You must have missed off a paragraph. It’s a win-win from what you have written so far. I’m intrigued!
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With something apparently missing from this account, it could just as easily be renamed to something like “BEWARE of hosts who just want free sitting, as it suits their convenience.”
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@KC1102 ,
It is unfair and out of order to speak of this sitter like that. The sitter accepted a fluid sit with the promise that if the dates changed the home host still was willing to honor the original listed dates - and this is exactly what happened.
To imply that by accepting the offer that was originally agreed, means she is probably only interested in free accommodation. and “clearly saw a good opportunity” as if the sitter has somehow taken advantage of the situation is as far wrong as it is possible to get!
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Actually not saying anything with certainty or accusing her of anything. I know nothing about this person and just saying it could be a possibility her priority is having accommodation over a simple desire to pet sit, and if it was, she would obviously choose to stay if she could for such an extended period. That is a possibility with any sitter and I was talking about this in a more general sense.
You obviously misinterpreted what i wrote. I know sitters can get super sensitive about HO posts concerning any sort of criticism of sitters. The HO offered to let her stay so obviously she did nothing wrong in choosing to do so and I wasnt implying she did.
@Rlean808
Like most other commenters above I am genuinely wondering what the problem is? I read your post- intrigued by what the ‘punchline’ was going to be (i.e the awful thing the sitter had done) and your post ends with the sitter staying the whole three weeks- as originally agreed, and at your invitation, should you need to return early, and is there for the whole 9 days you actually need them!
That sounds great! No worries for you with coverage and no worries for the sitter having a last minute scheduling drama with potential high costs because your plans changed!
If, as others have hinted at, you are somehow irritated that the sitter actually took your invitation to stay on at face value then consider this…
-The sitter had planned you into their schedule for that period of time and made a commitment to you, including being willing to be flexible with a date change.
-They may have incurred significant costs to get to you.
-They may have organised back to back sits before and after your dates.
-Unless you were to officially cancel the sit & relist with correct dates the sitters calender would be blocked for applying for other sits. That would mean they’d have unanticipated extra overnight costs if they did not accept your offer to stay on with you!
-If you did not really expect the sitter to take your offer seriously- if needed- you should not have offered it in the first place!
Sitters have busy lives to organise- especially we fulltimers who are keen to plan an efficient working schedule. Last minute changes can be extremely disruptive and costly for a sitter!
So I really don’t understand what is wrong in this scenario which seems to have benefitted all parties!
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I do not think the sitter did anything wrong in deciding to take her up on the offer to stay nor do I think the HO should have taken it back. My interpretation of her post, which could be wrong, is that the trip ended up being significantly shorter than she would have thought if it did end up being reduced and she probably didnt think the sitter would plan to stay for almost two weeks. Perhaps she was originally expecting a few days maybe.
The possibility I mentioned about her being more interested in free accommodation was meant in the general sense as that is the motivation of a number of sitters seemingly, and not a personal accusation of her. I just don’t think the HO expected her to want to stay that long and it led to that assumption. Whether it is true or not doesn’t matter. She made the offer.
Often, a sitter being very flexible with dates for an HO can lead to significant cost. The sitter may not be able to find other sits when the HO finally nails down the dates. And now they can’t even look for other sits until when/if the HO formally changes the dates. The HO should be happy that they found a sitter willing to accommodate their need for extreme flexibility around the dates (many sitters would not or could not due to other commitments). If the HO offered for them to stay the full dates then they can’t be upset that the sitters took them up on that offer. It seems that the offer to stay to the original end date was part of the agreement. The sitters agreed to extremely flexible dates with the knowledge that they would be able to stay even if the end date changed.
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I’m very sorry for your loss.
I’m glad you managed to get a sitter at short notice to help you out but I’m not sure what you are warning us about. You wanted to arrange a sitter for a 3 week period but you wanted to to be able to be able to shorten the 3 weeks at a moments notice? You advertised this saying you would honour the 3 week dates by making space for the sitter if you needed to shorten it and a sitter took you up on your offer exactly as you made it.
What has the sitter done wrong here that we need to be warned about?
From what I can gather since there’s been nothing bad actually stated is that you are annoyed the sitter followed through with the sit as it was agreed but you think they ‘got away with something’ as there was only 9 of 21 days where it turned out you actually needed them? Is this correct?
If you didn’t want to honour the offer why did you make it? Could it be because you knew it was unreasonable to expect someone to uproot themselves and travel to you only to be told on a moments notice that they need to leave 12 days early?
What exactly are you trying to spare other homeowners about? That there are sitters who on short notice will be willing to look after their pets and home in a time of crisis and stick to to the agreement the homeowner wanted them to agree to?
It’s bad enough when owners don’t want to stick to the agreed arrangement. Now they want to complain when sitters do stick to it?
