I seem to get a lot of requests to sit when my calender is showing unavailable. I think it’s a bit confusing for people as the booked dates have a strike through and dates I’m available are shown in green all other dates should be taken as unavailable but this doesn’t seem to happen, I suggest a clearer way of showing when a sitter is unavailable.
We don’t complete the calendar, I think it is totally confusing, it makes us ‘look’ like we are not available when we are, unless owners know-know how to read it. So we don’t complete it at all. THS needs to improve it.
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Yes I agree, it needs clarity, maybe they could not let the owners send requests when we aren’t available or flag it up when they look at our profile like they do for us if we are already booked.
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It is an old problem, and it should be an almost trivial programming task to add a legend or key to the availability calendar.
It is quite incredible, but THS seems to be unable to do this. The reason seems to be that they are afraid to touch the code:
We frequently get invitations- mostly for dates we’re already booked through THS and where the dates are crossed out. I don’t think many hosts actually check the calender before inviting. It seens they just scroll through potential sitters and invite those they feel drawn to. We’ve had 4 invitations this week alone where we’ve had to reply with ‘sorry, we’re already booked on your dates’
I also don’t like it when hosts don’t bother with adding a personal note- they just randomly invite sitters. I reply to everyone (because I’m a polite English lady!
) but engage more with those who make personal contact especially if their sit could be a potential future sit. This recently happened with a host from Portugal who invited us for Easter (with a very nice personal message) but we’ll be busy elsewhere. We’d love to sit in Portugal and we had a nice message exchange and have also connected on WhatsApp for easier future connection
@animar hello and welcome.
A good point but as @pietkuip posted…not a new concern.
But the bright side is that you are getting invitations!
Oh! Not a good reason! Sites need to be updated all the time. This issue will only cause more problems over time as algorithms change, and if house sitting apps become more competitive.
THS clearly has no interest in making the calendar feature user friendly. I would like the option to not receive invitations at all. When I receive invitations I reply that I’m unavailable and thank the HO for considering me.
If I could mark the dates I’m unavailable making it impossible to be contacted, I would use the calendar.
@ExploreDreamDiscover we have this problem regularly too . Even more frustrating is that for dates where we have a THS sit confirmed HOs can still send us invitations even though these are automatically crossed out on the calendar.
We often receive multiple invitations for dates where we have a confirmed sit. In addition I have been told by HOs that we appear in the search results when they do a search based on those dates .
We also try to acknowledge each invitation received with a personal message but having received multiple invitations in one day its time-consuming and frustrating process for both parties.
You would think it would be easy to fix on the system, I’m sure the HO find it just as frustrating.
Totally agree.