My beloved pet day care started Gingr a few months ago. Scheduling services was much better than the previous platform used by the business. Downloading photos to keep or share, a necessity with our fur babies, took some getting used to, but then it was noticeably easier to see the photos than it was when the facility sent it individually by text. However the latest upgrade has totally demolished this capability. Every time I try to download or just share a photo, I end up with the wrong photo, usually one from a previous month (sometimes for even the wrong dog, LOL). Yes it’s a good app for the business side, but it looses one of the big of the perks that pet owners look for when boarding their pet - monitoring and then sharing the ultimate cuteness of their pet. I’ve actually considered refusing some add on services from my pet daycare/boarder, because of the loss of this feature. In honesty, I did attempt to contact the developers for a fix before writing this negative review, but the link to contact them is not working either. Sooooo, there you go!
For 2024 this app is terrible in so many ways. It looks like a very simple mobile site just wrapped. It doesn’t provide any notifications at all for a report card or photos being uploaded. An email that seems severely delayed for a report card is the only thing you get. The only two colors used is gray and white. The account setup and fill out proportion is severely lacking. Basic function isn’t a thing. I have found two bugs and reported them both to support. Which was a pain to even find contact for them. They told me talk to my trainer. Pretty sure my trainer isn’t the one that codes the app. I now can’t download any photos or videos of my dog except for the one photo it chooses every time instead I try to download something. Definitely will discuss with my trainer to find a better option than this.
The most valuable feature of an app like this is to look in on your pet via live view of kennel and play area. However, this app lacks the most basic feature of viewing any video - turning your device to see full screen. As a result, it is very hard to get a good look at how your pet is doing. To make matters worse, pinching zooms into one corner of the video, and you can’t drag to other areas. Severely limits the utility of what would otherwise be a great app. Meanwhile, that ability to go full screen and zoom is not something that must be coded from scratch. The underlying toolkits to embed video on a mobile device provide these capabilities. Can only assume that they’ve failed to make use of those capabilities.
I’ve never used an app this complicated. It’s not intuitive and it’s really messy with two much info and wordy about the differences between services. I tried to make a reservation for two days in a row. The first day with an arrival time of 10am. When you finish booking the first appt. you have an option to add other dates. Click on it and it takes you to a screen that dumps you into recurring dates or click on a grayed out tab for just another date. That’s all I wanted was one other date, but it prefilled with the same drop off time. I want to change the drop off time for the second d day. No way to do it, that I can find. To start this mess off, I had to change my password three times to get into my account. And it won’t let you use an apple generated strong password. Guess I’ll just have to call and book my reservations by phone. Or use a facility that has there own website with booking. Like Dogtopia. Get a grip, guys. Using this app is like being back in the early 2000’s.
Awful user experience for pet parents AND businesses
The doggie day care I’ve been going to for years recently began insisting on completing all transactions using this app. I can’t even get a receipt any other way from them anymore. For that reason, I’ll be very sadly taking my business elsewhere. First off, there is no reason the developers of this app need to collect all the personal data they do. Protect yourself, don’t be complacent. Downloads do not work- will download only a blank photo file. Uploading vaccination files causes a crash. I can’t paste a password into the login screen- it must be manually typed in which makes using good secure passwords difficult. Booking a boarding service will sometimes cause a crash, other times not appear on the business end at all. UI interface is nonsensical, but would be tolerable if ANYTHING else worked properly at all. Not only is the doggie day care client side this bad, it appears to be even worse for the poor day care staff forced to use this by their corporate management. Several employees of my soon-to-be-former establishment have quit over it, and they are losing customers. No one who has ever actually tried to use this app themselves would choose it for their business.
I like the idea of booking and paying online . Changing a drop off time has to be done by facility , huge hassle . Also I have had to delete and reload the app four times now in just a few weeks . It goes completely white screen , sometimes right after just using it . Same for iPad and phone . Would be a great app if it was easier to use and more efficient.
Seems like it would be easy to use but nothing is as expected. Book a bath or nails? You have to go “More” then “contact us” and then scroll all the way down to the bottom for another link to book. That makes sense right?? How about you just put it under “Book” to book a bath?? And to cancel? The dates start in the future rather than what’s next so you have to scroll from the end of next year to get to current bookings. Ok, cool. And don’t book too many days because they expire. Why? If I want to pay for a year in advance then let me. I don’t want to deal with booking, especially with this app, every few weeks. Glad it helps my day care provider but I hate using this app. Awful!
This app has wonderful potential, but the current experience is quite bad. 1. When you attempt to “download” any of the photos uploaded by your boarding or day care company, it repeatedly only downloads the most recent photo. Eg: 12 different photos were shared. If you open each and click download, 12 copies of a single photo are saved instead. 2. Viewing cameras and live feeds works sub-par for portrait orientation (rendering a landscape 4:3 on a vertical 9:16 display as a 2” rectangle) and instead of going full-screen when you put your screen in landscape, it is so cluttered with white space that the video is unviewable.
