Thank you. I guess the purpose of posting was to glean whether others had faced this sort of conflict between house/ pet sitting and home working. Our guess is that ‘she’ found the whole pet care thing too conflictual with her ‘schedule’ and ‘he ‘ felt too constrained by not being able to go walkabout.
We have two rules. Be honest and treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself. I have taken the other actions you suggest and yesterday instigated Legal proceedings against them in the County Court in Oxford.
Thank you Hallt64. Fortunately for us and them we have well trained and behaved dogs that do not behave as you describe. If they did I would not expect others to endure what you seem happy to. If you can’t train your dogs properly why are you going away expecting others to take the strain, literally?
We had a pair of Beagles, trained to heel and walk great on a lead, whether it be an 8 year old or 60 year old walking them. Nice to hear your dogs sound the same
Now it makes perfect sense. Yes, that is a real issue. We have schedules, but the pets schedules come first, that’s the essence of housesitting (for us).
The only thing I can suggest is that you make the dogs’ eating and walking schedules clear in your listing, so that there is no doubt about what you need.
Yikes legal action! Makes you realise that we really do rely on trust for so much of this. Did this couple have any previous reviews on the site?
We’ve had sits before where it’s ended up being a lot more work than it initially seemed -but it’s never crossed our minds to leave and does a disservice to the whole concept when people do without a good reason (caveat that we haven’t and probably will never hear the sitter’s side of this).
Can you please confirm if this was a TrustedHouseSitter sit or a paid for house- sitting service you used on this occasion?
From the details given so far if it was an unpaid THS sitter, I cannot see that there is anything illegal that has occurred here .
However, if you used a paid for house sitting service and they have broken the terms of the agreement then possibly there is legal action that can be taken - if the service you paid for was not provided and there was no extenuating circumstance for the sitter to leave early.
Simple, we had a contract, they broke it, hence they are liable for all of the liabilities that flow from breaking that contract. They should count themselves lucky that we did not claim compensation for loss of holiday, stress, etc that flowed from their actions, but only the direct financial costs incurred by the breaking of said contract.
If you don’t like the heat, don’t keep up your hands in the fire
I’m sorry to hear about what happened - have you contacted Trusted Housesitters directly as @Silversitters and @Cuttlefish mentioned?
I tried to locate your details to pass over to the Membership Services team, but your Forum email address isn’t linked to a paid Trusted Housesitter account. We know that some members prefer to use a different email address for anonymity.
If you want to send me the email address you use for Trusted Housesitters so I can pass your details over, you can do so via Direct Message. You’d just need to click on my user name and then click the message button on the right.
Alternatively, contact the team directly using the information provided by @Silversitters as they’d be happy to look into this for you.
@Limelight12 this doesnt fully sound like a Trusted Housesitter sit as there isn’t really a contract there. Unless you were incredibly specific about the dog’s needs and sitter responsibilities from the beginning. I hope these sitters aren’t intimidated into settling out of court if they are on THS. THS is more of an exchange platform and it is recommended by the platform that you take out your own insurance. You have every right to be annoyed that it happened. How come you came home in the end rather than finding a different/paid sitter?
You still haven’t answered the question ‘Was this a booking confirmed via the trusted Housesitters site?’
Also, was the contract you mentioned signed by both you and the sitters? if so, that is very unusual for sitters booked officially, via the trustedhousesitters site, to be asked to do.
Any agreement can be a contract if it meets the legal definition. Even a verbal agreement can be a contract in many jurisdictions, including the UK. I would be very interested in hearing how a court will decide this particlar case.
Something seems off about this entire scenario. But yes, it would be interesting to hear whether the hosts make headway in court or whether THS has any input.
Generally, for hosts and sitters, this case helps highlight why it’s important to have backup plans. As a host, it’s better to be able to have someone step up to care for the pets or help get them to another sitting or kenneling situation. That’s to avoid having to cut a trip short, for instance. I think THS suggests this as well, in which case that could potentially undermine legal claims, if any.
It seems like there is a lot of information missing from the situation. From your first post it sounds like they let you know they had some concerns about one of the dogs. Whatever the concern was got worse and 4 hours later they asked for that dog to be removed. Then 8 hours later they informed you they would not continue with the sit and left two days later. Based on that it sounds like they gave you 2 days to make alternative arrangements due to some serious issue with one of the dogs.
Your next post says it was about their schedule. If there were two people why would it matter if one was gone for a day? Do your dogs need constant care from 2 people? What was the agreement for how long the dogs could be left alone? I’m just trying to understand the situation.