an au pair who arrived October 2014.

Our first au pair left in May of 2015. We were without au pair services for about 6 weeks (and hence had to hire local childcare) while another au pair was found through this same agency. We again matched and our second au pair arrived at the end of July, 2015. This second au pair became homesick and returned home after only 6 weeks.

We were unable to match with another au pair from this agency; after our second au pair left, there were only 2 candidates that were special needs qualified, and they both rapidly were removed from the site. We have numerous "screen shots" of our search during this time, which show no au pairs with the necessary special needs qualifications were available from this au pair service. As we needed to quickly find childcare as we are two working parents, again scrambling to find special needs childcare with very little (2 weeks) notice, we had no choice but to change to a different agency that had a large selection of special needs qualified individuals.

Au Pair USA has a refund policy that "punishes" parents who change agencies, and does not refund the entire amount for the time we were without childcare (a total of over 12 weeks out of our year contract). In fact, since the second au pair constituted a "new" contract, Au Pair USA is not only refusing to refund our money for the "unused" weeks of missing au pair services, but is actually charging us an additional $640.

We have 2 arguments in our request for a full refund for the year of agency fees paid and 9 months of services rendered:

1. We did not have an option other than to change agencies. There were no special needs qualified au pairs to chose from Au Pair USA. The state department requires a special needs qualified individual (in fact the "search" function of their site does not even permit us to "unselect" this option, since we had documented a child with special needs). We had no option but to change agencies.

2. There is a "local coordinator" who is supposed to provide mediation between au pairs and their families, and also discuss concerns (such as homesickness) with au pairs who are struggling with transition in a new country. Our "local coordinator" was brand new to her position (in fact, for most of the year we were without the services of a local coordinator, until this person was hired) and did not appropriately counsel our au pair when the issue of her homesickness was discussed. This "local coordinator" then quit her position (after less than 2 months on the job and literally the same day we told her our au pair was leaving - we have emails 20 minutes apart!) and was not available for helping us through the process.

We have numerous emails and phone calls to the agency to discuss a resolution to this problem without using the court system, but have not received one reply back. Our phone calls and emails are being ignored.Desired Settlement: We request a refund for the portion of agency fees paid but services not rendered - the key here is that we were UNABLE TO CONTINUE with this agency due to LACK OF SPECIAL NEEDS QUALIFIED au pairs, so we request a full refund, not the reduced refund for leaving the company: We paid $7980 for a year of services, minus 12.5 weeks of services not rendered = $1918.26 refund requested.

Consumer

Response:

At this time, I have not been contacted by Au Pair USA regarding complaint ID [redacted].Sincerely,[redacted]