I’m unable to get anyone to answer on the site Help button, so posting here. Need Tech Support please.
I’ve looked at 10 sits in the last few minutes, and the Amenities listed are (for almost all) “Wifi (High Speed)”. That’s all, nothing else in that section. I’ve checked listings for sits where we’ve been before and that’s all they have. Did find one listing with a new selection that says “Sitter can use your car”, with a little car symbol beside it. Is that a new Amenity design?
We are sitters and home owners, so we just checked our own house listing, and only the “Wifi (High Speed)” is listed. All the other amenity selections on our page are gone.
Oh my gosh - Just opened to edit my listing, to see what amenities I had originally selected, and there is a whole new list. Do every one of the 4,600 listings now have to go in and re-select their amenity listings? Without any warning?
There must have been consideration to aligning old selections with the new choices, instead of kicking everything off the system. Wow, what a miss.
Looks like we now have to select from seven categories, with a total of 50 possible subcategory selections.
Now I don’t know if my listing should be updated, or if Tech Support will come back and put the original data back into all the listings, then ask home owners over time to use the new process.
HI @Breezylake this is the new Amenities improvement launched today to help pet parents/owners make the very best of their home listing showcasing all of the amenities which make their homes unique and to help sitters when searching for their next pet and housesitting stay.
Hi @Angela_L , yes, I see that. However there was no warning or notification about this change, and no data alignment of past selections to current selections. As a result, it could very well be that all 4,600 current listings have had their amenities thrown away, except for High Speed Wifi.
That’s an awful lot of updating that needs to happen within this community. A data alignment for a period of time would have taken care of that, along with a direct email notification of the change.
So what happens now - do home owners have to slowly figure this change out?
@Angela_L - Just realized that this change doesn’t just impact the 4,600 current live listings. Our listing I just looked at currently has no open dates. So that could be 100,000 or more non-live listings that also need to be updated. Listings that we are all encouraged to review and mark as favourites when they don’t have dates posted. All of their amenities will now be gone, which will greatly impact a sitters decision to even mark the sit as a favourite.
Wow.
Where do you see “amenities” listed. I see a “facts and features” heading about the home. I clicked on several different sits in different countries and they show multiple features not just high speed wifi. My own sit listing still shows multiple features. So I don’t know what you are looking at.
@Angela_L why haven’t we been told about yet another change before it’s rolled out, and what steps we need to take, if any? THS communication strategies are very poor. If it wasn’t for this forum, I’d be unaware of many THS changes, like most members are.
@crookie, on the desktop site, open a listing, and these are the headings you’ll see:
Introduction
Home & Location
Amenities
Responsibilities
Meet the Pets.
Agree. If I hadn’t seen it on this forum, I wouldn’t have known about the change.
I’m a homeowner and just added all the relevant amenities to my listing, even though I don’t have dates posted at the moment. It’s useful to sitters…but only if HO’s know about it
It’s ridiculous that this change was implemented without telling those of us that are affected. Not surprising, unfortunately, given THS’s communication practices…
This is the view as a HO - multiple drop-down menus for each category.
Hello @Breezylake. I wanted to help clarify this further. Upon speaking with the product team no current details that are shown on a listing, such as Wifi, car included etc will be lost. You will still be able to view these, this new feature adds, previously unavailable amenities that you can select on your listing to give sitters that apply more details.
Hello @Carla. I wish that was correct, but that’s not the case. As you can see, this is the only amenity left on our listing. I just checked four others and it’s the same.
We are missing the selections of House, Family Friendly, City, Countryside and Sitter Needs a Car.
@Angela_L Is there a reason that this wasn’t communicated to users?
On the company’s part, when a lot of people on the forum are repeatedly discussing communication issues, this seems to show a real lack of self awareness/care.
Thank you @Breezylake and @Lassie I’ve just logged on to the website and can see that now. I hardly use the website, mostly use the app which doesnt show “amenities” as a heading. I clicked on a few random listings and as you say @Breezylake I saw only wifi and car use as the amenities.
I just updated my own listing with the new amenities categories. This is a great feature, if only home owners knew about it! Another THS communication fail…
@Angela_L
It might surprise you that my expectations are actually very low, but finding out about these changes because someone notices an issue and brings it up on the forum is not where a professional business should be aiming.
THS has a newsletter. It is the perfect place to highlight coming changes, or new roll-outs, or link to any surveys. I’d much prefer to hear about these matters that affect all of us in that newsletter, rather than most of the current content, which doesn’t appeal to me as a reader.
My next sit has a host - an experienced host - who knew nothing about any of the recent changes. That shows a major communication failure from THS. We regularly see this on the forum with people wondering why their listing has auto paused - it’s all new information to them.
When forum users repeatedly complain that the company isn’t listening to them, perhaps it’s because the company isn’t listening in an open way? There’s a lot of ‘shutting things down’ and a lot of deflection.
Collaborating with highly engaged and highly motivated users - both sitters and hosts - is free and many of us are begging for that engagement. It can only lead to greater satisfaction across the board.
@Pips@Crookie Thank you both for your feedback which I will pass on.
I have been updated by the Product Team that communication of this great feature is in place to send to all members highlighted in the March Newsletter.
It is important to understand that we are continuously iterating and improving the platform and its important to do gradual releases and will not be announcing every change via email.
Slightly off topic, as is the post … thank you @Pips for the suggestion will pass it on.
That blog post inclusion may not have been your chosen subject matter but it did keep many happy it is one of our most popular with great engagement, thank you for highlighting it again. I’m sure there will be those who may have missed it and will enjoy the read.
There are many great blog posts on the website both fun, serious, educational, including great member stories … pop over there now and discover something new about pets, people and places. Blog - Page 1 | TrustedHousesitters.com
