Good Friends Babysitting ClubFrequently Asked Questions
Please review our Frequently Asked Questions below and if you still have a query, just ask us.
- How does a Babysitting Club work?
- How safe is it?
- What do I need to do to set up a new group?
- What do I need to do to join an existing group?
- How much does it cost me to join an existing group or to create a new group?
- When do I have to pay my annual membership fee?
- What happens if I don't pay my annual membership fee before my one month free membership expires?
- How can I pay my annual membership fee?
- Can I get a refund if I cancel my membership before a year is up?
- Do all my group members need to be from the same suburb?
- Can I be a member of more than one group?
- Why is an online babysitting club better than an 'old school' paper-based babysitting club?
- What if there's someone in my group that I don't want to babysit for me?
- What policies or processes doesn't the website implement for me and my group?
- Communicating with members of the group to arrange a babysitting activity - there is a facility on the site that you can use that will email people in your group with requests, but you will still need to confirm this one-to-one with the person by email or phone.
- Defining and implementing a group policy on approving a person's membership request - your group should discuss and agree the policy for this and ensure it is implemented so that each time a group membership request is received by your group's coordinator, the group's policy is implemented and a decision is made on approving their membership accordingly.
- Defining and implementing a group policy on members exiting the group with a negative (or positive) balance - your group should discuss and agree the policy for this and ensure it is implemented so that should a member wish to exit with a negative (or positive) balance, the group's policy is executed accordingly.
- Defining and implementing a group policy on members with a negative balance not renewing their annual membership - your group should discuss and agree the policy for this and ensure it is implemented so that should a member with a negative balance not renew their membership, the group's policy is executed accordingly.
- Defining and implementing a group policy on the maximum negative balance you will allow a group member to accrue - your group should discuss and agree the policy on this and ensure it is implemented so that should a member, with a balance over the group's limit, who is seeking a babysitter is not able to.
- Defining and implementing a group policy on if/how the role of Group Coordinator is to be shared between members of the group.
- How is the Group Coordinator different from other members of the group?
- Approving membership requests in accordance with the group's agreed membership approval policy.
- Resolving any disputes that may arise between group members relating to a sitting event, and updating the sitting history accordingly.
- Review the group's sitting history.
- Make a manual adjustment to a group member's balance - this is notified by email to all active group members (along with the reason supplied by the coordinator) for transparency reasons.
- Resetting passwords for group members who forget their passwords.
- What happens if there's a mistake of some sort and someone in my group needs to have their balance adjusted manually?
- Can the Group Coordinator adjust their own balance?
- Can I transfer my membership from one group to another?
- Can our group transfer the Group Coordinator role from one group member to another and how is this done?
- How will I know when my membership is about to expire?
- What happens if I don't renew my membership before the expiry date?
- Can I renew an expired membership?
- What happens if someone in my group does not renew their membership after a year and they have a negative balance?
- How do I update my personal details (i.e. phone number)?
- Why does your website need to store my phone number?
- Should I provide you with my home phone number, my cellphone number or work number?
- Why does the website round up to the nearest quarter hour?
- What does a membership status of 'Pending' mean?
- What is a valid password?
- Why is the password policy (i.e. what you need to include in a password) so specific?
- What should I do if I find an error in the Babysitting Club website?
- What should I do if I want to recommend a change or enhancement to the Babysitting Club website?
Please do - we'd love to hear from you. Just let us know via the Contact Us page.
- Why can't I use my credit card to pay my annual subscription online?
I am relying on the good 'old fashioned', secure, internet banking approach initially. Once the volume of members increases, I'll look to enhance the site with an online payment option.
- How can I find out the name or ID of a group in my area?
Actually, you can't. At least not yet. The site is designed for groups of people who know each other to create a group or invite others they know to join their group. An optional feature that will be introduced in the future will be for groups to indicate whether they are willing to have membership requests from strangers in their suburb. Groups that have said they are open to meeting and eventually inviting strangers to join will be searchable by city and suburb. But this is a way off yet. In the mean time, if you don't have a group of friends in your area but want to be in a group, you may need to get creative and make friends at creche, school, the local cafe etc.
A Babysitting Club involves a reciprocal babysitting arrangement between friends. You belong to a group of families known to each other. You arrange for a family from your group to babysit for you. The babysitter claims the time from you. You approve the claim. Their balance is credited by the number of claimed hours. Your balance is debited by the same number of hours. That's all there is to it in a nutshell. Find out more at the How It Works page.
The Good Friends Babysitting Club is as safe as an 'old school' paper-based babysitting club - but a whole lot better! Your involvement within this website is between you and your good friends in your group alone. It's not with the wider Internet. We have designed the website to protect you by not requiring unnecessary personal information, by protecting your privacy and by allowing you to determine who babysits for you.
