Payment Safety and Refunds
The Pawshake Guarantee is included with every Pawshake booking and is our way of protecting you and your pet. This is our commitment to support you on the rare occasion when something goes wrong during a booking.
Is my payment safe?
Absolutely. Your privacy is important to us and we only use secure online payment processing methods. You can pay via Bancontact, Visa, Mastercard or American Express.
As part of your booking, you also need to enter your billing information, after which the amount due for the booking will be put on hold (also known as a 'hold authorisation' on your credit card for the total of your booking). This is very similar to a booking you make for a room at a hotel: here, too, a hold authorisation will be put on your credit card for the amount of the booking.
A pet sitter can then do one of these three things following your booking request:
- Confirm your booking: once this happens, your credit card will be charged. This means that the money provided for the booked pet sitting service will be held in escrow by Pawshake until the service has been completed. We do this for the security of both parties involved.
- Decline your booking: if this happens, no amount will be charged. The authorization for the hold on your credit card will be released immediately. After a few business days (10 at most), you will no longer see the pending amount on your statement. Please contact our Customer Support if the booking still appears on your statement.
- No response: similarly, if a pet sitter doesn't respond, no amount will be charged and the hold on your credit card will automatically expire after 30 days. Please contact our Customer Support if the booking still appears on your statement, or, if you’d like to have it released sooner.
A pet sitter responds, on average, within 4 hours after receiving a booking request. Pet sitters have up to 24 hours to respond. If a pet sitter takes longer than 24 hours to respond, their account will be flagged as unresponsive and will be reviewed by our Trust and Safety team.
When will the pet sitter get paid?
Once the booking has ended, Pawshake will transfer the amount due for the booking minus the contribution for Pawshake (19%) to the pet sitter's payment account. This can take up to 7 days. The payment process on Pawshake is cashless and fully automated, so neither you nor the pet sitter needs to worry about the money.
If you have any concerns about your booking or the pet sitter, please contact us at the latest 48 hours after the booking has ended so that we can place the payment on hold if necessary. Please read more about how you are protected with our Happiness Guarantee.
Refund policy
As a pet owner, you will be refunded the amount of your booking under the following circumstances:
- The pet sitter cancels or declines your booking request or doesn't respond to your request within 24 hours.
- You cancel your booking after the pet sitter has confirmed: you will be refunded the amount of your booking in full or in part, depending on the applicable cancellation policy of the pet sitter (i.e. flexible or moderate cancellation policy). You can check the cancellation policy of your pet sitter on his or her profile page.
- If, after completion of the pet sitting service, you are not happy with your pet sitter, you can file a claim with Pawshake under our Happiness Guarantee. You need to notify us via our Customer Support. Read more about the Happiness Guarantee here.