Thanks so much everyone. Really appreciate the replies! We’ll post jt today!
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They had a guest stay for 2 nights, not just 1 night as agreed, which is a huge no no on their part too. So that’s why I suggested asking what they did wrong first, so they can understand why exactly the HO marked them so low, & if the HO happened to make a mistake in their mark they could put things right quickly, but that obviously wasn’t the case anyway as the OP has now said. I still think they went hugely above and beyond with everything they had to deal with on that sit.
How much interaction in total did you have? Your role as sitters is to take responsibility without bothering the HOs unless it’s an emergency. We aim as sitters to offer a zero drama service… so that the HOs aren’t troubled.
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It does seem like you went above and beyond to try and mitigate all the situations that arose. That being said, if they have had sitters in the past where NOTHING went wrong, then they might feel as though these ‘unexpected issues’ were on you. Not necessarily done intentionally by any means, but they might just feel it wasn’t a successful sit.
We have had maybe one thing go wrong to where we fixed the issued, handled what we could on our own first and then contacted them about it. However, we went above and beyond with every other aspect (house sparkling clean, leaving a home cooked meal, etc). They appreciated our efforts and we always got a five star review. Now, if multiple things go wrong, I highly doubt they would have been as forgiving. But to them…the other times they had a sitter maybe nothing went wrong. In our opinion, wi-fi going down can happen anywhere and sometimes for multiple hours. If you reached out to them in a panic because you had to remote work…that might have been bothersome to them. That is just something you have to deal with in this house sitting. Try to reset the router, reset your computer, check local outages, wait, wait and more wait, and then do all those things again. 9/10 it will reset itself and you will have Wi-fi. Our HOs would probably be annoyed if we bothered them in a panic about wifi. 
A lot of these issues sound like things that just happened that they HO maybe wanted you to be self-sufficient and handle. Sure, they can provide you with the plumber info, but you are there…on the scene and must handle it. Sure the wifi can go down and they can do nothing about it on their vacation, but you are there on the scene and must handle it. Kitchen lights, common…changing lights happens a lot and something most can handle. Chicken issue, sounds like you handled it well and I am sure they appreciated it.
As you get more experienced you will learn that you must not run to the HO with every little thing in a panic as this will show them that your not able to be self-sufficient and handle things on your own. Our experience is that if you try every possible solution to fix it, 9/10 you can. However, there is that 1/10 chance that you need a plumber, electrician, etc. That is when you tell the HO the situation, make them aware of what you have done to try and solve it, send pictures and they will offer any advice. They really appreciate when you try your best, before you cause them a panic on vacay.
Sorry if that is harsh, but something you will learn the more you house sit.
They might not be thinking of you a s a 1 star sitter, maybe just that it was a 1 star sit because of all the issues you mentioned.
No thats really useful. I never really knew ‘self-suffiency’ was such a priority for HOs. I always thought they’d want some communication from us, to keep them in the loop about their home. However next time, if there is a next time, we’ll be much more self-sufficient. So its all a learning process for us -
thanks for your thoughts!
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good to know, thanks. We messaged them quite a bit - I thought they’d want to know when things went wrong, and to be kept in the loop about their home and animals. But i’m fast learning this isn’t the case
We all deal with this in different ways @FB2025 so it can depend on the severity of the issue as well as your relationship with the owner. We all weren’t perfect when we began sitting so it’s a learning process, and you have gained much from this experience.
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