Our teams across TrustedHousesitters are reading everything you’ve shared over the past few days, and we want to start by saying: we hear how frustrated many of you felt with the booking fee announcement. We also recognise that the way the update was rolled out came as a surprise. A technical issue also meant some members couldn’t see the updated Terms & Conditions, and we know that made things feel worse. That’s on us, and we’re sorry.
A lot of you have asked why this change was introduced. The reality is that running a service of this scale, with strong member support, trust & safety protections, and ongoing improvements across the app and website, requires continued investment. We’ve heard loud and clear that you want smoother tools, clearer processes, and a more reliable experience overall, and making those improvements sustainably means making changes in how we fund and build new features.
This isn’t about changing the core exchange or what makes this community special. It’s about making sure we can keep improving the experience you rely on: better support when things go wrong, a safer platform, and tools that make it easier to find the right sits and the right people.
We also want to say something that sometimes gets lost in moments like this: this community is the heart of TrustedHousesitters. The care you show to pets and to one another and the trust you build across continents, that’s what keeps this platform strong, and it’s something we never take for granted.
Our Product, App, Website, Member Services, Marketing and Comms teams are all listening, and your feedback is always welcomed. Thank you for taking the time to share, we’ll keep you updated as we move forward.
Me again, I just wanted to share this link which shares some answers from the team around the booking fee.
The original announcement post has over 1000 replies now, so in order to keep things running smoothly, we’re closing that post to new replies, and you can continue to use this post to discuss booking fees.
As I mentioned in the other discussion thread, please keep your posts on topic about the booking fee as anything off topic should go in a more relevant place and may be moderated.
We’ll do our best to answer questions and provide information where we can about the booking fee.
Jenny
EDIT: Adding more useful answers & links
Q. Will I pay a booking fee for any sits that are confirmed before the renewal date (even if they take place after the renewal date)?
A. No - see fuller answer here.
Q. My renewal date is on 6th January 2026 (or earlier), will I pay for booking fee when I renew?
A. No - in this scenario, booking fee will apply to sits which are confirmed after the following renewal date e.g. 6th January 2027. See our post here.
I agree with @kath. This is to weed out the long term members, who remember what it was to be a part of this community before it became a late stage capitalist high growth money grab.
There is zero respect from THS for sitters or homeowners, and that is reflected by the actions of the company and how we are treated. I will look beyond the simpering, condescending and weak talking points meant to placate us. You want us to go, we will go, but we will tell everyone about our experience here and what this site has become.
No disrespect toward @Jenny or the moderators and admins who are doing the best that they can in the face of these poor decisions made by execs who are not part of this former community.
THS may have read the comments, but what this response tells us is they don’t really care how members feel. This is utterly patronising, and insinuates members don’t understand how business works.
If a little extra was needed for investment then the membership could have risen slightly. £9 per sit is still greedy and members don’t like being taken for fools over it.
@Jenny, great post. Kudos for collective listening. It’s been remarkable to observe the quantity and ferocity of recent feedback.
As an advocate pragmatist, may I offer a simple idea. Why doesn’t THS commit to actioning specific “ongoing improvements” within a specific time period? Say some of the features/bugfixes that have been requested by members for some time.
Better still, THS could action some requested feature improvements before increasing fees . Stakeholder buy-in may be markedly different.
Your post suggests increased fees to build a better platform. But it appears that rather a few THS Forum members frankly lack trust in THS Management to action ongoing improvements. We’ve only been housesitting for a few years but we get the impression that there may a challenging related track record.
CS Lewis: ‘You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending’
We know this very well, and this community can move away from here.
There’s nothing new in this message and not one single answer to the many questions.
You can keep saying that they’re doing things and that this needs more funds, but as users we know if this it true or not, and if things in the user experience just get worse instead of getting better.
The actual reality is that private equity firms demand an extremely high rate of return so a statement like this is quite patronizing. This is being done to increase profits, not to improve functionality.
But let’s say I do take this statement at face value…the majority of the most recent “improvements” have all made the user experience worse: five-application limit, overlapping sit restrictions, decreased inbox functionality come to mind. Why would I want to financially support more features that make the product worse for me as a user? TH has demonstrated with past behaviour that the majority of changes they make are detrimental to users, not improvements.
What will TH actually be using this money for? Are you going to start verifying identity of HOs? Are you going to start tracking and displaying cancellation or response rate stats for HOs and sitters? Are you going to improve search functionality? Are you going to do anything that is an actual positive for users and not the company itself?
(And if it matters, this change doesn’t even affect me financially as I’m already premium and have many years of free membership from referrals. It was just handled so poorly I had to say something.)
. Stakeholder buy-in may be markedly different.
