Jeff L.

Cultural Care Au Pair

I strongly recommend against the use of this company and hope they are put out of business for the sake of the children, the host families, the au pairs, and the industry, for I believe that the concept of cultural exchange is a good one. Any cost savings they claim are being lost by the increasing fees, and having cars destroyed and insurance rates go up doesn’t help in this respect, either.

I have quit this company after three + years of experience with them. I am a single dad physician and am in need of an au pair as I have my kids 50% of the time and leave too early in the AM and return too late in the PM to reliably accommodate my own needs. The first three au pairs I had were acceptable, except that one was a lesbian and she took that relationship far more seriously than her job for the last three months; one stole money from my kids piggy banks (and probably from me as well); and one admitted, that her application was a complete fabrication written by someone else, six months after she was here. She also crashed my car 2 days before returning to her native Poland, leaving me to pay the bill and increased insurance costs. While these experiences were not great, they were at least acceptable. I still mutually get and send frequent emails from the first three girls, who also send me and my daughter’s birthdays and holiday greetings, as despite any negatives, they were truly treated as a part of my family.

In the past 6 months (since the third yearlong au pair left in 11/07), I have had 3 au pairs who stayed less than one week cumulatively. One was so asocial as to not venture out of her room in the two day period she was with my family over Thanksgiving, instead just constantly on her laptop to her friends; one totaled my Lexus SUV by leaving the car in reverse instead of park on a steep driveway without using the parking break, taking out a telephone pole and my neighbors tree at the same time, and the final one, who was from S. Africa declared after 1 day that she did not do house work as she has a servant at home to do that for her and that I should hire a servant for her to clean up the messes the children made, even though the children were not even at my house at the time!!!

Cultural care did nothing to help me with my child care needs during this difficult approximate 6 month hiatus, while they looked for a new or a defective au pair that some other family rejected, which is quite common, according to them. Cultural care is giving me a hard time about refunding my security deposit ($7000 “agency fee”), claiming they provided six weeks of care, when in fact, not one day was supplied, and trying to blame me for the car accident "because I allowed her to drive the car" when she had an Austrian license and they knew my requirements were high for a good driver which is primarily the reason I needed an au pair. I have tried to speak with the president of the company 7 times, but have not been put thru. Since I only had my kids 1/2 time and this was not a split situation, the au pairs averaged less than 20 hours /week of work, which did include the “extra job” of doing my laundry (the first three au pairs were not required by me to do this, they did it as a matter of practicality) as my kids slept with me half the time and my and their laundry and mine were mixed together.

The local representative was completely unhelpful, always referring me to someone else in the company with any problem, and never made one phone call to see how the girl who totaled my car was doing. I was promised my auto deductible deposit back for this more than a month ago and have not been paid.

Reading all the complaints on this list, I think it is time for a class action suit against this company, which I would gladly join in. Every friend of one of my long term au pairs had driving accidents, and the amount of turnover in families is incredible. It is hard to piece this sham together until seeing something like this, but it appears that the company does next to nothing regarding the screening of the applicants, assumes no responsibility when things go wrong, and lies to the applicants as well as to the host parents. I’ve been told by one of their former au pairs that they had to change their name in the past from EF Au Pair to Culturalcare Au Pair for some sort of wrongdoing, and had my children been in the car during the two auto accidents that occurred in my vehicle within 6 months (a 60K Lexus SUV so things would be safe), the company would be looking at a wrongful death suit.