Bark Busters
Reviews and Complaints
Stay Away - Ripoff
I purchased the lifetime support package and let me tell you... There is no lifetime support.
After adopting a dog who was previously abused, my trainer came to my house 3 times repeating the same methods we were trying from the first time. Nothing worked that she pushed and she refused to even pet my pup which made it uncomfortable. Not only did she pressure us to leave a positive review after speaking for 5 minutes the first visit, she has not contacted us for months. At this point, we will take the loss but let me tell you bark busters - word of mouth about a bad experience spreads fast.
I have reached out to corporate multiple times and they refuse to answer my emails and make me call them, then they are never available and ignore my calls. This is top 3 worst customer experiences I have ever had and I implore everyone and anyone to STAY AWAY
Preferred solution: Price reduction
Disappointed
- Excellent trainer
- Are nationwide
- Trainer
- Extremely expensive
- Price
Preferred solution: Price reduction
Do not use this company
Nice Trainer - Methods Ineffective and Without Structure
Note: This is long because there's a lot to share about our experiences over approximately 5 or 6 months.. I've seen lots of comments on other reviews that "they're too long." If your attention span is that little, consider the title the TL;DR and don't bother.
We rescued our dog in mid-July and it was evident fairly early that he was going to need some training. Many of his behaviors were typical puppy things, but we wanted to ensure that as he grew it would be safe to have him around our daughter. We also didn't want to have to keep him locked up if we went out so we wanted to make sure he'd learn to stop chewing on everything and would eventually be OK if left unattended for a little while in our living room. I trained him to sit, stay, lay-down and heel on the leash on my own, but felt I went about as far as my research could take me with my limited time. We learned about Bark Busters from our nearby vet and I made the call to invest in ourselves and our pooch and go for the lifetime training option.
At first we were really pleased. The trainer arrived and immediately demonstrated the ability to get control over the dog who really loved to jump on everyone that came in and continue jumping on them until someone grabbed him and pulled him off. He immediately started telling us about the gradual escalation using body language, posturing and then getting up to the verbal. The dog seemed to respond to it at first. And I liked the idea of the structured approach - it seemed there were specific steps you would need to use and specific times to use them. Unfortunately that's where the structure ended.
We sat down and spent about 45 minutes talking training philosophy. I wasn't sure that was necessary, but I went along with it. The rest of the training involved describing some very loose concepts, but never really giving us a road map for what specific steps to take in order to correct the behavior. To put it another way, much of the Bark Busters training felt like I was being given an overall training strategy, without the tactics needed to execute against that strategy.
As an example, we were concerned about his excessive mouthing on people and wanted to stop that. The response from Trainer was "Well, you need him to understand that people aren't for chewing - that he can chew on his toys. So you want to use the escalating body language to get him to recognize that it's not OK to chew people, but instead can chew his toys." Right...that's exactly what I want. Now, tell me how? "Well you can start slowly by walking into him with your legs, or if doesn't like that you can try the "pillow" (more on this in a moment), but then you can always do a loud "BAH!" and the clap." Well, no, which steps do I follow exactly and in what order?
And on and on it went. And this was the case with many of our lessons from walking on the leash to trying to teach recall off the leash. He'd never give us specifics about what we could do. We'd get "OK, so when he's really distracted by another dog you need to get his mind to go blank, so do something that kind of resets him." AND WHAT IS THAT? "Oh, well you can try to just walk him back and forth really quickly." So we do that and Trainer sees it doesn't help - the dog keeps turning his head to focus on the other dog. "Yea he's very interested in the other dogs, so you'll have to just keep it up." No, man. I can't stop in the middle of a walk whenever he sees another dog and pace back and forth for 10 minutes in the hopes he'll "reset." Occasionally when I explained that something wasn't working he'd give me some instruction to poke or prod the dog in someway and say "Well, that's not really Bark Busters, that's Dog Whisperer, but whatever works for you."
The equipment provided to us was also fairly confusing because it was just ineffective. We were provided with what Trainer called "pillows." They're mesh bags filled with chains that are intended to make a loud, scary noise to stop the dog in his tracks. The dog had that reaction once, but every time after that just picked it up and ran off to chew on it. Similarly, the harness we were given and told to "pop" when we needed to correct him, just served to confuse him - it never stopped any unwanted behavior. Trainer's reaction was "Well you're not using it right then and not projecting the kind of anger needed when using the pillow." I told him to show me and he got the same reaction from the dog.
The final straw for me came when Trainer invited us to join him and his dog in a fenced in dog park/trail to let the dog run and practice recall. The dog absolutely WOULD NOT come back to us or Trainer. Trainer told us, just keep walking along the trail, he'll follow. Our dog "followed' in the loosest sense of the word. He was in the vicinity, but paid us no mind and spent the entire time hounding other people and their dogs. I told Trainer, "Look, this simply isn't working." He responded by getting frustrated with me and telling me that I insisted on seeing negative in something positive. I asked him to explain to me what was positive about the fact that the dog doesn't pay attention to our screaming and clapping in public and won't come back. He literally stormed away from me shaking his head. Several times he had to go and retrieve our dog and finally at the end of our time when he had to trek all the way back across the park to find our dog in the woods that wouldn't leave this other poor couple alone, he acknowledged that it wasn't working.
