What agency do you use?

[Anonymous]

We are using Cultural Care this year and I am really happy so far. The website is awesome, I found a great au pair, our LCC is really organized, and we have received some really useful materials from them. They are also cheaper than APIA. On the flip side, I've heard some bad experiences about CC too, so we'll see. What agency do you use? Are you happy? What do you wish they'd do better?

[Anonymous]

We use APIA. We used CC our first year of hosting (8 years ago). We liked CC until we needed to rematch -- at which point they had no infant qualified APs who drove. None. And they were totally unsympathetic and unhelpful. We ended up leaving the program for 6 months and had my MIL move in with us to help (we had just moved somewhere where we had no support network). When we came back to the AP program, we found our own AP on greataupair.com, paid her to switch from APC to CC, and it was a great match. Once we were done with that year, we switched to APIA. We have been happy with APIA since. I will say that this year, I was having trouble finding good candidates through APIA and started looking at CC again (we no longer need an IQ AP so my concern about not finding a replacement, should something go wrong, wasn't an issue anymore). Had we found an AP through CC we would have gone with them. As it was, we found one through APIA. I ended up telling APIA I would switch to CC unless they matched the CC price. They agreed to do so, so I matched with the APIA AP. ONce we had matched, APIA said, "oh sure, we will match the CC price, but you still have to pay this $400 additional matching fee." I was really angry and took this up the channels a bit, but ultimately if I wanted to keep our match (and I was too exhausted from matching to start over), we had to agree. I feel like this was a sneaky way of making more money and keeping a family, but in the end, we're with APIA still. We really like our LCC so will probably stay with them going forward even after this.

If you want to try APIA, OP, then get in writing that they will match CC's fees, with no additional fees added on (except the airfare to your home). I didn't get that last in writing so that is why I had no leg to stand on.

Good luck with your decision.

[Anonymous]

Good info, PP. How did it work with finding your own au pair? Is that then cheaper for the agency fee?

[Anonymous]

We've used CC for several years and been relatively happy. We've never had a re-match luckily because I think the LLC is a bit of a ditz, but the girls we've found have been good and the placement managers have been able to find us some good candidates that of course we then interview.

[Anonymous]

APIA.

Haven't had to rematch, but feel comfortable about the pool of APs they have.