Melissa L.

My husband & I had high hopes for Melissa after we interviewed her to babysit for our son. However, after our most recent experience with her we are so disappointed that we will never use her services in the future. Long story short: Melissa had agreed to come & babysit our son on a Saturday, so my husband & I arranged to go on a double date. A few hours before she was supposed to come over I texted her to make sure that she was still coming & she confirmed that she was. Around 4PM, the time that she was supposed to arrive, I received a text from her stating that she missed the bus that was supposed to get her to our house by 4:15PM so she was going to be later than expected-closer to 5:10. I offered to come & pick her up at the next bus stop. After we were already driving to get her, her phone "mysteriously" started to send our calls straight to voicemail. Hoping that her phone died & that she didn't intentionally turn it off, my husband drove to the bus stop & waited for her to show up for over 15 minutes past the time she said she would arrive. He saw two buses on the same route arrive & leave with no sign of her. Even though we were very frustrated that she'd bailed on us last minute we were concerned that something had happened to her so we texted her that evening asking if she was ok. She finally responded at 10PM & said that her phone had died while she was on the bus & that she'd forgotten to check her phone after she'd placed it on her charger. So, basically, she bailed on us last minute AND she didn't even have the courtesy to stay around her phone for the 3-5 minutes it takes to get a basic charge to text us and apologize for not showing up. We understand that life happens, but the lack of overall communication & lack of consideration to let us know what happened as soon as her phone was charged is unacceptable. Although we thought that she was going to be our go-to babysitter we now know that she cannot be relied on. Very disappointing.

I cannot say enough about how wonderful Melissa is. She is an absolute dream when it comes to a childcare provider. We are living in a temporary situation in MD while we wait to move to a house in VA and I was nervous hiring sitters whom I haven't known well. We were thrilled with Melissa. She is totally engaged with the kids, she is sophisticated, kind, humble, caring and I knew as we left our kids with her one evening and the 2yo didn't fuss at all that we had found a gem. Wish she lived in VA and could be a regular sitter. We plan to ask her to watch our boys for a weekend sometime...she is that amazing!