Five stars for Gingr! As a devoted pet parent, I can't thank Gingr enough for simplifying my life. This app is a game-changer for organizing my furry friend's appointments, from grooming to boarding! The user-friendly interface makes scheduling a breeze. Plus, the ability to store my pets records securely gives me peace of mind. Gingr truly understands the needs of pet parents, and I couldn't be happier with this app. Highly recommend to all pet lovers out there!
I haven’t been using the app for long as I’m a new pet parent but any time my dog has been staying at his boarding facility I’m unable to download any of the photos but the very first one sent during his first stay back in early May. He’s been there on at least 3 other occasions for a couple days at a time and i can’t save any of the other photos. Kind of a bummer seeing as that is one of the highlights. Otherwise booking stays and services is relatively smooth and convenient.
I use this app to hold the dog kennel accountable. As currently structured I have to obsessively watch my dog to see if and when he’s let out/when he’s let out/for how long he's let out; whether he’s been fed, when, and how much he ate; etc. I know the idea started as checkin on a beloved pet, but I’d rather get a receipt showing the kennel staff are accountable to their promises. So far from my policing, they aren’t doing quite what they promised…so definitely an opportunity to improve service.
This is the clunkiest, most frustrating app I have dealt with. It is neither intuitive nor user friendly. It does not have an adequate list of breeds. It does remember the vet addd for the first animal when a second with the same vet is added. It froze and had to be deleted and reinstalled. It does not appear one can log in on a laptop and complete the information. I will be asking my facility to consider another booking app that does not suffer from these defects. It took nearly an hour to do what should have been able to be done in 10-15 minutes. At least it’s free.
Sometimes the report is missing, sometimes I don’t get the notification text, sometimes my pics won’t load or download and finally, sometimes, I get an error altogether and can’t see anything. My puppy is at a two week training camp, which has been very challenging. The only thing that keeps us going is being able to view her and know that she’s OK. But this app is very finicky and inconsistent. What it offers is not extremely complex so I’m not sure why there are so many issues on the customer side or why it’s difficult to fix.
What’s the point of having an app to book boarding if you have to wait days for confirmation? The app should be used for booking - meaning the availability is up to date and you can actually book and confirm a reservation. I’m planning a trip for work (it’s Saturday) and I have to wait until Monday for a confirmation. That’s ridiculous. I can call the business directly and cut out this app as a middle man. Again, what’s the point of the app?
My pets’ grooming facility uses this platform and both the app and the website are consistently broken. I select everything correctly and when I go to submit there is an error stating “it can’t be submitted at this time.” This happens on both the website and the app. I have to either call or send them an email for appointments. If I knew I had to do this, I would delete the app and just do the first two options. Gingr needs to fix their app!
For the love of god, please add a calendar view to the screen that shows you all your bookings! For someone who does a lot of recurring bookings but then has to cancel a booking here and there for holidays or other reasons, the list view is so annoying to look at and navigate! More often than not I find myself texting the facility for my bookings rather than using this app.
This is a lot user friendlier than the prior version. I appreciate the fact that customers now have their own app instead of having to go online. This makes access easier for them.
Our local daycare started using this system and it has been very frustrating. The app doesn’t retain any log in information; and after manually entering it each time, the app just fails to recognize that I even tried to enter anything. When I try to reset my password, it doesn’t even acknowledge that I made that attempt. Just a poorly written piece of software.
One of the options I love is getting pictures from my dog’s day. Lately, when I attempt to download certain pictures, it saves wrong ones that I didn’t choose. I finally deleted the app and reinstalled it, but the app let me download 2 pictures and now it’s doing the same as before. I really don’t want to have to uninstall the app every time I get updates 😑.
I love having the option to book online instead of calling or emailing! The app makes it convenient to pay invoices, schedule appointments, and see pictures of my dogs during the day.
The app is very convenient for booking daycare or boarding but I can’t see my dogs reports and seeing the pictures and videos posted takes forever to load. You can’t download the pictures or videos to keep yourself cause every time you hit the download button it only downloads the very first picture every posted.
I want to like this app as it has a lot of the features I would want to see however using it feels like traveling back in time, it is soo slow. This makes trying to view images or videos of our dogs infuriating. I know they are there, I can see, but I can’t watch them without spending substantial time to wait for videos to load. This is true on good internet connections.
I like booking from the iOS app more than the previous web app. Updates arrive frequently so they seem to be working out the kinks. It’s been getting smoother and less buggy. Keep up the great work!
The dog boarding service I want to use, uses this app. It’s a 20 min + registration process just to see if boarding dates are available! Then it tells me I’m already in their system!! That couldn’t be the freaking FIRST thing the app does? DEVS LISTEN…. no one wants to spend a long time in the app registration process just to access their service provider or to look for one!!! This app wasted so much of my time today that I will refuse to use it ever.
I really like this app for booking my dogs reservations and viewing the webcams so that I can see them at their doggy daycare. It saves me so much time not having to call the facility to make reservations or update their info.
