Complaint Review: Social Pet Jackie Philips

There are not too many complaints to this nice lady and appears many of complaints has been erased from internet because those who complained referenced missing complaints. But i have now hard proofs the owner of the business is lying or at least sincerely believes in her own lies and has extensive experience turning things into her favor by means of limitation her responsibility to the clients and extensive posting in internet. At least my experience resembles smallest details of other clients fooled by Jackie Philips.

This lady in her 60s advertises herself hardly on the internet in Bay Area as missing pets scout explaining she has some 10+ years of experience and has two trained dogs. One of her clients had experience with male dog, i had experience with Asia - female, but they behave the same way and the story is very similar to smallest details.

As she shares the story - she took the business from her partner who left to Australia (i need to find her to find the truth) and made her "improvements": ie trained the dogs her own way (found the way how to fool wealthy and desperate pet owners of Bay Area)

she obviously post a lot and if you don't have experience in dog tracking and you lost your pet it's easy to believe her lies and obviously she does that very VERY convincing, provided she's in the "business" for 10+ years and not hiding. i believe she may believe in her own lies or sincerely deluded herself to be so convincing and so weird to the real dog tracking ...

I missed the cat in downtown San Francisco who had extensive experience in long way trips and outdoor walks (3 countries, some 20+ cities, 3-5 times per week outdoor walks. SF could be the safest place for the pet to be lost if there would be single database and thorough tracking by microchip and pictures. Unfortunately, lost pets tracing is far from perfect and leaves a huge space for people like Jackie to fool desperate owners. 

As with other clients, Jackie arrived to the parking spot she knew very well and way too far from the lost pet location (stupid explaination she has BIG van and can't leave it in the parking lots and in covered garages) - total lie the only reason is to park the car far enough to have good 4 hours (equals her minimum charge) dog walk.

We had 2 locations: one - where the cat actually jumped from my hands and walked away 9 days ago - Geary/Scott and another location at 819 Filbert, where some person posted pictures and info he had seen her - 1.5 days ago. I brought scent articles with me, as instructed tho the most "recent" spot - the one where someone saw a cat similar to mine - Filbert.

The way of prepairing articles makes you believe it will work (it won't will and never did - read her blog carefully well prepared). again, as other clients described, she put dog cookie into the bag with the scent and dog behave as she never was interested in that. Jackie was pulling the dog to walk and after some struggle the dog started to walk not interested at all and NOT sniffing the pavement AT ALL!!!

Jackie however did instist the dog TOOK the trail and follows it and i asked her a dozen of times and she always confirmed the dog is AT WORK and ON THE TRACK. Jackie is very experienced in distracting the client by constant chat no matter how you try to focus her on the business. The dog does her easy walk and appears have been used to her OWN TRAIL. 

Professional trackers ALWAYS use TWO dogs to track and Jackie is smart enough to advertise two, but always to bring one (two dogs would be too obvious not following the track). i knew that but was very upset by the loss so that started to suspect something after 2h walk.

Even after that i still had some hope it's not a joke and indeed this lady sells you hope which is priceless and obviously for most professionals in Bay Area $85/h is not a big deal. Unfortunately for her i'm not making a fortune in Silicon Valley and $600 for a dog walk and a straight lie to a person who lost his pet and can't find it is a bit too much.

The "scent track" was in the places my cat would never EVER walk - it was really way too far from the place where she really was (Geary/Scott) and I have some 3 years of experience and know for sure she won't go to beautiful parks and the places where are lots of dogs (outside walking cats are very rare and appears Jackie specializes on dogs - it's much easier to fool dog owner if you walk your dog where other dogs are walking)

We did a 4h walk and first signal for me was that while i was moving my car from one parking spot to another (2h allowed and it took me some 40 minutes to re park) Jackie and dog didn't track, they just stayed where they were. we did another 2h walk at some most beautiful SF locations and after 4h she stopped in the middle of nowhere (she obviously was tired, but not her dog!!) and asked what to do.

I proposed to walk 1h more while i'll repark the car and asked her to track further. Within my 50 minutes absense she walked straight to the direction of the place where her van was parked. I did started to suspect and googled "Jackie Philips scam" and found stories resembling mine as identical twins.

Most important, i got a call from my girlfriend who checked data of the cat seen on 819 Filbert (the location where dog "TOOK THE TRACK") is NOT ours, 500%. Ooops. Bad luck for Jackie, who assured me some 10 times the dog is on the scent track. Later i checked how dog tracking is performed by professionals and no way it resembles the nice walk we had with her dog.

I filed dispute with Venmo (luckily she accepted Venmo and credit card charge) but appears she convinced them with "thousands"'of succeed cases. The rule of big numbers obviously works and i believe quite a few Bay Area residents would spend hours to get some $4-5-6 hudreds back as it could cost them more to waste their time this way. Not for me though.

I doubt she will spend all $600 earned by her dog to feed them well and i'd like to finish this scam for the sake of humanity to people who lost their pets and whom this lady misleads by expensive dog walk. 

I do have some other hard proofs she's lier but won't disclose it here as she may learn from it and adapt her strategy. For me it's more than enough that her dog "took" wrong path, made a walk and not tracking and i have hard proofs of it.