u/Natural-Gap-8145

Just want to share this post as a bit of a warning, as now we're into summer and others are arranging pet care during holidays.

I live in Wimbledon and have 2 cats and am heading to Germany to see family. I was looking at local cat sitters, and google pushed a company called "London Cat Sitting company". They appear to manage and coordinate cat sitters centrally across London, but the about me page on the website indicates its run by one person.

I asked around with friends who had cats if anyone had used them....and it was insane. One friend told me they had such a bad experience with the owner that they ended up calling the police. They also said they had spoken to someone else who had been granted a restraining order against the owner for such bad harassment.

Cue a deep dive and a rabbit hole at 2am! At first glance, the Google and Trustpilot reviews look mostly okay. But when I looked at the one/two star reviews, some of the owner’s replies were really concerning and just shocking. One reply even told a customer to “go pound sand”, which just felt wild for a business response to a bad review!

I totally get it must be hard when businesses get bad reviews, or they feel they are incorrect in their opinion, but when you are asking a business to hold keys, allow people into your home and care for loved ones (like my cats are literal family members!) how they respond to criticism matters, and the level of professionalism there.

My rabbit hole also took me down various employment tribunals accusing owner of racism, withholding pay and the company's social media on tiktok, twitter were weird with reposts from what appears to be their personal account, about their beef with the met police, lawyers, other customers etc.

I am not entirely sure the company is still running that being said, as on companies house it appeared closed but did have active website etc?

Sharing this because if I had not asked around and taken a bit extra time to research I'd have probably gone ahead and booked and I saw enough to tell me to stay clear.

Hi All, UK national here trying to figure out how the healthcare system works in Germany, particuarly for children.

In the UK, like Germany- we have a national healthcare service, you pay and insurance and we pay a national insurance. My question is around private care?

In the UK, If I want to see- for example, a private cardiologist, I can pay out of pocket for an appointment and any tests (or my insurance- but for the sake of this post, we don't have that!). Is this possible in Germany, could we- approach a doctor in Germany, and be seen privately directly and pay out of pocket?

I cannot seem to find via google any services that offer this, particuarly for children and often require discussions first via paediatricians. If, someone from a different country wants to access a doctor privately in germany- what would that process be also, is it the same?