It is so hard to see my dogs schedule. I would love it if you could show a calendar of bookings where I could tap on the date to add/drop a booking. It is so annoying that when I look at his schedule it pulls up the furthest date booked and then it does t even show all his dates. This could Be so much easier and better.
This is awful and I haven’t even finished adding my one pet. There is no type to text feature, so I literally have to scroll through every vet in the country to get to the one we use, which is at the end of the alphabet. The calendar doesn’t adjust to fit the phone screen so I can’t select a Saturday date. I can’t believe they even released it like this. I mean, really???? Hard to use when I can’t even get my pet registered.
Lots of features just result in a blank screen when you click on them (specifically the most annoying is when you click into a daily report card and just get a white screen of nothing - can’t back out, can’t see anything, have to force close the app and reopen to get back to anything else).
Two of the primary functions of app are broken: - Photos download as the same name, overwriting each other so you only get 1 picture. I have to go to the website and select “view” then “save to photos”. - report cards open to just a blank white screen. I have to close the app to get out of it.
The only complaint I have is that I am not able to upload photos to my dogs’ accounts on the app. It keeps taking me to the documents and not the photo library.
I have two dogs. But when I book it only shows one confirmed, if I try to rebook for second dog it won’t let me. Says they already have a booking but doesn’t come up in my confirmed. And when I get to the daycare they only show one dog is booked. So I have to call facility to book a making this app useless to me
A few months ago one of my dogs passed. When I recently went into the Gingr app to remove his profile I discovered there is NO obvious way to do this. This is such a fundamentally basic feature it makes me wonder if the developer even bothered with user testing. If I’m missing something here, please let me know. Otherwise, tell me why you want to remind me of this loss every time I open your app.
This app is not very mobile friendly. I’ve been going in circles trying to login and reset with a new password. A captcha icon appears briefly on login then disappears with no user feedback of what to do and does not log me in. Difficult to enter information with how they chose to implemented their scroll menus. Date input field gets blocked by mobile keyboard when setting up a new pet.
This app is terrible as a software engineer of one of the largest pet company apps, I’m am frustrated I have to use this not because I don’t support it but because they can’t even make the experience clean and reliable. This app just makes me want to forget about even scheduling my dog for daycare and just throwing my phone. Do better and get more testing on your apps BEFORE pushing to prod!
The app does fulfill its purpose; however, it takes 3-5 minutes just to put in a request for booking. When I do go to submit the request, I often get an error that I need to select a pet. After 3-4 submissions it will go to pugh. It’s a decent app for everything besides booking.
Whatever PetSuites is paying the developers for this app is WAY stop much. Registration works fine. Follow up, especially webcams, is horrible. Very non-intuitive. And what seems a simple “return to previous page” constantly takes you back multiple pages, in my case to a location I used over a year ago as opposed to where my dog is currently boarded. Love PetSuites. Hate Gingr.
No matter which photo of my dog I click to download, it always downloads the same one. I would like to keep all the photos of my dog that were taken by the daycare staff; I don’t need 18 copies of the same photo.
This app was hard to navigate in my phone. When I made a reservation and tried to pay the deposit it charged my card but still said "deposit not received ". I don't trust this app to correctly make reservation and charge card.
Seriously? Have to scroll through hundreds of dog breeds - then scroll through ALL the cat breeds - just to get to the “D’s” of the dog breeds!! Can’t enter the correct birth date because only part of the calendar actually shows up on a phone screen. This app is pathetic and reason enough to take my boarding business to another facility that doesn’t use Gingr!!!
The app itself works okay for scheduling and booking a stay…however I am unable to view pictures easily. When I go to download a picture it downloads one of the first pictures of our dog…none of the new ones. Please fix this.
When I try to download a photo, it saves an image from a month or two ago. The app update didn’t make a difference: it still downloads the same photo. This should not be a difficult fix and indicates the developers don’t care about quality. Very disappointed.
Closes when trying to see report card and/or photos
Whenever I try to view my dog’s report card or photos, the app closes. This just started happening a couple of days ago. Once that’s fixed, it’ll be better, and I’ll add stars.
Maybe looks good/cheap to business, but quite unfriendly to reserver. Useless to try to print any receipt or other record of activity. Forgets credentials too often. Picture access is excruciating and no navigation between images (and no cache so reloads everthing each time). Poor ratings are deserved (atypical distribution, super heavy on “it’s a bomb”)
The app constantly faults when trying to book anything. I really wish it worked better because it’s a convenient option, but it’s just constantly frustrating to use. Improvements other than app stability should be saving user name, and/or Face ID functionality.
This is one of the worst apps ever developed. It does not work most of the time. Terribly difficult to navigate. Won't upload information. Loses information already entered. Unfortunately, it is the app my groomer has decided to use so I guess I will just struggle with it. Can't imagine how an app could be worse.
This is the second time in two months that I haven’t been able to make a reservation due to glitches . The app freezes often which I find very frustrating. I prefer connecting the doggie daycare directly when making a reservation.
This app is so awful. Some serious upgrades need to be implemented. Every single time I open it, it takes forever to load and then it takes me thru several unnecessary steps just to book something.
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