The same way way anybody with an agreement does I guess. First by using what’s within the agreement. So I imagine the worst is terminating your account and no refund. After that it’s a case of sue you for losses if they have any. Don’t see the latter being the case unless they are sued by the other party and lose.
As you say you can just take your custom elsewhere.
Not ever? Out of interest what would you do if a door or window was damaged by a storm or a burglar and needed someone to repair it or board it up to make it secure and they want a couple hundred for the work? You would leave it until the owners found a way to pay the person doing the work?
Maybe if it were a couple hundred and they were out of pocket in such a case. But let’s say a tree fell on their home and there needed to be tree removal and emergency roof repairs. Something like that would cost thousands and I wouldn’t pay and then hope for them to do the right thing and repay me. But that’s also part of the reason I want a welcome guide with emergency contacts. If the hosts were out of pocket and an emergency happened, I’d be reaching out to them.
BTW, best to know the laws where you’re sitting. Where I sit, good luck suing a sitter for something like not paying for repairs if they didn’t do the damage. It’s hard and expensive enough to sue someone even if they DID damage. And even if you win, collecting is another matter, often expensive and also a giant pain. Plus, remember that if your sitter is from abroad, you’d need even better luck suing and collecting.
If they are going to insist on that, then they need to set up a start time and end time, like hotels. Where you check out at 11 am and check in at 3 pm. Because I have had sits where they leave early in the morning and or come back very late in the evening. Or what if they are delayed? I had a sit where the flight was canceled but I had another sit. They had to arrange a friend to come. It was a repeat sit, they knew me. So all good. Coming up with these rules without having more clarification is ridiculous. I do not think that a sitter needs to sit there until 11 pm, in a one bedroom condo, where there is no place to stay is stupid.
I wrote support with these questions. Clarification is required. What if your sit is until the 10th, but their flight is canceled, like happened to me, I had another sit. I think start and end times must be on the sit confirmation going forward.
The question, I believe, is that THS is requiring physical handover now. So you must stay until you physically handover the keys to the HO. Not as we have been doing, arranging details and leaving before they return.
I would hope the tree scenario would involve a company that didn’t expect upfront cash payment
I seem to remember a homeowner saying they were suing a sitter because they didn’t turn up and it led to them losing thousands in flights. They posted it here a while back but I never saw any update from them. That would be interesting to see the outcome. I think they said they were a lawyer.
THS terms have all kinds of squishiness built in that can give naive folks a false sense of security. For instance, terms say a sit can be canceled if either party has an emergency. Like anyone could say they’re sick or X emergency happened, yet no proof is required. If a host said they were suing because a sitter didn’t show, they probably aren’t a good lawyer, because all the squishiness in terms means winning such a case is farfetched.
So in the scenarios we’re discussing, someone would expect me to pay upfront for a couple of hundred bucks of work, but not thousands? Actually, where I live, if you’re doing even minor work, many vendors will ask for credit card info before they even head toward your place. That’s because they often charge for an estimate and then apply that amount as a credit if you actually hire them to carry out the work. I think many businesses do that, because if they do the work and you don’t pay, they can lose time and money trying to chase you for payment. When I had roof work done, we paid part of the cost to even get them to start work.
HOs can enforce through reviews. I had a review where “left early”. It was a cat sit, who was fed and medicated, linens washed, bed made, house clean – too clean, as put in the review. I could have left the house and come back at 4pm and returned the keys, since I was 3 miles away. In a similar situation, I will do that.
If a host and sitter agreed on a handoff that wasn’t face to face, who would complain or review poorly for that? THS wouldn’t even know, much less try to enforce.
If you and a host didn’t communicate clearly and agree, or if you left early despite the agreement, your best bet is to live and learn from a poor review.
As for reviews, if you have a one-off bad one among a bunch of strong reviews, many folks will take that into consideration.
In my case, I have strong reviews across the board. That’s because I’m a good sitter, but also because I choose hosts carefully. I always consider from the outset, if something went sideways, would these hosts be reasonable and show grace? Or might they turn out to be iffy partners? For me, because sitting is only icing, I’m very selective.
Have you experienced the stress some people are under when preparing to leave for a trip? I actively avoid adding to that stress either by collecting keys beforehand (if possible) or by doing a video call hand over. It is unusual for us to be when they leave.
Same goes for their return. Last thing they want are strangers lurking in their home on their return. A written note is sufficient. I ask them to call or text me when their flight lands so I know there are no delays and I can leave or inform me when they are an hour away from home.
As others have said, how are THS going to enforce this policy? They can’t even enforce no indoor cameras which is a privacy violation.
I’m not bothered by the term being included because while I would spend a few hundred to secure a door or window or stop a water leak in a hurry I don’t think anyone expects a person, even the homeowner, to have thousands lying around available for large works. My experience of large works is also that it will be billed, paid for after completion or by insurance. In fact I would be suspicious of someone wanting payment up front before work has even commenced. That’s certainly a huge red flag where I live.
