11/24/2025
ā ļø Pet Owners, Please Read This Before Relying on Tractive GPS Trackers ā ļø
This is not a casual review ā this is a warning from someone who has lived through the nightmare that these devices are supposed to prevent.
Iāve used 7 Tractive GPS trackers for my outdoor cats for years. I bought them because I believed they would protect my animals. I believed the marketing, the ratings, and the promises of āpeace of mind.ā
But in every critical moment when my cats were actually missing ā when my heart was pounding, and every minute felt like life or death ā the trackers failed.
Hereās what that looks like in real life:
The app says your cat is ānearbyāā¦
ā¦but Bluetooth wonāt connect.
The GPS keeps jumping around.
The map sends you all over the place ā to yards, fields, alleys, fences ā places where your cat simply is not.
You walk in circles, in the cold, in the dark, hoping the next point is real.
You trigger the sound feature ā nothing.
You trigger the light ā nothing.
You refresh again and again while the tracker leads you on a wild goose chase.
And the whole time you are imagining the worst.
And every timeā¦ the worst happens.
I have lost four cats while relying on these devices ā and each time, the tracker was either inaccurate, unresponsive, or completely useless when it mattered most.
Not once did it lead me to a missing cat in an emergency.
Not once.
And as devastating as that is, what happened with customer support was almost as shocking.
Despite multiple messages describing exactly what went wrong ā detailed, repeated, urgent ā support ignored the core issue every time. They responded slowly, sometimes taking a week or more. When they finally replied, the answers were scripted and irrelevant: billing details, renewal reminders, basic troubleshooting steps that completely bypassed the fact that their product had failed catastrophically.
Even when my case was āescalated to management,ā all I received was more superficial talk that avoided the actual problem.
No accountability.
No meaningful troubleshooting.
No compassion.
No acknowledgment of what it feels like to lose a pet while their āsafety deviceā spins in circles on a map.
It was like talking to a wall.
Iām writing this because many pet owners buy Tractive believing it will protect their animals during an emergency. Based on my experience, it will not.
Please donāt rely on this device to save your petās life.
Please donāt trust that the GPS will guide you when your pet is truly in danger.
Please donāt depend on support to help you if something goes wrong.
For everyday curiosity (āwhere does my cat wander?ā), maybe.
For finding a lost pet? Absolutely not.
Iāve switched all my cats to PawFit after losing trust entirely ā and after losing too much already. So far, it has performed as promised and, unlike Tractive which is garnering more and more negative reviews, PawFitās reviews are in line with their actions.
I hope this helps someone else avoid the pain Iāve gone through losing my furry family members.
