I would like to share my horrible experience with I-kare here so that you will think twice if you engage their service.
The person in charge for i-kare is May. My friend recommended her to me when I was finding a confinement lady. I did not do much research about i-kare and just engaged her service.
When signing the contract, Mat indicated that she will either assign auntie A or auntie B to me in the contract. She also showed me their good customer feedback. Therefore, I was quite happy with the arrangements.
On the first day, saw the confinement lady who brought to me by May, I immediately knew that she is not the 2 confinement nannies who May showed me previously. I asked May but she just told me this confinement nanny is also not bad. She also told me that this confinement nanny has few years experience and can cook well. I trusted her so just accepted the arrangement. This is the beginning of the nightmare.
On the first night, this confinement nanny shifted my baby from the baby cot to sleep with her on the mattress that we provided to her. When I asked her for the reason, she told me because the baby may be scared of sleeping alone. (!!!) I told her not to do that again. But this was not the most shocking thing that she did.
The following 8 days, she did more unacceptable things:-
1. Kept watching TV. She switched on the TV whole day even when she was in the kitchen. She just stared at the TV when feeding my baby and still blamed my baby for drinking milk so slow when I asked her why took so long to let my baby finish the milk.
2. She told me that she only has one year confinement experience in her hometown in M'sia, NO experience in S'pore. It means May lied to me about her experience!!
3. She was very disorganised in taking care of baby. For e.g. she did not prepare the necessary items before bathing the baby so she was rushing around the room to get clothes, baby lotion, diaper and etc after she bathed the baby.
4. Unhygiene - She tested the water temperature by drinking the water directly from the milk bottle. (Her lips touched the milk bottle!!!). Also, she used her hand to hold the milk bottle teat after sterilized it! I complained to May and she told me that she already scolded her.
5. She always neglected the baby. For e.g. she did not feed my baby on time, and always needed my reminder about feeding and diaper changing.
6. The most unacceptable matter was she scratched my baby's umbilical cord wound and caused it bleeding. The worst is she did not realise it until I saw it.
During her service of nine days, I complained to May once, she promised to give me a replacement initially but later on she msg me and said she already scolded the confinement nanny and asked me to give her one more chance. But I could not tolerate anymore when she hurt my baby so I asked May to take her away even without replacement.
On the 9th day, May brought another confinement nanny to replace this first confinement nanny. She promised to ask this replacement nanny to work additional one week to compensate me.
This second confinement nanny is more experienced in taking care of baby. However, she is another nightmare.
1. She talked on phone few hours daily. Sometimes even talking on the phone while doing her work.
2. She did not cook breakfast for me and only made a cup of Milo if I did not specially ask her to prepare breakfast.
3. She joked about my breast milk supply is low several times until I asked her to stop it.
4. She made unnecessary comments on my mum's habit or cookings thought it would not impact her.
5. She carried my baby to the living room so that she could watch TV at night even when my baby was tired and she supposed to bring him to the bedroom.
However, I did not take initiative to complain about this second nanny to May as I was very tired and wanted to get all these over asap.
Until one day, May sms and asked me to provide her some photos of my baby with the confinement nanny. I refused to do that as I did not want to let her use my photos as compliment and mislead other ppl. May asked me why, I just briefly said I am not satisfied with the service provided by this second nanny.
Initially May promised that she will let this second confinement nanny to work additional one week in order to compensate the bad service from the first confinement lady. However, when I sms May to reconfirm the last day of this second nanny, the date that she gave me is just compensate 4 days. But I did not persue further as I just wanted to get it over soon.
One week before the service ends, the confinement nanny informed me that she would leave 4 days earlier (which is the initially service end date). She said May told her that she has already communicated to me and I agreed to let her leave early. I sms May to ask her about this, she replied that the nanny misunderstood her meaning, she said she was about to discuss with me. She said she could feel that I was not happy with the service provided so OUT OF GOODWILL, she will refund me the 4 days charges. When I asked her to clarify why she was not based on the full charged amount for the calculation, she replied me this is in the contract, I can go to complain to CASE if I am not satisfied. I was very shocked with her reply, all this while I have been trusting her so much and I was just asking her to clarify but she gave me such attitude.
But this is not the end of the story yet, one or two days before the last day, the confinement nanny told me that she will leave in the morning instead of the regular timing of afternoon. She told me that May told her that she ALREADY talked to me and I agreed to that. But ever since the previous sms, May did not contact me anymore!!!
Previously, May promised that the nanny wil work addtional 2 or 3 hours on her last day as both the first and second nanny reached my house late on their first day. I was very unhappy that May lied again so I sms her that I insisted to only release the nanny at 3pm. May did not reply my sms but I overheard her phone conversation with the nanny, she lied to the nanny that I wanted to make things difficult to her (the confinement nanny), I am very calculative, my complaints are fake one and etc.
Eventually, I still released the nanny earlier in the morning as she had urgent matter need to go back to KL and I have no intention to make thing difficult for her.
Iinitially I did not want to share my story here, firstly I do not want to make my friend feels bad about recommending May's service to me. Secondly, I have been very busy taking care of my baby alone. Thirdly, I am really lazy to tell my long story.
But now I decided to share it here because I hope this can remind who are considering i-kare service to think twice before making the decision.
Thank you for reading this long story. Hope it helps when you need to make that critical decision. It's always good to do more research before engage confinement service.
