The Day I Got Banned From Rover

When I started Wag & Walk Middleton, Rover was basically the entire business.

I had no website. No Google presence. No social media audience. No lead generation strategy. No idea where dog owners actually went when they needed a walker.

I had a Rover profile. That was it.

Then, not long after getting my first proper client, Rover banned me for seven days.

At the time, it felt like a disaster. Looking back, it was probably one of the most important things that happened to the business.

Because it forced me to realise something very early: if one company controls where your customers come from, how you communicate with them and whether you are allowed to continue trading through their platform, you do not really control your business.

My first proper client

My first Wag & Walk client was Rudy.

He was not a small booking either. Rudy is a large rescue dog and his owner, Tom, works shifts, so there was the potential for regular, recurring work. For somebody who had started with nothing, it felt huge.

I had paid £20 to get verified on Rover, waited around two weeks without receiving a single enquiry and then suddenly I had a genuine customer.

Naturally, I thought this was how the business would grow. Get one client through Rover. Then another. Then another. Build reviews. Become more visible on the platform. Eventually have a full diary.

It seemed simple. The problem was that the platform was also sitting directly between me and the customer.

When the platform gets in the way

As the bookings with Rudy became more regular, I started noticing friction.

It was not that Tom had said he hated Rover. It was more subtle than that. Every time another booking needed creating, I could sense that the process was becoming inconvenient.

From my perspective, the user experience just was not working particularly well for the type of relationship we now had. We were not strangers arranging a one-off dog walk anymore. I was regularly looking after his dog. We already knew each other. We already had an established routine.

But we were still having to interact through a marketplace designed to sit between us. Eventually, I suggested that we arrange things directly. That turned out to be a problem.

Getting around Rover's contact restrictions

Rover deliberately limits the contact information shared between owners and walkers. Instead of simply giving you someone’s telephone number, calls can be routed through a Rover number. The messaging system also prevents you from simply sending contact details through the chat.

If you try to send information it does not allow, the message can be blocked. So I found a workaround. I put my phone number into an image and sent it as a screenshot.

It worked. Until it did not.

Rover’s systems eventually flagged it, and my account was suspended for seven days.

Seven days suddenly felt like a very long time

A seven-day suspension does not sound particularly dramatic now. At the time, it terrified me.

Rover was not one marketing channel among several. It was the only way I knew how to find customers. Rudy had been my first proper booking and it was a significant one. I had expected that I would simply continue using Rover and gradually find more clients in the same way.

Now that route had suddenly disappeared.

The question was not really whether I could survive seven days without Rover. I already had Rudy. The bigger question was: how was I supposed to find the second client? And the third? And the tenth?

For the first time, I had to think about Wag & Walk as an actual business rather than a profile on somebody else’s marketplace.

So I started building my own marketing

The ban created urgency. If I could not rely entirely on Rover, I needed other ways for people to discover me.

I started building a website. Then I started creating pages targeting the areas and searches that potential customers might actually use when looking for a dog walker: Dog Walker Middleton, Dog Walker M24, Dog Walker Bowlee and Dog Walker Alkrington.

I started learning about local SEO. I created social media accounts. I started posting photos, updates and content so that if somebody came across Wag & Walk for the first time, they could see that it was a real business looking after real dogs.

I also started looking for alternative lead sources. That is when I discovered platforms such as Bark.

Bark worked differently. Rather than being the environment where the entire customer relationship had to take place, it allowed me to purchase credits and contact people who were actively looking for dog walking services.

That created a different challenge. A lead might see several dog walkers competing for their business. They needed a reason to trust me, which meant the website, social media accounts, branding and online presence suddenly mattered even more.

The different pieces started supporting each other. The lead platform could introduce somebody to Wag & Walk. The website could explain the service. Social media could provide evidence that the business was active. Reviews could provide reassurance. Google could eventually start generating enquiries directly.

Instead of one platform being the business, platforms became ways of bringing people into the business. That distinction became very important.

Rover was not the problem

I do not think Rover was bad for Wag & Walk. Quite the opposite. Without Rover, I may never have got Rudy. Without that first booking, I may never have had the confidence to believe that the business could work.

Marketplaces are incredibly useful when you are starting from zero. They already have customers, trust and traffic. They solve the hardest problem for a new business: getting somebody to give you a chance.

The mistake would have been assuming that because Rover helped me start the business, Rover should remain responsible for growing it. Those are two very different things.

The danger of platform dependency

There is a fundamental risk whenever your business depends heavily on somebody else’s platform. You do not control the rules. You do not control the algorithm. You do not control what customers see. You do not necessarily control how customers communicate with you. Ultimately, you do not control whether your account continues to exist.

That does not only apply to Rover. It applies to businesses built entirely on Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, Etsy, TikTok or any marketplace where another company sits between you and the customer.

The platform can still be extremely valuable, but it should not be your entire business. The moment the platform disappears, changes its rules or decides that you have broken them, your customer acquisition can disappear with it.

I learnt that lesson after one client. I am glad I learnt it that early.

Owning the customer relationship

Today, my view of customer acquisition is completely different. The objective is not simply to generate leads. It is to build a business that people can discover, investigate and contact independently.

Someone might first hear about Wag & Walk through social media. They might find it through Google. They might come through a lead platform. They might receive a recommendation from another customer. They might even be referred by another local dog walker.

Where they discover the business matters less than it did when I started. What matters is that Wag & Walk exists beyond that individual channel.

There is a website. There is a brand. There are reviews. There is a direct relationship with customers. There are systems for onboarding and managing bookings. And there are multiple ways for the next customer to find me.

No single platform gets to be the front door.

The ban that forced me to build a business

When Rover suspended me for seven days, I thought I had created a massive problem for myself. In reality, I had been relying on something far more dangerous without realising it.

I had confused having access to a marketplace with having a customer acquisition strategy. The suspension forced me to build one.

It pushed me towards creating the website, learning SEO, building social proof and finding alternative sources of leads. Eventually, those things became much more important to Wag & Walk than the Rover profile I had originally assumed would grow the business.

I still think platforms such as Rover can be a brilliant way to get started. I just would not build the foundations of a business on one.

Use platforms to find opportunities. Use them to build experience. Use them to get the first customer when nobody knows who you are. But while you are doing that, build something you own.

Because your profile on somebody else’s platform is not your business. The customer relationship is.