What other companies have y’all used for sits? I’m not moving forward paying extra fees
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@MKPeacock depends on where you want to sit. I know when we joined we didn’t research any options, had heard about from “influencers”. Worked well for us sitting in the UK. However future sits will likely be in Australia and New Zealand and they both have local sites with more sits available than THS. THS may be the biggest but that does not necessarily mean the best.
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Remember. You get what you pay for.
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After watching Rowan Atkinson’s latest film ( man v baby) where he is offered massive renumeration to look after a very high end London penthouse, I explored professional house sit agencies. … And signed up with one! The daily allowance is only about £40 a day plus travel expenses but no sign up fee. I don’t think the new £9 sit fee will stop me from being a THS member but I think it might have been fairer to charge HO £18 and sitters £0 as sitters tend to do multiple sits a year while the majority of HO tend to use the service once or twice a year.
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There are a number of other sitting sites with lower membership fees, but depending on how often you sit ,and where you are looking to sit, you may end up spending a lot more on travel, and gap days, than you would paying the difference between whatever membership you have now and the premium.
Like someone else mentioned, there are a couple of countries who have dedicated sites that often have more sits available there than THS has for those locations.
But overall, most sites have a miniscule fraction of the listings THS does…for example, one site I used to belong to often just has a handful of new listing a day, often less, at most. I let my membership lapse but still check in occasionally and would sign up again only if I saw a specific sit to which I wanted to apply.
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If we name them here they will be deleted as we’re not permitted to advertise th competition. As @KC1102 says, other sites don’t have anywhere near the listings THS does, or has had up until now. There is also the option of getting paid as suggested.
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^This. Do you know why THS is more expensive than the others? Because it’s worth it. And for many, it still is.
I’ve checked out a few other sites and found they’re extremely favorable to hosts (which I am). Way more sitters than hosts so we got slammed with sitter applications immediately upon joining. In fact one of the two is a free FB page and I simply asked a question (were the sitters paid or unpaid). I got a slew of replies, friend requests and messages from ready and available sitters even though I didn’t list any dates. On the other site I listed dates for next March and also got innundated and had to remove the listing.
I had the same response here on THS, on this platform it appears that there is a more even balance between hosts and sitters and during peak vacation periods the sitters are in the more favorable position.
So before you make a decision to leave based on the cost between regular and Premium, do your research. The only variable is the effect of these fees on the membership as a whole. I suspect sitters are more put off by the fee, some will leave, and that will shift the balance in favor of the remaining sitters.
One of the most common complaints here from sitters is being treated like hired help. That’s very unfortunate and unfair. THS seems to work best when both parties view sits as exchanges between equals. Having hosts pay higher booking fees unavoidably undercuts the equal exchange. A few $s or £s shouldn’t make any difference but people are weird about money.
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