Cultural Care, Inc.

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response submitted by the business and have determined that the response does not satisfy or resolve my issues and/or concerns in reference to complaint # ***I was contacted by *** *** who in fact confirmed that I was correct and the company was off by weeks and will be refunding me another $They had originally offered me an additional $due to the unusual and difficult circumstances that my family had to endureI would be willing to settle for an additional $refund in addition to the $to bring this matter to a closeThe company never addressed the main concern and breach of contract which concerns me having to extend beyond my contracted time if I were to take on a different au pair even though I would not require her services. I hope we can bring this to an end quickly.Thank you *** ***
Regards,
*** ***

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response submitted by the business and have determined that the response does not satisfy or resolve my issues and/or concerns in reference to complaint # ***.
We are not currently represented by an attorney and were hoping to avoid litigation. It's not who we are. We simply want the money back that we paid, minus what we paid directly to our au pair, and we can part ways professionally
Regards,
*** ***

We wish the family the best in moving forward and regret
any frustration they experienced on the program.  At this point, further response does not
appear to be productive given the unfortunate, untrue and inappropriate way
that our organization is being described by the family.

The family has proceeded with a legal filing, therefore, we will defer to the legal process for any further communication regarding this matter.

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response submitted by the business and have determined that the response does not satisfy or resolve my issues and/or concerns in reference to complaint # [redacted] 
Cultural Care is clearly a business of liars. It doesn’t matter if the au pair’s references were confirmed, the au pair could have had her friends give her a reference by lying and saying she worked for them. Regardless, my child was placed in a life-threatening situation because of the au pair, and Cultural Care validated those claims by taking away her ability to care for infants. Cultural Care claims that I chose to have her continue to work and live with us after the very first week when we realized that she was incompetent, did not understand, and could not care for my children, however, they mandated that we had to continue to try to work with her. We never ever left the children alone with her and she did essentially nothing. We would have had her leave in less than a week if we could have. Also, I, the host mom was not “in the room,” when these events occured. Thank goodness I happened to walk in to witness these events as they were happening, or my children could be dead. Cultural Care clearly does not care about children, or putting them in danger. Cultural Care did not properly screen this au pair  and misrepresented this au pair. Not giving us back our money after this nightmare and stating what happened “wasn’t so bad” is an egregious offense. They should be ashamed of themselves and people should be warned about them in the future.
Regards,
[redacted]

We sincerely regret the disappointment and frustration
described by the [redacted] family.  While we
work with both host families and au pairs to help identify a compatible match
that we hope will last the entirety of their term, we can never guarantee that
either or both parties will remain...

satisfied. 
One au pair departed after approximately 11 weeks and returned home to
attend school and the other au pair departed at approximately 4 weeks having
realized he had made the wrong decision and wanted to complete his term with
his first host family.  While very
disappointing, we cannot force an au pair or a family to remain in a situation
where they are simply not happy.  We
recognized that this was not what the family had envisioned for their program
participation and have recently offered them a specialized refund reflecting a
100% refund of their unused weeks.  This $5115.65
amount was offered on April 25th and since it is an increased amount
over what they reference in their complaint, it would appear this complaint was
filed before this offer was made.  We
understand that the family is requesting a full refund of their unused time
as well as the nearly 4 months they hosted an au pair, but we are simply unable
to provide a refund of the time they hosted an au pair in their home.  We certainly wish them the very best moving
forward and look forward to processing the increased refund once the family
confirms with their Program Director.

