As I understand it, homeowners can search for sitters by location, and that’s one of the functions of the location field on sitter profiles.
Is there a reason they can’t search by name?
For those of us who sit full-time, with no fixed abode, it’s a bit of a conundrum.
The way I see it, I can either enter the place we’re currently sitting, or a preferred location, but neither is completely accurate.
Is there a solution I’m missing?
As an owner I can select sitters living in a contry/a specific region/a specific town, I can select people mature or young but I never see their full names, only the first one (a single sitter or a couple) and for sure I can’t find them (I tried sometimes on this forum to look on some meMbers profiles but most of them give nicknames on the forum so if they don’t tell their age, their town, it’s pretty hard to guess who is who)
when you subscribe you gave what adress ? Even if you don’t have a permanent home, you must be obliged to give an adress to tax administration or health insurance ? When THS confirms your identity how do they manage if you don’t fill up an adress ?
As an owner (again), I would feel annoyed not to know the exact adress of my sitter, learning he has no personal home. I’m always asking that kind of information as my own insurance company is warned when a sitter is living in my home.
THS has an insurance service. With a sitter who has no home how can the sitter be contacted by mail (not e mail, mail) by an insurance company, police (for example when he is flashed on the road with a rental car : you’re obliged to give an adress, which is what ? the one on your driving license ?? no longer valid ?
@Provence
The address I provided THS when I subscribed is not relevant to my question because we no longer live there.
The location field is editable, and as you have noted can be used to find sitters in a specific location.
My question is specifically about whether it’s best to regularly change the location to where one is currently sitting or use the city/state/country one is available to sit in.
We were homeowners for more than 30 years. We sold our home when we began house & pet sitting full time. There are many responsible, highly-rated sitters who, like us, choose to be location independent.
If you find that annoying, it is certainly your prerogative to only choose sitters who are still homeowners.
I change my location. I am (normally) based in Singapore, and have over 10 sits in Singapore, some from HO approaching me. but if I travel to eg, Thailand, with no planned onward travel, I will change my location to Thailand. or where I would like to go - Bali, Malaysia. It works.\
It does seem a bit of a flawed system. We normally have ours set to Brighton as that is where we were based when we first started (+ we love going back there).
We are available to do sits anywhere in the world, and would love to get invited by people from anywhere but if they can only search by location they will not necessarily find us.
As a sitter you can set countries that you are available to travel to - would we show up in the searches for those places?
Maybe changing the search for homeowners looking for sitters to include filters in the same way sitters search for sits.
E.g homeowners could search for people with availability on certain dates, people with experience in certain pets or even by number of reviews. (As well as keeping the location search available for people that want local sitters)
Or maybe just having a location of “anywhere” for nomadic sitters?
We don’t think you’re missing anything @Happyhousesitter. Similar to @ChrisAndSuzeGoWalkies, we’re full-time house sitters and leave our location where our ‘home-base’ is. We can and usually go a year or longer without being there, but since there isn’t a nomadic location option available, we don’t worry much about it.
The only downside is what has already been mentioned, it’s a bit misleading for homeowners who search for sitters in their area. With that said, the downside to a “nomadic” location option would mean we’d never, or rarely, appear in sitter searches (at least how we understand it).
Here is proof that an issue exists. I just received a message from a homeowner asking why I was applying for her short sit in the summer, because we just spent four months in Mexico, and I had forgotten to update the location field. I thanked her for the reminder, and am grateful to have an open dialogue with her.
@Happyhousesitter I just accepted a sitter based in Alaska (I’m in CA). Although I was looking for someone closer to me, he explained in his application that, due to the pandemic, he would be staying here in NorCal this summer rather than returning home. That was enough info to get us started talking. So, long story short, you could try just explaining your location in your initial message. “Location independent” sitters are not so uncommon these days, I think most HO’s will get it.
we similarly were refused a sit once although the HO said we were perfect for it, but she didn’t feel it was fair to have us travel all that way (across a continent) for just a week. I explained we were fairly close to her but she had already made another choice. True, she may have been letting us down gently but in that case there was no need to go into the explanation of our believed location
I would assume many “nomads” have mailing addresses, which is different from an address where you live. I can see this is a legitimate concern. THS should have an option to say “nomad” or whatever as an option.
To be honest, I’ve never had a home owner ask for my address, not in England or in France.