That being said though I think it’s a very clunky term, poorly written and is trying to enforce people being decent human beings (please don’t watch my house collapse because you had to spend $20 on a piece of wood to hold it up). They would probably have been better off with having people “make reasonable efforts for emergency repairs” and have it in the code of conduct.
I also think any unhappiness about breaching terms for large sums would fail just on a test of reasonableness.
My two cents (also what I require and state in my listing, with dates reflecting when we want the sitter to arrive): pre-sit handovers should be in person. If HO are stressfully packing then they are disorganized people. We mostly pack a couple of days before, leaving time for a meal with the sitter before we excuse ourselves (after doing dishes) to head upstairs and finish tossing a final couple of items in our bags. Sitter is welcome to the guest room downstairs or can get a nearby motel. We don’t want to get on a plane and find out the sitter has issues with either a travel delay or trouble getting in the door or whatever. Then it’s trying to scramble to arrange help/coverage from a flying altitude of 30,000 feet. No thanks.
Post-sit I still prefer an in person handover especially if our flight is long our getting in at a late hour. Again, if the sitter leaves early and we end up with a delay we are scrambling to wake people up to let out the dog. Though I usually am ok with sitters leaving before us if we are are flying domestically(we can schedule those flights to get in at a normal hour) and text once we are on the plane and it’s on time. Sitter can take off then as not much risk at that point and if there were, it is still daytime hours and we can ask a neighbor to pop over and let the dog out.
THS should amend the definition to state that Handover should be in-person unless both parties agree otherwise. I do realize there are situations where it isn’t practical to have both HO and Sitter overlap, like a one bedroom flat.
And also, sitters can book back to back sits. Like the sit I am on ends Friday, the next sit starts Friday. Now, the next sit is my holiday sit and they know my daughter is coming. I could take her and come back, like what happened 2 summers ago when both sits had dogs. But with a cat, it can be left after fed and medicated, and everything clean. The litter box is not going to get filled in 8 hours. So what happens then? That is why it is imperative they deal with the expected “check-in” and “check-out”. Which can be adjusted with the HO and sitter but allows the sitter to say, the sit ends at noon, or whatever and then the HO has to deal with it. Because there are one bed condos or apt where there is no where to stay if you are expected to stay late. I have stayed overnight when there is a guest suite, but I have stayed in more than a few one bed condos. I have a repeat sit in Buffalo. They love me so they make arrangements when I cannot show up super early or in the latest case, their flight got canceled.
This is common in parts of the U.S. I’ve lived in — seven states in different parts of the country.
And if there’s an insurance claim, no sitter would be relevant and allowed to file. That would have to be done with by the homeowner, because the insurance company doesn’t bother with anyone but the policyholder.
What??? This sounds like some kind of weird CYA thing. Personally, I wound never do an initial dog sit without having met the dog IRL first, and to me that woud make sense as a condition. But for cat sits at least remote handovers are more the norm. So many sits involve the sitters leaving before the owners get home sometimes with catsits the evening before at the homeowner’s request!
I understand the fears of a sitter leaving a place in a shambles but sheesh, part of trusted, is you trust them not to do that. (I say this a HO and a Sitter.) This doesn’t seem like anything that anyone wants or needs.
It’s really beginning to sound like the goal of the company is to deliberately implode.
Even running things through a lawyer there has to be a better way to phrase this. Most of my Airbnb experiences have been remote even if I was staying on the top floor and the owners lived below.
This is why I lost my dates to account for the extra day before and after, I don’t want the sitter leaving at noon to go to another sit far away then we have significant travel delays returning, leaving us scrambling while already dealing with stressful delays. If the next sit were very local I wouldn’t mind amending the post date to accommodate.
There is what people prefer and there are discussions. These are voluntarily matches. I’ve only one time had a sitter insist on a non-remote meeting (cats) This was after we’d agreed to an advanced key pickup handover as they had another sit in town.
Then the sitter who was apparently having emotional issues kept putting off/cancelling when she was coming over, and finally after I offered to drop the key by for her, she insisted she coud come over at 6 AM before we left for the airport which was the thing I wanted to avoid happening and the reason why we’d both agreed to the advance meet earlier in the week. When I then suggested a remote handover – I’d already sent videos about everything and a comprehensive welcome guide – they told me they really needed to go over everything in person and wouldn’t remember it otherwise and then (this conversation was in messages on whatsapp) the sitter said they “never” cancel a sit but were super stressed.
So I said, “Okay. Clearly you are stressed. No worries. I can unconfirm you and find someone else.”
And the sitter said, “Yes. If my coming early morning stresses you maybe you should do that.”
So that’s what I did. And I got another sitter. And that sitter is not active anymore. And the moral of the story is, communication between both parties is important. And both parties need to discuss and agree on stuff like handover before confirmation and stick to whatever is agreed on or mutually change it.
Definitely agree. Nothing is worse then agreeing to handover a day before then either party changing things last minute. Seems like that sitter was not suited for sitting so glad you found another and also glad they are no longer active!