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response submitted by the business and have determined that the response does not satisfy or resolve my issues and/or concerns in reference to complaint # [redacted].  
We attempted to file a small claims dispute for the money we are owed. This complaint was swiftly dismissed by Cultural Care's legal team since it was filed in a state other than Massachusetts where all legal complaints must be filed. There are no legal proceedings. Cultural Cares last response shows how they don't operate with basic customer service but instead respond with legal language. We feel powerless. We do not know how to get back the money that is owed to us. Any other company would do the right the thing and refund the money. Why won't Cultural Care do the right thing? Why won't they take responsibility for their error? 
Regards,
[redacted]

Attached are the emails from the Cultural care representative that indicated that she would be infant qualified. As you can see although I had chosen her as a candidate I was told the Colombian office would discuss this request with her prior to the match. If she was not okay with getting these hours I would not have matched with her. Additionally I was told she was already securing a nanny position to obtain these hours. After this email I never received any notification that she wasn't getting these additional hours. Since I am an individual and not an agency I am not allowed to verify the hours. Finally, the information that she only needed 7 hours is actually incorrect according to the documents I was provided. She would have actually needed 8 to qualify as infant qualified.

On September 5th, the [redacted] family filed a claim in the small claims court of Nebraska.   Four days later on September 9th, the [redacted] family filed their Revdex.com complaint.  Therefore the Revdex.com is not the first nor the only way they have sought resolution and, in fact, the Revdex.com complaint was made after already filing in the local court.  We did not receive notice of the court filing until after the Revdex.com complaint communication was already in process.

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response submitted by the business and have determined that the response does not satisfy or resolve my issues and/or concerns in reference to complaint # [redacted].
 I'm sorry, but the response from the business simply is not accurate, and seems to again be designed to be deceptive, as was their letter with the refund check which stated that withdrawal from the program was our choice. Their response mentions a pattern of behavior on our part and approach to hosting that led to lack of completion of full terms - we can only surmise that the "pattern" they talk about is that we refuse to put up with Au Pairs who are not adequate for our needs. We have had several wonderful Au Pairs, including term completions and even extensions into 2nd terms, so clearly with proper support from the agency and the right fit things work just fine. However this agency is very lazy, prefers to take the side of Au Pairs in most disagreements (not surprising, they have former Au Pairs on their staff), and is apparently upset when a host family says "send this Au Pair to rematch, they are not working out".  There was an incident with a previous Au Pair, where that Au Pair violated work rules and then claimed we made her violate the rules -- we made it clear that we did not make her violate the rules, the violations were minor incidents (such as she threw our laundry in with the kids laundry to wash, and framing the situation as we forced her to do our laundry, or when we were 15-20 minutes late getting home from dinner on a couple of occasions the Au Pair complained we had her work more hours that she was supposed to). It should be known that this Au Pair has a cousin who works for the business, and was pretty obviously coached on how to setup a host family for future complaints by that cousin, which was then used against us. We agreed to take unusual steps with future Au Pairs, such as explicitly telling them that they should not do any work for "us" the parents, only for the kids -- in fact when we fired the Au Pair with this refund in question, the agency specifically stated over the phone that we "did nothing wrong, no violations of work duties" but that they thought we were too picky and expecting too much from an Au Pair. The business response tries to frame the situation as us violating work procedures, when that's simply not the case; the agency just wants to be rid of us because we won't put up with Au Pairs who can't drive well, or who are lazy and don't do the work they should, or who won't get off their mobile phones and focus on the kids. In short, the agency feels we are too high maintenance for them, and if they decide to decline service then they owe us a refund of the full amount that we could otherwise use on a replacement Au Pair. The business further frames the refund issue as if they explained it and I agreed, when that is not the case. I have maintained all along that we prefer to stay in program, but that if they don't want us then they need to provide a full refund. In fact, when they sent their refund explanation email and breakdown prior to mailing the check, I responded in email that they need to do better than their partial refund. I never received a return email reply, instead the next thing we know we receive a check in the mail (for the reduced refund) and the letter saying they were sorry we withdrew from the program. I'd be happy to discuss with any business representative, and did get a call from them after 6:00 pm last night - and then they posted their response this morning before 6:00 am, without waiting to hear back from me. However, I remain willing to talk to them about the issue, but our stance remains very clear: either follow through and provide the service (a replacement Au Pair for the balance of the Au Pair contract term), or refund us the prorated amount we would normally have to apply towards that service and not simply the punitive partial refund of about half what we should be getting. We violated no rules or agreements with this Au Pair and the 1 year term in question, so we should not be penalized due to laziness of the business.
Regards,
John [redacted]

