We booked and paid in full in advance for our dog to be housed at professional sitter’s home for 3 weeks. The policy requires full payment at time of booking with the cancellation policy noted below. We booked 6 months ahead of our trip.
Three months before our trip, our 6-year frenchie was diagnosed with an aggressive vascular cancer and was gone from our lives in less than 3 weeks. We are still devastated.
We cancelled our reservation for the pet soon thereafter but were denied a refund because of the policy below.
We have been long-time clients, have never cancelled before, and do feel that a loss such as what we experienced, we should be able to get a full refund.
Interested in your thoughts. To me death/unexpected loss should allow for a full refund. Thank you in advance.
“Cancellation for overnight stays : we do not offer cancellations on our boarding, sitting, or daycare services. We will provide a full credit for future stays if you cancel up to 15 days of travel. For cancellations less than 15 days of travel we will credit 50% towards a future stay and the rest will be forfeited.”
I guess they have to have rules, and I can see both sides. Difficult for you to be paying for something you are not needing anymore, but why should the sitter lose out on income that they might need to pay the rent?
It would be nice to think that as they had 2 months they could find someone else to sit for so maybe refund you at that point, but that would be hard to write into the rules.
Someone posted recently that a cat they had sat for before and were due to sit for again died and the homeowner cancelled leaving them out of pocket on travel and tickets they had booked.
There are two sides to everything
It was about boarding. It would be like a hotel. Sometimes one can get lower room rates by booking in advance, and then one cannot get a refund. Amongst other things because the hotel may have told others that they were full then.
Similar with airline tickets etc. Sometimes the company may decide to give a refund, out of compassion and/or because it is in their interest to maintain a good relationship with the customer.
If the company has followed their rules, and they appear to have done that, then all is fine.
Those are the rules you agreed to when signing up, no mention of any variances for losing pets.
Really sorry for your loss, been through it twice before and it’s an awful time. Our dogs went everywhere with us, including holidays, so heartbreaking.
Time is a great healer though, and you will remember the good times more than the bad eventually.
Sorry for your loss @dbjmths welcome to the forum. It looks like no refund is due as per the T&Cs you have quoted .
From the professional sitters POV ( not THS ) they still need to make a living and loss of 3 weeks income is a significant amount of money -
However there can be no harm in contacting the owner of this business to ask for a refund as a goodwill gesture given the exceptional circumstances and since you have been regular customers over the years . You could say that you understand that you they need to make a living but if they find a replacement booking for those dates can you get a refund as a goodwill gesture .
If you had listed this on THS and found a sitter - you would not need to pay any money to the sitter - the sitter would look after your dog without charge in exchange for staying in your home .
The Forum is generally for discussion around Trusted Housesitters, but I can see that some of our members have been able to give you some support, and @Silversitters has even explained the benefits of signing up to Trusted Housesitters which is great!
I have updated the title of this discussion just so that it’s clear that your experience wasn’t with Trusted Housesitters.
I do hope you’ll consider joining Trusted Housesitters!
