What SitStay.com offers is dedicated primarily to dog supplies and food but also has an assortment of products for cats. This online pet supplies store is particularly suited to the dog and cat owner who has very specific nutritional requirements for their pet but the selection is likely to seem narrow for less demanding customers.
On first viewing the SitStay.com website, it’s easy to conclude that its products are exclusively for dogs and indeed the emphasis is on our canine companions. The home page features only dogs and an extensive menu of dog supplies. Buried within that menu, however, you’ll find Cat Supplies. Drilling into that category reveals both food and non-food products for cats.
SitStay.com doesn’t offer products for other pets that are featured on our other reviewed Online Pet Supply sites.
For the dedicated dog lover, the menu is a shopper’s paradise with groupings of products that most of us have never even considered. This, for example, is the first site that we’ve seen with a category dedicated to the admittedly important topic of cooling your dog.
You won’t find the exhaustive selection of dog and cat food on the SitStay web site that is available on the PetSmart or PETCO megastore pages. You will, however, find a specialized variety of premium quality foods for the very particular pet owner. Featured dog food brands include Dr. Harvey’s, Grandma Lucy’s, Honest Kitchen, Merrick, Nature’s Variety, PetKind, Stella & Chewy’s and Tripett as well as Real Food Toppers.
While cats clearly take a back seat to dogs on the SitStay site, they’re still well supported. You’ll find a specialized assortment of cat food as well as a wide variety of other cat care products.
Cat food options include Before Grain, Instinct, Prarie, Homestyle, Honest Kitchen and a high end collection of raw, freeze dried products including beef, lamb, venison, chicken and a chicken and turkey blend.
If you’re shopping without a specific product in mind, you might find it interesting to visit the site’s 100 Days of Specials section. You can also find some intriguing notions by viewing Dog Lover Ideas or New at SitStay. If you’ve already narrowed your search, you can consult typical categories that include bowls and feeders, grooming supplies, dog houses, bedding, collars, leashes and toys. Both pet and owner education is well covered by books and DVDs for cats as well as dogs. There is also a wide supply of nutritional supplements, pet treats, and health care items and specialized areas for travel equipment and dog houses. There’s a dedicated areas for care of puppies and even for one called Stuff for People which includes pet oriented clothes, door mats, games and more.
SitStay also dedicates an area to products for Service and Therapy dogs for those invaluable working canines that have come to play such critical roles in the lives of many people. There are supplies to support service and therapy dogs who work in hospitals and nursing homes as well as guide dogs, search dogs, and signal and hearing dogs.
SitStay offers an automatic reorder service they call SitStay Replay. If you choose this option your repeat order will be sent on your schedule and you get a ten percent discount.
SitStay.com accepts most major credit cards for payment. They can also accommodate wire transfers and money orders. They suggest that you can even pay with cash if you choose money order as the payment method then send in the cash. We discourage our readers from mailing cash.
The SitStay.com website is tested and certified daily to pass the “McAfee Secure” Security Scan. To help address concerns about possible hacker access to your confidential data, and the safety of visiting this site, the "live" McAfee Secure mark appears only when this site passes the daily McAfee Secure tests.
SitStay.com provides limited telephone support from 9AM – 4PM Central Time on weekdays. They are closed weekends and holidays and the site actively discourages customers from calling for help. They note that if you do call, you’ll likely get their answering machine but that they’ll call you back within two days. They suggest that the fastest way to contact them is by Live Chat; however, we found that it to be unavailable over an extended evaluation period. That leaves email which they encourage and that appears to be the only reliable contact method.
The company’s return policy is straightforward if not generous. If a product is defective, damaged or the wrong item, contact them within 5 days and they’ll make it right. To obtain refunds, items must be returned in brand new, unused condition with its original packaging. They don’t pay or refund shipping costs. If your pet simply doesn’t like a product, they encourage donation to a charity.
SitStay.com fills a niche for very specialized dog and cat food needs and has a good selection of non-food pet products. Their narrow customer service and payment options will limit their appeal for many potential customers.
How do other leading online pet supplies retailers compare to SitStay.com? Read our reviews of PetSmart and PETCO for details.