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response submitted by the business and have determined that the response does not satisfy or resolve my issues and/or concerns in reference to complaint # [redacted].  
For clarification purposes, our family is in fact due to a contractual refund. There is no exception made by the program as they are trying to make it sound.  Please note that the contract stipulates a refund of only 60% of the amount we paid in advance for services.  We are NOT even asking for a 100% refund.  (In Cultural Care, if you are dissatisfied you don't get your money back; you get 60% of it and you need to sign that before you can hire an AuPair).    But that is not the argument we are making.   Please see below the email that we, as customers, sent to the Program Director of Cultural Care, where the numbers are spelled out. All of these numbers and emails are all verifiable as we have written proof of the invoices and receipts from the program.  They never replied to this email.However, several interesting points are noticeable from the response that Cultural Care has provided to Revdex.com:1.  As it is evident in their response, they are more focused in adopting a defensive position by stating that the timeline of events as described in our complaint is "incorrect" rather than proactively trying to offer a loyal customer (our family has been a customer since 2012) a solution that acknowledges their mistake and satisfy the client, which is the basics of all customer service.   This is of no surprise as we have had several interactions with the program management and have had answers similar to the ones that they just wrote down to Revdex.com.  2. They state in their answer: "While it is correct that at one point there was a temporary error on their account reflecting an incorrect credit, this was fixed proactively and was not a factor in the calculation of their refund."    Of course it was fixed proactively and it was not a factor in the calculation because it was on their favor!    They had generated an invoice crediting us for a wrong amount of money and, when we, as family, brought it up to their attention, they "corrected" it immediately by decreasing the credit and never offering any sort of financial amendment in our favor!3. Even though we are contractually due for refund , they asked us to sign "special release" because they presented our refund as a "special agreement" - (this is the paperwork that they refer to in their paragraph).  In other words, we were told that they would not process our refund until we signed a form that prevent the customer from any future attempts of litigation against them.  This obviously speaks of their legal vulnerability.     Can you imagine going to a coffee shop and been handed a "special release" to sign when you are dissatisfied with their product so you don't sue them latter on?   The manager of such a company would do anything within power not to lose a loyal customer instead of clearly admitting fear of litigation by handing them a paper to sign!However, at this point, and because we are frustrated beyond words to continue with this back and forth, we would be even willing to sign that "special release" form, only if Cultural Care were to admit and acknowledge that this is, in fact, their mistake.  In addition, we expect some sort of responsibility for their mistake by at least writing a satisfactory apology to our family for being mistreated by management miss handling this situation.The email mentioned above reads as follows:"Our family does not need to sign a general release form since this is not "a special agreement outside of the contract".    We are,in fact, contractually due to refund - please see below.   It seems that Cultural Care made yet another error in the calculations as per your email which is copied and pasted below, followed by the necessary corrections.You wrote in prior email that the breakdown is as follows:"Four payments of  $300, $2545.70,  $1000. $1000, for a total of $3845.70. Plus your accurate credit from XXXXX (prior's AuPair)  term of $1,049.30. Plus a credit of 299.8. Total paid toward Program Fee: $4,895.   Please note, that in order to be eligible for a contractual refund you have to pay a minimum of $4,995, in which you did not meet. In essence, you are not due a contractual refund, however, we agreed to honor the $100 so you would meet your contractual refund."Please note corrections:- First payment : $ 300- Second payment: $ 1545. 70  (not 2545.70 as you typed)- Third payment : $ 1000- Forth payment: $ 1000- Credit from prior term:  $1049.30  +  $299.8  =  $ 1349.10Therefore:300 + 1545.70 + 1000 + 1000 + 1349.10 = 5,149.80  (which exceeds the minimum of $4,995 to be eligible for refund).Given the above, the following conclusions are made:1. We are contractually eligible for a refund and therefore no need to sign any general release.2. Cultural care is not helping us reach eligibility for refund because we exceeded the minimum amount for refund, per contract.  However, to facilitate your calculations and to clear out any confusion, we made another payment of $100 dollars  (in addition to the above payments).3. Cultural Care has not yet taken any financial responsibility for generating an invoice stating that we had a credit from prior term in the amount of  $ 2395 , and then changing this credit to $1049.30 a few days ago. "
Regards,
[redacted]

