Exactly my thoughts. Something like this must be easy to set up if you know what you’re doing.
But what a waste if time! Why apply again if you’ve been declined? If you do that, you’ll just annoy people, would anyone actually get a sit this way? Some people, honestly 
Given the above use cases, do you think this is a feature that could be looked into? Not sure what the effort would look like or how it sits against other priorities in your backlog but would be great to get TH thoughts on this. X
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If this is due to bots, THS will need to stop this.
The bots would just overwhelm the system. It would drive away hosts, starting at the most attractive locations.
Yea. Makes sense. It sounds like there are several people that have accounts they feel may be running on scripts or something.
Maybe we can send in the ones we find concerning to support under a shared title so that they can collect the use cases and see if there are any patterns there?
But I’ll wait back to hear what @Jenny and @Carla ’s thoughts are.
It’s only happened to me with the one account I started this thread with but it’s incredibly frustrating.
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@andrealovesanimals, I think it is more likely to be a tech glitch.
Just confirming I hear you @bakindoki - because I’m still new around here I’ll bring this all up with Carla when we catch up today - thanks for the suggestion!
Hello @bakindoki Jenny kindly filled me in on this thread.
Just to offer some reassurance all of our sitters sign up and pay a membership fee, verify their ID with our third-party provider and need to get some external references for their profile to go live, so hopefully that process prevents bots from signing up and your sitter should be a genuine member.
Here is our trust and safety page which will explain it a bit better Trust and Safety | TrustedHousesitters.com
Although you are right it does sound odd that they are reapplying without further communication. It doesn’t look as though you have reached out to the Membership Services team yet and they can look further into the sitter in question at support@trustedhousesitters.com that might provide you with some more answers 
As far as blocking members this seems to be a popular suggestion by several members on this thread so I will make sure that the feedback is passed on to the wider team.
I hope that helps and anything else let me know!
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@Carla It is more likely to be IT savy members (lots of digital IT nomad types probably use THS) that are writing their own scripts to trawl through listings that meet their criteria (cats in NY for example) and once the criteria is met an automated application is sent. That application could be a very simple one such as that suggested by other members of “I am sending a short message to be in the first five and will follow up with a full application”. Then when they are free they can check their messages, check the listing and send further messages or withdraw as needed.
There is no suggestion that a Bot is impersonating a member just that tech savy members are using their skils to be fastest on the button. This would also explain why so many complaints of not being able to apply as some listings are gone in minutes. If a person is running a script then they can get in as soon as a listing is live.
OH plays an online battle type game and they are coming across this problem too where it impossible for their group to win a battle as it is obvious that a member is running a script as it is physically impossible for a human to make the necessary key strokes that quickly.
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Hello @Shannon
Thank you for the clarification, appreciate your expansion on this as I am definitely not one of those who could run a script 
so it’s an interesting thing to understand more about.
I just wanted to offer some reassurance to the OP just in case there were any concerns about bots being members, I probably took it too literally!
You are right the script running part is most likely. I have passed this to the team and any feedback, I will let you know here.
Again thank you for the example, who would have guessed that someone would do this as it sadly ruins the game for everyone else.
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@Carla I assume THS developers use automated testing tools for testing your site and app. Reach out to whoever creates your tests (QA?) to see how easy it would be to automate searching and applying for sits.
Theres not much you can do to prevent people from doing this through the front end. And there are other methods of accomplishing this too. But you can implement mechanisms that would detect frequent applications, or multiple applications for the same sit, by users.
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Oh you should hear it when it kicks off! I always know when to cover the dogs ears 
. Tbf I think it is galvanising the opponents to get together and challenge it so out of every cloud… 
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I feel like it’s a serious safety concern that you can’t block someone on the platform. I was the only applicant for a listing and I decided to withdraw the application since the dates posted were inaccurate. They wanted someone to stay two nights before and two days after for three night sit so I thought it wasn’t a good fit….not to mention it violates the third party policy. I wrote them a brief message with the decline thanking them for taking the time for talking to me but that the actual dates don’t align well with my plans.
They have more than two months to find another sitter but they were really upset that I canceled my application and now they won’t stop harassing me. I talked to someone from membership service and they are going to email the HO but the easiest solution here is if I could just block the chat. Really not cool that these people won’t leave me alone :((
No it does not. But it is extreme. Especially those two nights after!
I talked to membership services and they confirmed the way these HO are going about it does violate the policy BUT the third party policy is something that’s really not enforceable and also most sitters are chill with staying an evening before or after a sit. Or having gardeners, housekeepers, family visitors drop by occasionally during sits. I think sitters should do there best to be flexible under these circumstances but that sometimes HO seem to push the boundaries too much…
Having more than half the sit with the HO there and still requiring work is concerning to me because I feel like more inexperienced sitters are being taken advantage of since they think this is the norm. Ultimately though my biggest concern is the fact that these people are continuing to harass me and there’s not much I can do to stop it since there’s no way to block communication on THS. It’s not a big surprise that me nicely asking them to stop contacting me isn’t working.
Yes, then I agree that it is against policy if the sitter is expected to walk the dog etc those days.
Got it, thanks
Does anyone know if there is a way to block a certain individual from seeing one of your future listings?
As per a previous post from Carla, no you can’t block. It has been requested but not currently possible.
@Cj72 I also wanted to confirm that this is also applicable on the TrustedHousesitters website too.
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