Unless the entire story is false it really doesn't matter.

Dog died. Wag wanted them to sign an NDA or Wag wouldn't pay for anything.

The only correct response from Wag was to pay everything (again, we're talking about a couple of thousand maximum) no questions asked and apologize profusely.

Even from a purely soulless financial standpoint, that's the only correct response.

Did Wag confirm this somewhere? You just believe everything someone says? Where is the police report? Why didn't the owner call the police to get that information? Why do they say they don't know what happened? If it was a car accident, certainly there would be a report. Can't believe the HN crowd here is so quick to jump to conclusions from a single unverified source.

Sorry, I don't consider a Facebook post to be a good source of information to develop my views on. We don't have sources, we don't have reports, we just have a random post. I personally find it strange that there was no police report that the owner of the dog could check on to see how their dog died. I encourage you to reserve judgement unless you have a few sources to validate the facts.

It'a possible there is, but unlikely. If there is, without knowing location (jurisdiction and precinct to inquire) of the accident or names of the humans involved (likely required to search records) it would be hard to find.

Please explain why wanting to hear both sides of a story gets an "OH COME ON!" from you?

We do have Wag's side of the story. They decided to only reimburse costs if a customer signs an NDA, and then they decided to revoke their offer when the customer refused to sign.

Wag don't need to add anything more than that for us to know they care more about a very small amount of money than the dogs customers entrust to the care of the walkers they employ.

To be honest the money is actually a small and distracting aspect of this story. If it was my dog I'd want to know what happened. The fact Wag won't give any proper answers shows they probably don't know what's happening to dogs people trust their walkers with. That is a HUGE problem for me.

> We do have Wag's side of the story.

No, you don't. You only have someone's claims about Wag's side of the story.

It sounds authentic, but Internet is full with authentic-sounding false stories.

Is it more likely that someone is lying on the internet about their dog being killed, with no one they know replying in the comments to call them out, or that a startup is catastrophically bad at PR and just basic human empathy?

The principle of Occam's Razor applies here.

You are making inferences about the situation after hearing one side of the story. As reasonable as it is, it is still coming after hearing one side of the story.

And no, Occam's razor does not apply.

Does anybody know if wag does any type of background check which might show signs of an unstable individual violence mental health issues or something that might throw up a flare so maybe not hire them if they are not doing so then they are just as guilty as the individual who caused the death of the pet.

It seems you don't understand what it means to hear a side of a story.

It gets a "OH COME ON!" because it's completely irreverent. The actual story here doesn't actually matter. A dog is dead, and there's no recovering from bungling the PR of something that sensitive.

Everything in the world is a matter of understanding the marginal impact. There is no universe in which hearing both sides of the story (or trying to save n number of dollars) results in a better net outcome for Wag as a business than apologizing profusely and visibly showing as much empathy as possible.

Hearing corporate excuses from a fucking dog walking startup that got someone's dog killed couldn't possibly improve my opinion of them.