We are disappointed in the way that the [redacted] family has described
their program experience and we respectfully disagree with the description of
our policies and engagement thus far.  We
appreciate the opportunity to respond to their submission.  While the [redacted] family has hosted a...

number of
au pairs, upon extensive review of their history with the program, we were concerned
about a pattern of behavior and approach to their hosting that was leading to a
lack of a completion of full terms.  We
had an open conversation with the family to discuss these concerns and established
conditions of continued program participation which included that should specific
issues be brought forth again, program participation would end and the standard
refund policy would be applied.  Those
issues were brought forth again and so, as previously discussed, program participation
was brought to an end.  The issues of
concern and the refund calculations were reviewed with the family, specifically
Mr. [redacted], and it was confirmed that the standard refund would be issued.  Recently Mr. [redacted] reached out requesting a
full refund and while this will not be possible, the Director of Customer
Relations contacted him but did not receive a return call.  Another outreach has been made this week and
we are hopeful that we can address any outstanding concerns and questions.

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response submitted by the business and have determined that the response does not satisfy or resolve my issues and/or concerns in reference to complaint # [redacted]. I think it's best to address the issues in the order that they appear in the response:1. While the au pair’s room was initially approved, the au pair reported significant fluctuations in temperature and excessive noise; two factors that could not be ascertained without staying overnight in the space.The problem with this statement is that, unbeknownst to us at the time, our former au pair had mentioned these issues to our LCC who did not mention them to us during her stay, and who did not mention them to us when we were deciding whether or not to continue with the program.  The agency KNEW about these issues, we were not, and had our LCC done her job and let us know about our original Au Pair's concern we could have made an informed decision regarding continuing with the program.2. Additionally, she felt that her nutritional needs and preferences were not in line with the family’s and she didn’t feel this would be a compatible placement for the full term.  On our Au Pair's application she stated she had no special dietary restrictions and in the two weeks she was with us she was allowed to shop with us, add items to our list and choose from a number of "take out" options on two separate occasions.  Furthermore, this seems like an issue for which a mediation or conversation should have been at least attempted.3.The family was frustrated and expressed that frustration to both the au pair and the LCC and informed the LCC at that time that they no longer wished to participate on the program.  This is inaccurate, and to quote the transition document: Cultural Care has determined that her bedroom was unsuitable and [redacted] is now staying with her LCC.  So when it's convenient for the agency (when they don't want a prospective family to contact us), we are no longer able to continue with the program.  When it comes to an issue of a refund, "we no longer wished to participate." 4.  The former host father initially agreed and the au pair received her stipend.  This is true, but he also asked the Program manager to contact me because, he admitted, he didn't know a lot about the particulars regarding how things unfolded with the LCC. I was not contacted and after a week went by I reached out to the agency.5.  We were later contacted by someone claiming to be the grandfather and attorney representing the family and demanding a full refund of all monies paid.  We referred him to our legal counsel and, to date, we do not believe that a conversation has occurred between those parties and no specialized refund document has been executed.That is correct- my father in law is an attorney and had some questions about the contract.  He is not representing us.  Upon reviewing the contract I was troubled by the gag order that came along with the terms of the refund.  The agreement read as follows: Host hereby covenants and Agrees that he/she/they will not, at any time hereafter, attempt to assert any claim or commence, maintain or prosecute any action at law, in equity, or otherwise, against the released parties described herein, or any of them individually, on account of any loss, damage, claim, demand, action or cause of action of any kind and nature, whether known or unknown, of any kind whatsoever, in any manner connected with Host’s participation in Cultural Care’s Au Pair Program.Host represents and warrants that he/she/they have the whole right, power and authority to enter into and execute this release and that Host has not assigned or transferred or purported to assign or transfer any claim, demand, debt, liability, damage, obligation, action or cause of action against any of the released parties to any other person, firm or corporation.Host acknowledges and confirms that no representation, promise or agreement whatsoever has been made to induce he/she/them to enter into, execute, and deliver this release, other than as expressly set forth herein. Host agrees to keep the terms of this Agreement confidential and will not disclose its terms to anyone except Host’s lawyer or accountant. Host further agrees not to make any disparaging or defamatory comments about any of the Releasees.I did feel as though the Revdex.com should hear about the deceptive business practices that are commonly experienced by host families involved with CCAP, and while the refund is important, I feel strongly that doing the right thing is more important.  Regards,
[redacted]

