Care.com is a website, job board, and online community that allows you to find qualified caregivers to take care of your loved ones.
They provide connections to caregivers who specialize in senior care, childcare, home care, pet care, or a combination of all of the above, letting you place ads or review resumes of people who provide care in your area.
The service is not free, however, and for users who no longer require care, or have made arrangements elsewhere, it can leave them asking: How do I delete my Care.com account?
In this article we’ll provide a step-by-step guide to:
- Reverting to an unpaid membership of Care.com
- Fully deleting your account, either online or by calling a customer service representative
We will also review Care.com’s billing practices, and answer some frequently asked questions about the service.
A Brief Guide to Care.com
Care.com is a website that specializes in partnering people who need caregivers with qualified, experienced professionals with a variety of specialties.
What started as a simple job board has grown into a one-stop-shop for all care needs, offering everything from job listings to comprehensive background checks to a massive online community space that features hundreds of discussion forums.
The Care.com Community is one of the most useful parts of the experience using Care.com.
An online message board, discussion center, and information gathering resource, the Community brings together thousands of experts and millions of community members to share experiences, offer advice, answer questions frankly, and help you navigate the often confusing world of caregiving.
It also doubles as a very effective job board.
Care.com says that a new job is posted every 30 seconds, and offers families help with finding child care, nanny jobs, senior care, care for special needs, tutoring, home cleaning, home organization, pet care, and more.
Founded in 2007, the company is headquartered in Massachusetts, and boasts 22 million members across 19 countries.
How Care.com Bills Its Users
Care.com has a free Basic Membership and a paid Premium Membership, both of which offer different things for users to take advantage of.
A Basic Membership includes the ability to:
- Post a job
- Browse through summarized profiles of active caregivers on the site
- Access the online Community
- Utilize the Safety Center
A paid Premium Membership includes all of the above, plus the ability to:
- View full profiles of caregivers
- View user reviews of caregivers
- Contact caregivers
- Purchase background checks
Basically, a free membership allows you to post a job and have people reach out to you.
A paid membership allows you to search through caregivers in your area and reach out to ones you’d like to hire directly, as well as order a background check through the site if you’ve found someone you want to hire.
Premium Membership has three different membership types:
- 1-month membership, $39 monthly
- 3-month membership, $19 monthly
- 12-month membership, $13 monthly
While you can offset those costs substantially with a Care.com promo code, those memberships above do represent a commitment for that amount of time, but what is important to note is that memberships automatically renew.
So say you want to get a one-month membership just to hire a caregiver, and then you hire that caregiver.
You might think that’s it.
But if you don’t downgrade or cancel your one-month membership, that membership will automatically renew the following month and you will be charged that $39 in perpetuity, with the membership automatically renewing every month.
Note: If you get a 12-month membership, you will be charged for the full year and that membership is set for 12 months.
If you change your mind after six months, you can still downgrade or cancel your membership, but you will not be refunded for the six months you did not use.
Next, we’ll discuss how to stop that recurring charge from happening.
How to Downgrade or Delete My Account
Many people who want to remove their Care.com account simply want to return back to the free Basic Membership option and stop the recurring billing, while others want to cancel their account outright.
Both are easy enough to do, but you must navigate a difficult menu system.
Important note: Neither of these options are available on the Care.com app or on the mobile site.
You must visit the desktop site on a computer to cancel your membership.
How to Fully Delete Your Account
To fully delete your account, first go to the Care.com homepage.
In the top right corner, you’ll see an icon that either is default green or a photo that you uploaded.
Click on that icon, and you will see a menu.
Click on Account Settings.
On the next page you’ll see your membership information including your personal account information, Care account preferences, and then if you scroll down further toward the bottom of the page, you’ll see one link that lets you close your account.
Click “Close Account.”
Before you make your deletion request, Care.com will ask you if you would like to revise your email settings instead.
Click “No thanks, cancel my membership.”
Then just answer one question about why you’re leaving and you’re done.
How to Downgrade Your Account
If you want to remove a paid account and keep using Care.com with a free account, follow all the above directions, but when you get to the “Membership information section” on your Account Settings page, click “Downgrade Account” instead of “Close Account.”
There you will be taken to a screen that confirms that you want to downgrade your account.
You will still have the full benefits of your Premium Membership for the remainder of your subscription.
So if you pay for a month and downgrade on the second day, you will still have a month to use the Premium Membership.
Canceling Your Account Over the Phone
Some people prefer to speak to an actual person on the phone when canceling or downgrading their account.
It should be noted that wait times can be substantial, and downgrading and canceling really just takes a few clicks on the website.
However, if you feel that you have been mischarged after downgrading or canceling, they have a phone number you can call: 877-227-3115.
If you don’t mind navigating the online process, it tends to be a much quicker task than sitting on the phone and waiting for someone.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens to my linked accounts? Do I need to take extra steps?
If you have signed up for your Care.com profile using your Facebook profile, your
Google account, or your Yahoo account, you will not need to disable the connection between the two accounts.
Closing the account will sever those connections and should remove your data.
If you set Care.com up to provide you alerts through a service like IFTTT, Evernote, or other online accounts, disabling your account will most likely disconnect those
functions, and you may get a prompt from those services that the connection needs to be repaired or deleted.
Is removing my account really permanent?
Care.com says that once you delete your account, you can not bring it back.
That’s both true and not true.
That version of your account, with all your saved preferences and information, will be deleted permanently.
But you can always open up a new account, either with a different email address or different linked account.
Will my Community posts be removed if I cancel my account?
Posts you made to the Care.com Community will remain active, though to view them you will need to sign up for a new account.
Free, downgraded Basic Accounts can always see the Community section.
To delete posts from Community, you need to manually remove them.
Onward and Upward
Once you’ve used Care.com for what you need, removing or downgrading your account is a relatively simple process, but an important one that can save you money.
When signing up for a Premium Membership, set a reminder to downgrade or remove your account so that you don’t continue to be charged.