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You also said this problem could be mitigated by suggesting she look at part-time sitters who are homeowners; my point is that there are ripple effects for all of us “downstream,” as it were.
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Yes, I was talking about specific types of sitters she may feel more comfortable choosing in the future generally if she is concerned about things like people just looking for free places to stay, not in the specific context of a sit where she knows ahead of time she may need to return early. That could negatively impact anyone obviously ,regardless of who they are.
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@pitcherplant Yes, I was talking about specific types of sitters she may feel more comfortable choosing in the future generally if she is concerned about things like people just looking for free places to stay, not in the specific context of a sit where she knows ahead of time she may need to return early. That could negatively impact anyone obviously ,regardless of who they are.
I agree with people’s views that I don’t understand the issue here, that the sitter is honouring the original dates as posted & could not get another sit through THS unless @Rlean808 were to change the dates on the website & reconfirm with the sitter. However @Rlean808 agreed to the sitter staying as originally planned and with a private basement area is causing no problem.
I do hope @Rlean808 that you will tell us all what your concern is as can see you’ve been reading these comments
Aren’t we a lively group. The OP posted a “cryptic” problem that may not even really be a problem and look at the dialog it generated! And the OP has not even popped back to clarify anything. I can only smile.
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Sorry everyone - I actually don’t know how my story posted. I had drafted it months ago for some catharsis but I guess I should finish it because tbh it still bothers me and it was 6 months ago!!!
Continuing the story….
We agree to let them stay for 3 weeks even though the sit was to only last for 9 days.
The first couple of days were great, very communicative, lots of pictures and everything was going great. As soon as the weekend hit, there was a major decline in communication. We didn’t say anything at first but from that point on we ended up having to reach out to get any updates.
Just to give some background, we have an external camera at our front door, we also have external door sensors and a garage sensor so basically there’s a log of when anyone goes in or out of the house. We only get notifications when the garage door opens though.
There was a night that the garage sensor pinged us at like 2 am and this kind of led us to look at the door sensor history which revealed that no external doors had been open for 10+ hours. This happened on multiple days. Sadly, there was even a day that no doors were opened for 16 hours.
None of their updates said they took the dogs with them and all the pics they provided were of the dogs at home.
We were unsure of how to handle it and I was dealing with a family death so I honestly didn’t have the bandwidth to address it when we were so far away. So we agreed to talk to them when we got home.
We drove back home and found multiple accidents, the house smelled like pee as soon as we entered.
They were not home upon arrival but when they got back, they were so upbeat and happy to see us. They told how they were celebrating a birthday this week and has multiples hikes planned….blah blah.
All that to say, I didn’t feel comfortable confronting them. I’m non-confrontational so it’s really hard. Anyways I decide to wait until all the birthday stuff is done…
After a week and half, we finally confront them and they said they took the dogs with them. They said they had hundreds of pics and never shared one of them.
We had held off on checking the front door camera until after they left because we weren’t ready for the truth while we were still hosting them.
The camera confirmed that they left our dogs at home for extensively long periods of time and they didn’t even take them on any daily walks or anything.
They completely lied to us the entire time even though we hosted them and let them use my car.
I don’t know it still really bothers me to think about but yeah…… that’s my first terrible experience with THS.
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I think what the OP should actually be looking for is a paid sitter service. That way they can book the days they want and change them as needed. They will of course also have to pay any late cancellation fees, lose any deposits etc. as is normal when you book a service and then want to make last-minute changes. It will all be clearly laid out in the terms of service of this paid sitting service.
What it appears a lot of home owners are having difficulty getting their heads around is that this is not that service. They want someone to do the paid level of service but for free. They want a $99 annual fee to cover them for up to 365 days of home and pet-sitting.
If you want to treat the sitter as a service provider then engage a service provider and pay the rate for that service.
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Well this is truly terrible! I’m sorry for sure that they were negligent sitters, and I’d also be pretty PO’ed at spending two additional weeks with someone who clearly hadn’t held up their end of the bargain.
Hope you and the dogs are both doing better now. 
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Well that is a terrible experience and I’m sorry that you and your dogs went through it. I think it’s hard to choose a good sitter. I don’t know if the story ended with you giving them an honest review, but I hope that now with the blind review system in place, there will be less fluff and more truth in reviews. If THS doesn’t boot sitters AND homeowners who don’t deliver on promises, at least a good review system might help.
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Thanks for getting back to us and clarifying. Its understandable why you were upset now and with good reason. The cheek!
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Hope you reviewed them with specifics. You mentioned that they’d never sat before. People like that should never sit again.
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They sound like truly appalling sitters, I can see why you are so angry. They took advantage of your generosity. Hope you mentioned it in your review.
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