@HappyDeb I’ve never thought of that actually, but I’ve seen the 4 stars on the HO profile and 5 stars on the sitter’s, so it’s quite hard to judge…
If Cleanliness has been marked down, I’ve no doubt on that and I usually don’t apply for that sitting, even if all the other sitters gave 5 stars.
If it is all the others, I find it hard to tell also by cross checking most of the time. I am wondering now if it would be worth it to go ahead anyway and possibly clarify that doubt with the HO…
I’ve read a lot of stuff on these forums about the hows and whys and the responses to reviews, and why I’m hesitant to write anything negative myself due to the potential backlash… but I wasn’t expecting this.
Here is a sitter who states if they were to read a hosts review history and find nothing but solid 5 star reviews, with the exception of one sit that has 4 stars in the cleanliness category, that host would be removed from consideration.
Just… wow.
Dear @idocsteve
The way I think or feel about certain reviews, is far from the absolute truth. The fact that I wrote this, doesn’t mean that everybody thinks in the same way.
Perhaps I should go back to many years ago when I was still sharing houses with other people and one day when I moved into a new place I was welcomed by a rat! The place also had some very serious dirt I hadn’t seen during the quick viewing. Luckily a friend helped me and another girl who had just moved in and I teamed up in cleaning the whole place from top to botton. That experience quite gave me an imprint, I became quite obsessive about hygiene. I am not looking for luxury accommodations and I don’t care that much about perfectly tidy places, but hygiene is important for me.
I think many sitters are much more relaxed than I am, so I really have to check the reviews through the lens.
The first sitting was in a house with a very filthy kitchen. The kitten was lovely, the lady was very kind and generous and being my first sitting, she trusted me. So I tried to look at my first experience with an open mind. I admit that I gave 5 stars and all the other sitters did, that means that they tried to look at this sitting in the same way I did or they are just not as a freak as I am 
If had got another similar experience, I would have downgraded the sitting.
Most of the sittings with less than 5 stars in cleaning more or less show that in the photographs. For some others it is hard to tell and I wonder if it is an opportunity that I am loosing here or if that is the case.
Thank you for sharing this experience, which is very similar to mine, although from the sitter’s side, whereby a maybe 2-3 star sit was given a false 5 star review. I understand this happens rather frequently, and it’s precisely why I have modified my strategy to adapt to the THS platform accordingly.
It can’t do any harm. You’re trying to help them, so just ask, and you’ll soon be able to see whether the host is for you or not.
As a sitter who has not left any reviews for sits that are fewer than 5 stars across the board, my guess is one of either of these scenarios: a) the sitter gave an overall rating of four stars but the reason for not five stars couldn’t be reflected in the categories; perhaps their overall experience wasn’t quite perfect, which could be an “off” feeling they can’t articulate, or maybe the sitter didn’t have a great time because the weather was bad or they had expectations that they’d love the location more than was the reality, or b) they made a typo. Sometimes I’ll see average ratings of less than five stars and get curious about what went wrong, only to see that clearly the sitter hit only one star for the overall rating of the sit after checking five stars for all the categories. I would never want to hurt a HO’s reputation, so I always proofread carefully before submitting my reviews.
There is a glitch where 5 stars are input for the overall category but the system defaults to only one or zero stars . This has been my personal experience one one occasion and and reported on the forum by many members . Support have confirmed that it’s a known fault but it’s still not been fixed by THS.
https://forum.trustedhousesitters.com/t/star-review-system-glitch