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response submitted by the business and have determined that the response does not satisfy or resolve my issues and/or concerns in reference to complaint # [redacted].
A Cultural Care representative told us via email that the Au pair we chose would get additional infant care hours prior to arrival. She did not get these additional hours. It was an error, and errors happen in businesses but Cultural Care refuses to accept any responsibility for the error of their employee. Cultural Care was paid a large sum of money to do one thing, provide an infant qualified au pair. No monies were paid until Cultural Care confirmed that the au pair would be infant qualified upon arrival. If you promise a service you deliver the service. If you or one of your employees makes an error making it impossible to deliver the service you promised, you apologize and offer a refund.  The invalid reference issue is a separate issue that is being handled by the US Department of State.   Regards,
[redacted]

We understand that the family remains dissatisfied with the
offer we have made, however,  this offer was a significant exception to the policy and continues to be available to them.  The
specialized refund agreement is not an usual requirement in order for there to
be confirmation between two parties that a dispute has been resolved.  They may certainly present this to their
attorney for review and if there are any modifications they would like to make,
we will review those requests with our legal counsel and respond accordingly.

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response submitted by the business and have determined that the response does not satisfy or resolve my issues and/or concerns in reference to complaint # [redacted]. Please add your rejection comments below. 
After several conversations with the business, including our conversation yesterday, this issue continues to go on unresolved. Without hesitation, if the business does not refund the FULL amount TIMELY we will take the process of getting our refund further, including but not limited to legal action.
Regards,
[redacted]

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response submitted by the business and have determined that the response does not satisfy or resolve my issues and/or concerns in reference to complaint # [redacted]. Please add your rejection comments below. This agency should return our money because they are not rendering the services agreed to. We are not requesting they fulfill the contract, but it is only right to refund our money.
Regards,
[redacted]

The response provided is false. We were told that we were not able to continue with the program due to the "allegations against our family". I thought this was slightly ridiculous considering my daughter was the victim here, having suffered two dislocated elbows. When I asked what the allegations against our family were, they stated that they made an error and there were no allegations against our family. Now I still want to know why we were kicked out of the program.
Regards,
[redacted]

We look forward to speaking and are hopeful these issues may be resolved and the closure sought by all parties will be achieved.

Revdex.com:
I have reviewed the response submitted by the business and have determined that the response does not satisfy or resolve my issues and/or concerns in reference to complaint # [redacted]. Please add your rejection comments below. 
It does not matter if the au pair had a day left. She injured my child and then ran away, aided and abetted by Cultural Care. Is this the service you're providing? Letting criminal elements harm American children and get away with it? The whole premise of caring for children is obviously fraudulent.   I had to take my child to the emergency room. When I asked if  the au pair would pay the emergency room bill, the reply was that she was not their employee. So they recruit these au pairs, get paid hefty program fees but shirk all responsibilities. This is not the first time this au pair has harmed a child and it will not be the last. I hold you personally responsible for this and any future situations. 
[redacted]