Summarizing what has been posted on other topics about booking fees, I would say most opinions can fit in three categories:
Financial impact on members.
Financial impact on THS.
Personal impact on members.
I am going to focus on this third aspect.
Many long term members have expressed their concerns about loosing the sense of community or even a break of trust. I have been a member for just three years and did not really get into that sense of community but I fully understand the feeling.
I have been here long enough to see that many suggestions for easy, 0 cost improvements have been repeatedly ignored but they are now trying to sell insignificant changes as improvements in return for the booking fee.
I have also seen how members support have given inconsistent, sometimes ridiculous answers, like the time they literally said:
“Cancelling an upcoming sit with over 14 days to go is not a violation of our code of conduct”
I have recently learned the term enshittification and I think it fully applies here so I have to reassess if THS is suitable for my personal situation anymore. I sit for fun and right now it doesn’t feel like fun to be part of the new changes. I can fulfill my needs with a combination of alternatives:
Everyone needs to make their own decision. In our case we still see membership as value. Saying that though it would have been hard for THS to do worse job of introducing the fee.
I am very disappointed in THS & the way that have gone about introducing & implementing the booking fee.
Ironically, trust has now been diminished & I wonder what other price increases will follow?
As a Sitter, I have happily applied for short local sits as well aslonger sits further away. Once the booking fee comes in to effect for me, I won’t be doing short local sits.
I’ve been a member for two years now with over 10 sits completed, and I’m not bothered by this. I still see exceptional value in what I’m getting. I’ve also been proactive in sharing my referral code to get some extra months added to my membership, and during Black Friday there was 50% off to upgrade to Premium.
My situation is similar. Very few of our sits are longer than 10 days and we often do short weekend sits. We also won’t be doing short sits through THS once the booking fee comes into effect.
I think @TheEnglishFlaneur has summarized (in another thread) perfectly well the personal reasons some members have against the new fee and the way it has been introduced
long term members have been disappointed and disgruntled with the lack of improvements, the kludginess of the website and app, the introduction of new features that weren’t requested and seem to make things worse, rather than better. The sit fees are for some the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I just accepted my first sit off the books from THS — going to repeat sit for hosts who are not renewing. They texted me and offered me airfare to sit.
That’s an alternative I forgot to mention in my original post but it’s probably one of the most popular, especially with long term sitters who do a lot of repeats.
I have transitioned to paid sits with 2 of my repeat HOs. They weren’t renewing so reached out to me. It’s been for many months now so not related to booking fees. I expect some other HOs will be wanting to discuss too.
Yup. I don’t even sit that much. My first two years as a member, I did about a dozen each year. But this past year, I did far fewer and was expecting likewise in coming years, doing more nonsit travel. THS membership has become less useful to me.
Yes, I’ll start reaching out if I end up dropping my membership. I still have a good stretch, between paid membership and bonus months for previous referrals.
Before we joined THS a big factor in our decision process was the fixed annual cost.
Whilst the fee per sit is currently only £9.00 I’m suspicious that this is just the thin end of the wedge.
A few aspects that really leave a sour taste in my mouth.
The way we’ve been strong armed into accepting the new terms & conditions if we want to access our profile.
The rationale given for introducing the fees is not credible. The growth in fee paying members makes the platform less expensive to run per member, not more expensive.
It’s just greed.
I would like to turn off auto renew, but as I have a sit straddling my membership renewal date THS are not allowing me to do so.
Unless THS get rid of the per sit fees I will have to seriously consider my continued membership, which is a shame as I like the service.
We do a lot of local sits to help people out and not just to have a vacation. So having to pay for that PLUS the increase in membership fee amounts to undesirable costs that we look to avoid/minimize. I see that we will instead do more housesits for people we know and that just ask us rather than through TH. And we will be substantially less likely to recommend TH.
I’ve seen the enshi–tification of the small business I was building which required using sites to generate business that got more exploitative and worse over time. They changed their business model so I was paying more for less. Then I got some remote part time work. Initially, the work was fun but challenging. I felt that I was using my mind, and while the money wasn’t great, it was decent for the type of work and the flexibility made it worth it. Then the company that contracted the work got bought by a bigger company and the work dried up and when projects came up they were dumber and paid much less. So I’ve seen the ruinaton of everything and it doesn’t surprise me.
That said: I can find great sitters in my location and I expect that will continue for a while. (I can also run through the list of people who’ve sat for me and usually find one.) I can also still find the kind of “vacation” sits I like to do although my spouse who had to return to the office most of the time, can’t travel as much. No worries, due to cuts in government programs that funded the non-profit he worked in, he’ll be retiring soon.
Soooo, not to sound like a gloomy gus. If I were facing an expensive membership renewal I might have thoughts, but thanks to one neat trick, I won’t be facing booking fees or any fees for a while, so not going to “leave” until I can’t find sits or sitters or just don’t have the money to travel even with free accomodations.