Cancellation policies
Please find the cancellations policies for each service below.
As many of you know, Roma Dog Behaviour Academy is a small business, and we’ve always been happy to go above and beyond for your fur babies.
But we feel in the need to establish cancellation policies to protect us, who are always willing to give the best for your pets, for many reasons:
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It’s a lot of hard work (admin) for us to arrange the week’s / month calendar and get to the best outcome. Every dog walk is perfectly balanced with matching dog personalities
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We are almost fully booked for training and dog walking, and pretty much booked for petsitting as it’s when there is a high demand of this service. The empty spots can’t be replaced by any other pet with such short notice.
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For training, there is a waiting list of 2 weeks for appointments, and lots of families needing help. That spot can’t be taken by other clients with such a short notice. I usually “borrow” other doggies for training classes (socialising) and cancellations imply cancelling to my other clients who were counting on this. Furthermore (and this is super important), the progress of a dog’s training can get affected if I cannot have the consultations with the correct amount of time between sessions. Some bad habits can be picked up, some training must be done at certain age, etc. and the quality of the training may be affected badly, not reaching the best outcome – and we can be easily blamed for that as “I did some training but didn’t help much”.
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For dog walking, the appointments we give to you have a BIG amount of brain hours / admin to fit your fur baby into the perfect day, with the perfect group, so we can all have a lovely time. My team allocate the hours that I happily pay every time they work with me, and I don’t cancel them last minute as I don’t think is fair.
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For petsitting, the calendar blocks once the date is confirmed, and the team is committed, leaving aside any other possibility of petsitting and personal affairs.
I also make a mental projection of how my business is going to be during a month so I can invest in it (equipment, clothes, etc.), and it’s absolutely stressful not to meet the expectations. I fully understand that we all have crazy moments and lives get in our way, but if you cancel without the proper notice, that really hurts our business.
I’m happy to help now and then when things get super complicated and I do have exceptions to the rule, but please understand if it’s not in my possibilities to accommodate your pet. This small business is a professional business, this means that I studied hard to build it, I pay taxes, insurances, buy equipment, have a suitable car to transport dogs, and is my main source of income.
Therefore, from now on:
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Dog Training: cancellations / rescheduling will require a minimum of 72 hours’ notice or the lesson will be charged / class will be missed.
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Dog Walking: cancellations / rescheduling will require a minimum of 48 hours’ notice or 50% of the walk will be charged.
For cancellations on the same day, the full amount will be charged.
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Petsitting: cancellations / rescheduling will require a minimum of 72 hours’ notice or or 50% of the petsitting will be charged.
This is not something that makes me feel good at all, but at least will bring me & my team a little bit of peace of mind.
Thanks for understanding.