Find some friends that are interested in being in a group, decide on a good name for your group, go to the Set Up A Group page, complete and submit the form. Your group is then instantly established and ready to have friends join it!
Find out the name or ID of the group from an existing member, go to the Join A Group page, complete and submit the form. The group coordinator should then approve your membership request. Once they have, you can log on and use the website.
To set up a group or join an existing one, we offer a one month free membership. This will allow you time to set things up and use the site a few times. By then you'll see how useful the site is. Once your first month is up, there is an annual cost of $15.00 NZD to use the website's services. This is a modest fee designed to cover administration and website costs. We offer a 30-day refund without questions, but after that time no refund or pro-rata refund is available.
The system will email you advising you to make payment toward the end of your first free month. This email will contain details of how you can make the payment.
You membership will be unusable after the first month has passed - so make the payment prior to the membership expiry date. If we receive the annual membership payment after your first free month, we'll re-activate your membership for a year from the date we receive your payment.
The payment request email that the system sends to you will contain details of how to make payment. Currently, the only method of payment is by bank transfer. Shortly, we will be adding an online payment facility.
Only if you cancel within a calendar month of your annual membership being activated. We offer a 30-day refund without questions, but after that time no refund or pro-rata refund is available.
No, not at all. We capture the suburb when you set up a group purely for informational purposes. The location of the members in your group is up to you.
Yes you can. But you'll need to pay the membership fee for each group membership and you'll need to use a different email address for each one. Each membership would be completely independent.
Firstly, it's available 24x7. Next, the 'Request a Sitter' function saves you having to "ring around" to find a sitter. Next, you can easily see the balance of all members in your group. Use it for a while and tell us all the other reasons that we've left out here!
The website allows you to make a request to all or some of the members in your group. If there are families in your group that you do not wish to use as babysitters, you can simply exclude them from your request, just as you would if you were phoning around to find a babysitter.
The website is designed to provide a framework for you to operate a babysitting club. There are things that the website does not attempt to do for your group. These include:
Review the Guidelines page for suggestions on how your group can handle these scenarios.
The Group Coordinator has all the privileges and functionlity that other group members have. They have the role of Group Coordinator either because they set the group up originally or they had the role transferred to them. There are two minor activities that they need to take care of:
Additionally, Group Coordinators can:
The Group Coorindator needs to determine the necessary correction(s) to people's balances and credit/debit those people accordingly.
Yes, this is possible. Remember, balance adjustments are notified by email to all group members for transparency reasons.
Yes, this is possible. If you have a paid up membership of one group and you decide to leave and join another (or even create a new group), all you need to do is notify us via the Contact Us page specifying the group you wish to move to. Your membership of that new group will need to be approved by that Group's Coordinator. Your membership term remains as it was before - expiring on the annual anniversary of your initial member start date.
Yes, this is possible. The group must first agree to transfer the Group Coordinator role from the current Coordinator to someone else who has an active membership of the same group. The current Group Coordinator notifies the Site Administrator via the Contact Us page. In this request, they must specify the new Group Coordinator.
We will remind you by email in advance of the expiry date. This will give you ample time to decide whether you will renew your membership before the expiry date.
Your membership will go into a status of 'Expired'. You will not be able to log on when in this state.
Yes, just notify us that this is what you wish via the Contact Us page. We will arrange with you to make payment, which will then activate your old membership.
This is a scenario that your group should formulate an approach to and ensure new members are aware of it.
When you are logged on, you have an option to 'Update my profile' and to 'Change my password'. This is where you can change your details stored by the website. Note that if you change your email address, the new email address is used to log on.
To allow us to contact you should we need to, or to identify you when you have forgotten your password. We will not provide your phone number to anyone and will not display it to any other user of the website.
Any of these will be fine. We suggest your cellphone number is best.
This was an arbitrary decision to keep the balances simple. The same approach applies to all transactions ensuring fairness.
If there is a member displayed with a status of 'Pending' in your list of group members, this means they have submitted a request to join your group but that request has not yet been approved. Only your group coordinator can approve requests.
When setting up a password (or updating it), the password you provide must be between 6 and 16 alphabet or numeric characters long, and it must contain at least one number. The characters used must be from the alphabet and 0 through 9.
It is quite specific so that the password you use is secure. We want to ensure that your privacy is protected and one way to assist in achieving this is by making passwords hard to guess for other people.
Please make us aware of any bugs via the Contact Us page. We will do our best to respond and resolve the issue as soon as possible.