Spot Dog Walking 4+

Me and my dog are grateful for this service. The support team is also excellent.

Some feed back from a frequent UAT’er.

The colour scheme for “confirmed and pending” is not clear to a new comer. Your trying to haul people in and make them want to use the app. So the first booking has to be very easy and I was so confused that I just had to send a request out to the population and not be able to directly message someone, or even see how many dogs they have in there schedule in the next few weeks.

It was hard to message a person directly. I read some profiles and wanted to message them to see how they felt about a 100lb dog and what there schedule was like, but it wasn’t clear how into do that. “Book walks” was the only thing I seen and it was not what I wanted to do right away, I wanted to make sure she was ok with a huge dog First. I also wanted to choose someone in my neighbourhood instead of someone a few Kms away, for many reason

You should be able to set a time frame that is longer then one hour for an arrival of a walk. I honestly don’t care if they come in a specific hour, I just need them there within. 2-4 hour time window while I’m at work. It should be based off of there schedule from there. If someone wants a tighter schedule they can set it that way.

The walker should be able to propose different times. I’m not sure if that’s not already in the app though.

When I messaged a walker, my iPhone allowed me to click “done” from the keyboard but this made the app freeze and I had to retype everything and this time be sure to click spots “send mail icon” key instead of my iphones “done” key.

When a walker accepted my request, it took 4 minutes for the app to show me this, despite getting a push notification saying that a walker selected the request.

I really didn’t like that I can’t see who is ok with boarding over night. I’d like a long time walker to become friends with my guy and be ok with a night or two of boarding each year, and that was VERY unclear. I was not going to just send my request out to the world without seeing someone’s profile.

I’m also not sure on the walkers side of things. Can they see my address and my breed of my dog in the request? Therefore everyone gets this requeSt and can see that I have a pure breed alone looking to be walked? That’s not cool either.

Hope this helps with app improvements.

I’m still confused as to why it’s a thing that walkers can see “stories” from other walkers in random locations at the top of the home page, and why they still cause my app to freeze and crash every time. Even more concerned that the new updates now display walkers’ full names along with the story! Their recent updates have also made the active walk page longer & more difficult to navigate, which is especially frustrating when trying to do so quickly with two leashes and a poop bag in hand.
Furthermore, I think Spot has changed their pay model. I believe they’ve increased the prices for dog owners, yet walkers are still being paid between $11-17 for a walk. The only way to actually make decent money is to wait for a “bonus” to be added to the walk price, if no one has accepted as it gets closer to the walk start time. Bonuses are $1-2, added approx. every hour, but rarely exceed $10 before someone accepts the walk.
Of course, it’s always been a gamble to wait for added bonuses, but even more so now that bonuses seem to be few and far between. And since the beginning of 2024, fewer walks are available in my location than ever before, so most walkers will take whatever they can get as soon as something is listed.
I haven’t seen many of my favourite dogs for some time now, which could support my theory that Spot has made walks more expensive to owners. It’s a shame, really.