To sum this all up, I suppose the Bark Busters methods may work for some dogs and some people. I suspect our Trainer had an easier time with other dogs and may have dealt with clients who weren't as concerned about specifics as long as they could copy what they saw and it worked. That wasn't the case for us, we needed more work to be done with the dog and more instruction on what to do. It wasn't worth $800 to spend 30-45 minutes watching someone scream and clap and then just trying to copy that. And when it finally was evident that our dog wasn't responding and continued to have issues, Trainer's reaction was to direct frustration at us and suggest we were somehow misinterpreting what was happening. Yes, he finally saw the flaw in that and apologized, but this isn't a friendship I'm trying to maintain - it's a service I paid good money for and the damage is done.
I'm sure the quick reaction of some will be to suggest the issue is with us and our willingness to "practice" but, it's simply untrue. The problem is there wasn't enough structure for us to have anything to practice. I asked upfront if it's possible that there are dogs that just don't respond to the training and they said yes, but it's so rare they can't even think of one.
So disappointed
Had purchased the lifetime program from Bark busters when our puppy was 4 months old. Worst mistake ever.
The trainers we have are so stuck on a set training method that they don’t think every situation could be a bit different. Our now 7 year old is having a few issues & I thought I’d turn to the trainers for help as we thought things or they might have changed a bit in how they deal with clients & dogs. Was extremely defensive right from the get go. Made me feel like a horrible dog owner & we do get compliments on how well behaved our dog is all the time.
I think she is just stuck on how dogs should be trained & it might be worth it if we think outside the box once in a while. Without even seeing my dog she said don’t baby the dog. I just feel horrible as we have just wasted $600+. & can’t seem to get the help.
We needed someone with a bit of compassion & kindness & never found that. SO DISSATISFIED. Now we have to pay for yet another behavioral specialist. We want our dog to be a dog not a ROBOT.
Our dog is extremely well behaved with dogs & people.
Just needed a bit of help in dealing with whatever is going on with him in a kind way & not add to his anxiety. Ugh so very disappointed.
- Trainer
- Poor customer service
Preferred solution: Let the company propose a solution
Terrible!
- Poor trainers
- Does not get results
- Too expensive
Preferred solution: Full refund
Proffessional rip off!
Worst money ever spent
- Poor customer service
Preferred solution: Full refund
AWESOME
Danger to animals
Terrible ripoff trainer never replied after taking $1,000
I had a great experience, so far
- That i saw immediate results
Thank you for honest people
Resolved: No thank you
I had a series of phone calls with a very kind Bark Busters rep. He listened to my story and validated what I was upset about.
He offered to be the middle-man and contact the trainer to see if we could have a refund. The trainer offered a 50% refund, which wasn't what...
The presentation was 100% scripted and was where I became increasingly uncomfortable with their methods and approach.
It goes against everything I believe about handling a dog. It has put a strain on the relationship that I worked incredibly hard to create with our rescue dog and has increased her anxiety and abandonment issues. I dislike the collar used for correction and find in inhumane and potentially damaging to my dogs neck. The bean bags and spray bottle do nothing.
I canceled our second session due to sickness in our house but have no desire to reschedule it.
I want my money back. I absolutely regret signing up and would not recommend these services to anyone and wish I would have researched further before jumping into this.
- No value in the cost
- Price
- Lack of training methods
Preferred solution: Full refund
Waste of time and money
WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY! A dog collar, a bean bag type thing with metal bits in it and you're told to growl at your dog, this is what you get from Andrew Gawur at Bark Busters for $672.
Andrew made one visit and spent a whopping 1h 45m in our home, during that time he threw that bean bag thing on the floor a few times, made us sit through some antiquated flipbook presentation, was unable to get our 9-month-old pup to do anything that we couldn't get him to do and he growled and our dog a few times. Overall the entire experience was awkward and generally made us feel uncomfortable in our own home. I reached out to Bark Busters head office and explained that I didn't feel like we received the level of service that we were promised and that Andrew wasn't the right fit for us and our dog. That was a useless exercise because they told me that if I wanted to get a refund I would have to reach out to Andrew and negotiate with him.
Normally with any other kind of business if you're buying goods or services and you're not satisfied you aren't directed to negotiate to get a refund. Anyhow, I reached out to Andrew and explained how we were feeling and I asked for a partial refund, as we believe he should be paid for the 1h 45m he spent with us. Andrew replied with the following " I understand. I'll think it over and let you know as soon as possible." So Andrew is going to think it over and let me know if he's going to give me back any portion of my payment.
I thought we were being fair but Andrew seems to want to drag this out a bit longer. A simple Google search of Andrew Gawur lead us to find other reviews and apparently, this is what he does when you ask for a refund.
I'm not sure what he has to think about here but it's infuriating that he's going to hold on to my money and let me know sometime in the future if I'll get anything back. I'll update this review when I get this resolved and let you know how long it actually took.
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Hi there, I am with our customer care team and we are sorry if your concerns have been overlooked or not addressed in a timely manner. We appreciate you bringing this to our attention so we can improve how we continue our support.
If you would kindly reference this post in an email to office@barkbusters.com along with your contact information (name/phone) I will call you back promptly. Thank you