I have noticed that some listings show the wrong city as their location. We have been actively looking for sits in the county of San Francisco, California (United States), and we found a home in Oakland, California (across the bay from SF) and also one in Antioch, California (far from SF). The Antioch listing seems purposely vague and does not give written details in the “home location” section, and there is not even a map!
I learned to search “San Francisco County” to find homes actually in San Francisco, but these 2 homes come up, which are not in San Francisco County. How can this be? It makes me wonder about the accuracy of listings all over the world. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area so I know it well, but when I am looking for listings in other places, I am not as knowledgeable.
Has anyone else come across this? I don’t understand how this can happen.
I wonder if the HOs list a more desirable city to attract more sitters.
There is a sit currently listed for Dallas, where the HO states in the body of the listing that they live in Fort Worth (a different city, about 35 miles away). Even when I zoom in on the map to exclude FW, this sit shows, so the HO must have listed Dallas as the location.
I think that’s right. I recently did a sit listed as being in Leigh on Sea, Essex, Englandwhen it was actually in Westcliff on Sea (less desirable). I think the owner thought she’d get no interest if she was honest!
This is another example. Exactly what I am talking about. I am a huge fan of “Trusted Housesitters.” It is sad that not everyone can be trusted. How are we supposed to know when a listing is dishonest?
BunnyCat, you are correct that if you search “San Francisco, CA,” the surrounding areas are included. However, if you search “San Francisco County,” only the homes within the actual county should be included. I have tested your theory, and these two homes show up in BOTH searches! This is just not right. Neither home is in San Francisco county. Right in the listing, under the photo, it states “San Francisco, CA.”
I was looking for Sits in Northern Ireland and came across one in Sydenham near Belfast. The map also showed it as in NI. However the listing heading stated it was in South London! Their home description did not contain info to clarify the location. So I googled and found out there is a Sydenham in both Northern Ireland and in England. So my good deed for the day was to drop them a line and mention it so they could notify THS if it was indeed the wrong location. They had not noticed and were really grateful to be informed!
I’ve come across this before. Hosts need to check where THS has put them on the map!
Hosts should definitely check their listings thoroughly after they are published. I have seen several instances where the dates are wrong. The dates will say April 3 to April 3, 2022 or similar. Obviously that is an error. As far as the location goes, as I said, one of the ones that said “San Francisco” was far away from San Francisco, and the wording in the listing was vague as to the location, and no map included. Red flags? I think so.
I look at London listings daily and would like to know how listings way outside even Greater London get there. Obviously houseowners want to be seen by more sitters, but numbers doing this are increasing. Can owners place themselves wherever they want? Gravesend, Slough, Windsor are just a few current examples. This trend is making daily numbers of sits misleading and ever more cumbersome to trawl through. @Angela_L
Same! If it’s not actually in London, i.e. doesn’t have a London postcode (E, EC, W, WC, N, NW, SE, SW), list in “United Kingdom” and specify the area. If you’re saying it takes 30 minutes to get to London by train from your home, you are not in London, you’re “near” London.
People do the same thing with New Jersey, claiming they’re in or from New York City just because it’s “near” NYC. Really misleading and frustrating, like when I see a great flight deal supposedly to/from NY, and it’s actually to/from Newark, New Jersey. I’m not going to an entirely different state when there are two major airports in NYC. “NJ” is as easy to type as “NY,” so just be honest.
Hi @Lauraa, I also think it may be the actual website that slots listings into locations and owners are not responsible for that. It is the same with sitters’ locations too. When I put my town in to see which sitters are there, they are not just from my town, but some over 50 kilometres away in completely different towns.
30-minute journies are common within London, from numerous areas to the centre. These are separate towns farther out being included in ‘London’ listings.
Hi @Lauraa@temba … I have checked this with the tech support team and the responsibility is with the owner to input an accurate location on their listing. There are no known issues with the mapping.
In terms of searching for sitters and listings, this is a different topic. This is controlled by the search parameters, and yes this might show a wider range of sits, or sitters to allow flexibility. For instance if I search Truro, Cornwall, UK … I get shown a map with the 3 sits in Truro, but also sits around the general area that I can zoom in and out of to widen the search. If I only want Truro I can click on the marker and I will only see those 3 sits. As has often been mentioned here in the forum, members like to be inspired by other sits and this is a way of widening that range. It’s a common feature of map searching on many other sites including Airbnb. But the choice is there to hone in if you want to be more specific, assuming the owner has put an accurate location.
This has been an interesting thread, which we’ll feed back to the team with the various scenarios mentioned - thank you everyone for your input.
But these places have their real town-names in their listings so how did they get onto a London saved-search page? @Vanessa_A Current example is a country-town Chipping Ongar, which is an hour and a half travelling by car into central London. Are owners able to tag themselves into London? I don’t mind a Truro search showing other towns, but for London it results in large numbers of faraway places. And clicking on the central map-icon for London excludes many areas of London that are easy to get to.
I like the way the mapping works. I live in a “less desirable” location** adjacent to a “more desirable” one so it’s helpful that the map brings up mine as well and prospective sitters can see the full range of what’s in the locality.
**It’s very nice, honest! And there’s a bus stop at the end of the road to take you the 20 mins into the other one
I agree! We always joke about a sit we did in Gravesend, East of London, where we’ve since become great friends with the owners, and their FB famous cat! Despite being 30 mins outside London, it was and remains, one of our all-time favourite UK sits. We could get into London easily and cheaply, along with Greenwich and the Thames. Gravesend itself had so much history with English heritage sites, 2 historic forts, a nuclear bunker, a huge mosque, and several “escape” rooms which introduced us to a new activity. It was so good I wrote a blog about everything you could do there!!
Never discount a location I say!!
This thread has triggered me to take more time analyzing why I felt I experienced similar issues at times to what has been mentioned so far. I’ve come to realize that, in part, my issue is that I rarely use my browser full-screen. When I’m not in full screen mode (I’m on a Mac laptop), the map doesn’t show at all when I do a search. I therefore am not seeing what you’ve mentioned, where you’ll see the full range of the map the current search is covering. Now, when the area is more important to me, I have to remember to go full-screen. Maybe others are doing similar to me.
This is the problem we face as a world full of different devices, operating systems, browsers… they all display and act differently - couple that with our own preferences for using software and it becomes a complete mish-mash of outcomes
I’m so glad I no longer work in software development… it was all so much simpler when IBM first graced our world with their first “personal computer”!
Have you tried using the app on your phone to search? I am a long time convert from Apple to Android, so my experience is such, but the map works well on my phone and I’m finding myself using the THS app more and more as it improves in functionality. Or of course… as you say… remember to go full screen
