Don’t care or have few options? Both look the same from the outside looking in. But I think the distinction is important.
The rest of that sentence included “without additional cost.” This thread is about the new booking fees. Non premium memberships will not be able to confirm sits without paying additional fees.
I missed that. Probably wasn’t paying attention. Was it ugly or ???
Thanks for bringing attention to these other platforms I didn’t know about. For me, the fee per booking is extortionate, but yes, I would have inevitably paid a higher yearly fee. Now I feel like I have to go premium, and that doesn’t feel nice!
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WRONG AGAIN, I can read. THIS is what you wrote. “ Exactly this. With a membership you can’t actually confirm a sit (unless you have premium), so with a non premium membership all you can do without additional cost is peruse the listings. “
a basic member CAN book sits, I have completed 50 and booked a further 8 as a Basic member. Perhaps you meant in the future? but even then a sitter could do more than peruse listings, they could still apply for a sit, and perhaps negotiate to do the sit with the pet owner paying them the booking fee, or they could agree between them to do the sit privately, off site,. Same End Result though for thousands of us, quit this site altogether and sit privately, having built up a nice contacts list from our time here.
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It was not elegant… But they did their best. Users had been asked what features they wanted in the new messenging module. There was also a beta testing phase. I volunteered to participate but it was messy and I reverted to the old software.
I am not a member now, so I don’t know if more work has been done. But the main problems were that one could not search one’s messages anymore and that one could not see when sending an application if one had been in touch with that HO earlier. So functionality that had been there had disappeared in the new version.
One fancy thing that THS was pushing for was including the possibility for a video chat in their own system. Most users were not particularly interested. Experienced users know that it is actually good to have established a second channel of communication via WhatsApp etc.
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@pietkuip No change to the messaging. Still can’t see past messages so it’s still embarrassing applying to a past HO. You’re not missing much but great to see you’re back contributing to the forum.
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Having been part of the investment banking team, I would say, don’t care. If you estimate, 200,000 members, maybe averaging 200 USD in membership, maybe 175, and you add 25 USD for 100,000 sits. What they are counting on is the boost from basic to premium. That definitely takes you from average 175 to 200. that extra 25 USD is double what they get from the sit fee.
Fast forward to an increase in premium membership take up and lo and behold they introduce booking fees for them as well.
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@Twitcher . 100% agree, and what’s the betting it will be more than £9 too. I’m not being bullied into paying for a premium service I don’t want.
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After travelling for a year all over Europe we are now back in the UK , so do mainly long weekend sits, we have quite a portfolio of regulars who would not hesitate to keep on using us, I was just made aware if house sitters UK by another post on here, looks perfect to me, £29 a year, no booking fees, so when THS membership expires then that will prove a good alternative.
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They asked for feature ideas and still tried adding a video conference capability nobody asked for to their app? THAT is definitely ugly. And pointless. And idiotically arrogant. And an utter waste of resources. Unfortunately, THS is where they are in technical capabilities with a 12 year veteran of THS as CTO. Not the optimistic future I was hoping for. Quite the opposite.
This thread is about the booking fees. Once the fees start only premium members will be able to confirm sits through THS without additional fees. Obviously, in the past all members could confirm sits, the change starts once the booking fees start.
It’s hard to calculate what the average membership is. I actually checked though the people who’ve sat for me. Out of 15 still active sitters, only 4 had premium, but I don’tif the others had standard or basic. Some people may be paying more as “duo” sitters or “combined members.” Many people have extensions from discount codes sometimes for more than 12 months.
Agreed. The idea that they would try to develop a video app which is completely unnecessary and not do stuff like make sure the content in the app and the webpage align is nuts, or develop a better mapping system that still maintains homeowner security.
I was not trying to be accurate, just look at potential numbers. And what they are looking at. And if the growth in members continue as it has been, it probably easily covers the people that leave. I was a little shocked how much the growth in members has been. The fact that the revenue seems decent for a platform like this, someone was spending a lot of money instead of reinvesting. I think the founders couldn’t manage the growth. I looked at another platform and they didn’t have the sit population. I found one sit in LA area from Jan 1st to June 30th. But that could change. It all depends on what people trust and their experience. Knowing I spent over 10K on dog boarding, people who want to travel will easily use THS. If I continue to use THS as I have, then the premium works.
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I don’t understand the original comment WHY THS is supposed to be loss making. Of what I’ve previously understood they’re profit making. And I see no reason not to.
E.g. the service is very simply: a matchmaking website. That hasn’t changed much. More people access it, but at the end of the day it’s still simply a website that has listings, you can respond to them, you can click on confirm, you can get a Welcome Guide, and you get some auto-reminders.
That has been the case for over 10 years, except that back then we didn’t have 5 application limits, the application form was better (you could see previous interactions), etc.
In addition, you have a chatbot and some real humans. The forum moderators has always been just 1-2, maybe 3.
Now you take 200-250.000 members, who are all paying at least $100 a year or more.
So let’s say they bring in at least $30 million a year. For a website with a customer service. They don’t need to sell any physical products, they don’t need to ship anything. Only Premium has the insurance and you pay handsomely for that. There’s no basic insurance included such as with AirBnB for home owners. Etc.
That sounds pretty damn good to me.
You can run a good website with quite a few software engineers and customer service agents for $30M/year. And considering they’re already by far the largest petsitting website, you don’t NEED to do massive amounts of marketing. You could if you want to grow to half a million members (do we want that??), but certainly if you provide good service, then those 200-250k members on their own will provide an enormous amount of free marketing.
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The marketing is insane. With the referral system you only need happy customers. Don’t grow it if you can’t service it.
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I did a similar exercise using averages. I calculated 250,000 members (which THS says they have, and growing) by $AUD150 per member (roughly £300) which comes out at $AUD37,500,00 (£75,000,00). Now that to me is not struggling, despite any overheads they have. The company was VALUED at $US150,000,00 in 2022, nobody knows what the actual sale price was to Mayfair. So what I see is. Mayfair are an equity company who’s job it is to purely and significantly increase the value of a business to that figure, regardless. It’s their business, it’s what they do. So introducing the booking fee for both HO and sitter, that target can be achieved fairly rapidly. If membership were to increase, and with the booking fees, the company can look to far exceed that valuation figure. But at what cost. The members!
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Unless they’re lying to the UK government, THS has never made money, wishful thinking not withstanding.
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