Having heard about the pausing of applications through Facebook,
we have twice now had to send a hurried message in order to get into the first five applications. This is madness and only worked because we happened to be searching the website at the exact moment the ads were posted as live.
As experienced sitters we don’t want to waste the HOs or our time and we like to take a professional approach to our applications with due diligence and preparatory logistics to ensure that the sit is viable. We strongly believe it should not be a race to get there first.
It prejudices the process against those of us travelling or in different time zones to the poster.
All HOs could be shown in an introductory video how to pause and unpause applications, so this should be a redundant feature.
None of the HOs we have spoken to about this had any idea about the fact that their applicants will currently be paused at 5, so there is a definite communications problem here.
Please do not keep this feature after the trial.
It is 8 weeks tomorrow that this 6/8 week test began.
That should mean some news is forthcoming.
It’s bonkers how much more stressful it is to be looking for sits right now, compared to two months ago, before the auto-pause test started.
I’ve literally never been this tethered to the internet ever, in my life. 
I have to check my phone constantly (which is decidedly not how I want to live my life) … and the push notifications are very glitchy, so lately I’ve only been getting notified of a small fraction of my saved sits when they go live.
So I have to check THS many, many, many times a day, and I have to hand-check each of my searches, since the notifications only work part of the time.
And then when I apply, I’m literally sweating, because of the intensity of trying to get my application in before the listing auto-pauses.
Apparently, most of the sits I’m interested in are high in demand, because many of them disappear within hours. And that’s just the sits I’m seeing.
I know that many sits disappear within minutes, because I see them pop up and disappear. I try not to think about the sits I’m not seeing at all because I’m not willing or able to just sit on the site allll day long.
.
I used to be proud of my applications. I read the listing several times, looked at my calendar, researched transportation, looked at maps, took some time to think about whether I’d be a great match for this sit, and then wrote a good letter.
This focus on speediness makes sitters look bad.
With our applications, we’re trying to show that we’re responsible, conscientious, detail-oriented, and that we read and follow instructions well.
Now my applications mostly show how speedy I can be. They have typos, missing information that I would have liked to have included, and sometimes I have to send a follow-up message to add or clarify things. And one of these times, I’m going to have to withdraw an application simply because, after my speedy application, I realized that the sit wasn’t going to work for me after all.
It’s embarrassing. It’s not a great way to try to communicate, especially with someone you want to work with. And it wastes everybody’s time.
.
I’m proud to be a great sitter, and it’s an honor to take excellent care of HO’s precious animal companions. It’s very meaningful work.
Speediness and being good at checking the listings all day every day are not qualities that make for good and trustworthy house sitters.
US based. It all seems to have disappeared now?
SInce yesterday (?) I am seeing sits with 4-8 applications and no evidence of reviewing apps.
Anyone else?
PLEASE let it BE GONE! As the good witch said…
Amen to every word you wrote! Its horrible.
Hi @peach If it’s showing as 4-7 (which I think is the range after 0-3), given the current pausing test, it means it currently has 4 applications. It won’t go to the reviewing message until it receives the 5th application.
You make a lot of valid points. The stress impacts even part-time sitters. The perfect Christmas holiday sit just became available in my hometown. I am on a National park road trip right now with spotty cell service. I had to quickly apply from my phone from the passenger seat of our car while traveling on a mountainous road. Normally, I would wait until we had gotten to our destination, but I was afraid to miss out. I lost cell service for about 30 minutes in the middle of trying to submit my application. In haste, I made a typo in the homeowner’s name. I was able to make it in the first 5, but it was very stressful and my application was not of the quality that I normally submit. I did send a message apologizing for the typo, but it was not the impression that I wanted to make.
Ahhh, Darn, I was hoping it was gone! Thanks for the clarification.
Absolutely agree with everything you’ve said. We joined only a few months before this started and if I’d known them I probably wouldn’t have 
As a new sitter (joined in May) I have kept quiet on this debate as I didn’t feel I had enough previous experience to comment usefully. However I couldn’t agree more with @luckycat having just experienced the issue first hand (saw a sit which had disappeared within 2 hours presumably because the 5 applicants limit was reached). I also have the desire to write a good, relevant application for each sit I apply for which now seems to put me at a disadvantage for many sits. I can’t see how this automatic pausing is helping anyone - sitters or HOs. Is the solution not to leave it to individual HOs to decide how many applications they want so that they pause further applications at a point that makes sense for them? Surely this would be an easy fix and give back control to HOs whilst also giving more potential sitters the opportunity to apply for sits without being glued to their screens.
I had previously advocated for HO control of their own auto pause threshold. In thinking about it further, it seems to me that would not help the speed over quality problem, as sitters would still have a “get in the queue” incentive whether the threshold is set by THS or HO… The feature really needs to either go completely away or also have a minimum time element, like 24-48 hours. The former is my preference.
@BruceT I agree that it wouldn’t totally mitigate the “speed of application” problem. Having read many comments from HOs on the topic it seems many HOs do want to receive as many applications as possible before making a decision. Of course there will be others who for whatever reason (lack of time, happy with a smaller pool of applicants etc) who do want a speedier cut-off. I think that a minimum 48 hours before any cut-off is a good idea but prefer that the whole “pausing applications” idea is dropped. Let’s hope some resolution can be found that suits everybody!
I’d have to disagree that it is the HOs fault as THS did not tell the homeowner IN ADVANCE of the 5 pause!
Imagine driving your car, getting pulled over for speeding, telling the police you didn’t see a speed limit sign and the police responding, “We don’t tell you what the speed limit is until after we think you’re speeding.”
Wait, what!?
Try this thought…
You go to a restaurant and open the menu.
You begin reviewing the many delicious options. So many great choices!
You take a few minutes to consider and are then ready to order.
However, the server tells you because you delayed you can only choose from 5 dishes!
OK, then I’ll take number…
Sorry, you weren’t quick enough! Please come back in an hour and maybe we’ll have something for you!
Wait, what?
Would you go back to that restaurant?
Please stop this 5 pause insanity!
You should contact THS customer service to discuss this. It is very unfair of them to cancel at the last minute without a good reason and waste your time and money. Not sure of your membership level, but if you are premium, you may qualify for lodging benefits if you still decide to make the trip.
You’re right. While THS may have let HOS know their applications were paused, they could only become aware of that immediately if they were checking their emails every few minutes!
That’s insane!
The 5 pause is bad enough but to not tell people BEFORE they placed their listing just made it even worse - which was difficult to do!
Hi @Ben-ProductManager. It’s been 8 weeks today since the new process of testing was introduced. Can we expect an update today?
My husband and I are full-time petsitters, so our lives depend on this web page (literally). We’ve been using TH for more than 3 years now.
We have had a terrible experience since this update came out. We always tailor our application to every sit…but oh well… now we don’t even have time to think about that cause the sit is already gone before we can apply.
We already lost dozens of great opportunities just because of this new feature. So we are stressed all the time because we constantly have to check our phones and be fast without even thinking if the sit is a really good mathc for us.
Therefore we hope that this feature will go away and never come back 
@Ben-ProductManager do you have any update?
P.S.: to be honest if we find a web page that is as good as this one but without 5 applicants rule - we would switch.
@BruceT - our sentiments exactly. This has been a debacle with little input from the actual sitters on THS. There are so many better ways to manage this and your suggestions are spot on.