06 May 2008

Babysitter Options

A couple people have asked, and I have posted about this before, but it's been a while so here are two options to get babysitters:

Babysitease. Basically, this service guarantees to hook you up with a sitter for $8 an hour. There is a $50 registration fee, then you schedule the sits through their website and pay Babysitease $8 each time you schedule. Then you pay the sitter cash. We have done this several times and it has worked wonderfully. The only drawback is not really knowing who you will get as a sitter, but they have mostly been UC students and some have been excellent.

Mommy Mixer. I keep getting unwanted solicitations for this event wherein you meet potential sitters and get names and phone numbers. The next event is May 14 at 6pm. Cost is $50. We have never done this, but it might be worth a try for others.

5 comments:

Julie said...

I have friends who have used Mommy Mixer and really liked it, particularly because they got to meet the sitters to determine a good fit.

VisuaLingual said...

I find it really surprising that parents would choose a service that doesn't allow them to meet the sitter beforehand, or get the same sitter again. I understand that there's pre-screening involved, but the personal connection seems really important.

Do these services ever balk at your location?

CityKin said...

On Babysitease, you must describe your family situation and we make it clear on there that we live in OTR and some sitters may not want to accept the job. However they are mostly college-age and none have found location to be a problem.

We did have one young woman though who was hysterically afraid of cats, and couldn't believe that we didn't mention the cat in our family description.

KQMom said...

My name is LaDonna and I plan MommyMixers for Cincinnati. It’s true. There is no better way to find out if the sitter (or sitters) you are about to hire is a good fit for your family than meeting them face to face in a relaxed setting, seeing how they interact with others and seeing what your other options are.

So far, MommyMixer has been very well received in Cincinnati. Currently, I am running a $50 special for the May 14 mixer at HighStreet. In addition, if you bring a friend, you’ll receive 50% off of the next mixer that you attend. Pre-registration is required. If interested, please feel free to visit http://www.MommyMixer.com/Cincinnati. Oh, and HighStreet is giving everyone in attendance a 15% discount. Yay!

Peggy said...

I am one of the owners of BabysitEase- and I just wanted to explain some of the service! Our goal is to take the stress out of your childcare experience by making High Quality childcare Fast, Easy, & Convenient.

We interview & reference check all the sitters that work for us, we schedule your sitter so if Sara (for example) isn't available we'll move on down the list to Abby and Jessica, etc. So you don't need to make the 10 phone calls. Because we have so many sitters working for us it greatly increases the likelihood of you getting out for the night. :) Qualifying a sitter to work for BSE takes over an hour- from interview through checks- and only 3 out of every 10 sitters that apply actually come to work for us, so we work hard to maintain high standards. Our families just don’t have that time to spend to find awesome care givers.

There are other options for finding good babysitters including list services such as Sitter City or networking events such as Mommy Mixers but the problem occurs when the sitter you selected is not available. With BabysitEase we have many, many sitters that are available if the one sitter you want is busy. We do the work for you- from the initial screening to actually scheduling the sitter- you save precious time and hassles.