Ugh..Barbara. I couldn’t be paid enough money to hire her agency.

They’ve had a poor reputation forever.

There is nothing special about agency found nannies, from personal experience. Inflated rates and ridiculous expectations, with zero qualifications to merit the same.

The nanny doesn't want to ruin their relationship with the agency because the agency is the gateway to their livelihood.

White Nannies definitely do not have "best" caregivers. They have average caregivers. Maybe that is why their rates for nannies are also just average.

Does booking through them offer you other benefits - I know some agencies guarantee a sitter, so if you book and the person gets sick or flakes or has car trouble, they will send someone else. That would be worth the fee to be sure that you have care. I would imagine (but don't know for sure) that sitters have some protection against a family if they did not pay, or set up cameras without telling, or stayed out past agreed hours and did not communicate. So, it would make sense for the nanny to not want to break with agency requirement for someone who might book them 1x/ month.

I am sure that if you are using someone 2x per week over the next few months and are consistent, that person might be willing to deal with you directly, but for sporadic jobs, it would not be wise for the nanny.

I'm sure you signed a contract outlining the repercussions of booking one of their sitters outside of their agency. The nanny probably did too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No other agency charges $50. per day on top of the nanny’s hourly rate. That’s utterly ridiculous.
No doubt they threaten the nannies with a lawsuit if you don’t pay up to the agency. And probably will sue you to.
WHN is generally not well regarded on this forum.

Temp placements are always daily fees for the agency plus hourly for the nanny, and $50 is reasonable.

Which other local agencies charge $50. per session (as OP put it)?

Anonymous wrote:No other agency charges $50. per day on top of the nanny’s hourly rate. That’s utterly ridiculous.
No doubt they threaten the nannies with a lawsuit if you don’t pay up to the agency. And probably will sue you to.
WHN is generally not well regarded on this forum.

Temp placements are always daily fees for the agency plus hourly for the nanny, and $50 is reasonable.

harvardstreetmom wrote:I recently joined White House Nannies as a client and I have been impressed with the quality of caregivers. (I'm not getting long-term nanny care, just occasional daytime babysitters). I didn't fully realize that the service charges me an extra $50 per session on top of what I pay the sitter directly (and on top of the memebership fee or whatever when I joined). So if I have a sitter twice a week, I'm paying the sitter of course, but I'm also paying White House Nannies another $100.

I truly appreciate the work they do to find quality care, but now that I've found 3-4 good sitters I really like, why wouldn't I just communicate with the sitters directly, vs using the White House Nannies program to request their time? Is this a thing other people are doing to "get around" the $50 charge, and I just don't know about it?

Nanny here. I go through NannyPoppinz, but the same thing (hopefully) applies to nannies with whn.

Long term: I’ve had families interview me, decline all the candidates that NannyPoppinz set up, then call me and try to bypass the agency fee. I hang up and notify my agency, not because I would have a financial penalty (I wouldn’t), but because my agency has treated me well, and they spent the time and money recruiting and vetting nannies to interview with the family, interviewed the family and set up their profile, then called us to set up interviews that work with both the family’s and nannies’ schedules. I could jump ship to another agency, but why would I do that?

Short term: I occasionally take short term placements through NannyPoppinz. If I met the family in any other venue, I notify the agency that I’m taking the booking, and they get the fee the first time, but the family just calls me from then on. If I met the family through NannyPoppinz, I only schedule through them, unless I meet them later through my primary charge (ex: if I find that we’re at the same preschool the following fall, I’ll book through the family from that point forward). I’m not going to undercut my agency to save a temp family a daily fee, regardless of how much it is.

No other agency charges $50. per day on top of the nanny’s hourly rate. That’s utterly ridiculous.
No doubt they threaten the nannies with a lawsuit if you don’t pay up to the agency. And probably will sue you to.
WHN is generally not well regarded on this forum.

I recently joined White House Nannies as a client and I have been impressed with the quality of caregivers. (I'm not getting long-term nanny care, just occasional daytime babysitters). I didn't fully realize that the service charges me an extra $50 per session on top of what I pay the sitter directly (and on top of the memebership fee or whatever when I joined). So if I have a sitter twice a week, I'm paying the sitter of course, but I'm also paying White House Nannies another $100.

I truly appreciate the work they do to find quality care, but now that I've found 3-4 good sitters I really like, why wouldn't I just communicate with the sitters directly, vs using the White House Nannies program to request their time? Is this a thing other people are doing to "get around" the $50 charge, and I just don't know about it?