I myself didn’t produce the numbers but guessed the big ones to be the total number of member-houseowners who may list in an area, which is what you’re saying, I think. The meaning of the word listings isn’t so clear. @Ben-ProductManager
@Ben-ProductManager - The problem with publishing numbers is that they have to add up and it seems that something is not adding up with the numbers THS are making public?
THS are now advertising that they have over 120,000 members.
If you add the sitting opportunities in the countries it only adds up to very roughly 20,000. That would make me assume that the other £100,000 members are sitters which seems like a much larger ratio imbalance than I had imagined- or is this (roughly)correct?
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@Ben-ProductManager you did not address the concern that I raised on 15 October regarding percentages
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Yes that is the screenshot I referred to.
I still think the figures are very misleading.
If I was a prospective sitter looking for sitting opportunities in say France I would see a figure of 500 but once I had paid my money and joined I would be very disappointed to see that there are actually 78!
There is also a lot of ambiguity around THS definition of small and large numbers/percentages with not a lot of data to back it up.
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Hi All and @Colin 
Thank you for raising this, and yes it looks like we have some bugs 
in the footer links.
We will look at fixing these issues.
Thanks, Ben
I’m pretty sure the discussion isn’t about footer links, but about differing results when you search for sits as a member and when you search as a non-signed up prospective member.
Re-read the posts, and the screenshots.
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A post was merged into an existing topic: Conclusion Of Pausing Application Test - Updated Post
Yes, two different discrepancies have been raised: first was differences in results when members v non-members search and second was numbers at bottom of page (‘footer links’). @Ben-ProductManager could you see farther above, 5-6 days ago, about differences when searching as a member v a non-member? I am now more confused than ever.
Very frustrating, This is the exact reason why I signed up and then felt misled. I brought it to the team’s attention the same day and they brushed it off as a glitch, which I knew it wasn’t. Of course, they would not refund my money as I had already sent a message to a sit.
Very misleading and seemed like a marketing ploy to get someone to sign up.
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Hi All
I am investigating both issues @Lauraa, will get back to this thread once I have an update.
Thanks, Ben
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Hi @Ben-ProductManager - since your latest product update these figures seem to have gone even more awry.
A couple of days ago France showed 500 listings and 78 available. Today I checked and it now shows 1643 listings and
81 available.
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I also felt misled by the huge discrepancy between the number of sits available before joining & after. I posted about my experience in the thread about pausing application tests here’s an extract.
"I’m hoping I haven’t been unlucky with the timing of joining THS as a new member.
The week before I joined I’d reviewed the various sits available in my area (Catalonia, Spain, Andorra & Ariege, France) plus other places I wanted to visit & bookmarked the pages of a fair few, excited about applying to them when I joined. After I joined (21st July) ALL of those sits were no longer there & there were none in my area at all, I thought this was fishy at the time, wondering if THS advertised non-available sits to non-members as an enticement for joining.
Now I don’t know if that assumption is correct or if the autopause “test” had caused the sits to disappear!
In the weeks since I’ve been a member I have never seen even a fraction of the number of house-sits available to me to apply to as I did before I joined, I’ve seen many of the few sits I wanted to apply to disappear before I’ve had a chance to apply & I’ve received alerts & emails for sits that are no longer accepting applications & in my first week as a member I had to trawl through support documents then this forum to find out why this was happening."
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Yes I think you are right. There is certainly somethings that we are not being told.
And why would they include sits without current dates?
Ben advised it was so that sitters could favourite listings without current dates. I thought we could do that anyway but it doesn’t explain the massive change in numbers.
I may be only talking because I’ve got a mouth and I admit that I have never given the figures a second thought or look until now. However, from a programming POV, wouldn’t truly accurate numbers (in the footer for example) require a continuous refresh of the whole database to reflect every time an HO posts dates and every time a sit is confirmed? The numbers would change by the minute, if not the second. And how to factor in variables too? Is one HO with 3 advertised date periods one sit, or three? A sit gets paused, change the stats, then it’s unpaused change them again. It’s not that software isn’t up to that challenge but does it need to be really? There could never be a truly genuine reflection of the number of sits available to apply for because that will change by the time someone has even logged into the site, let alone joined-up and paid the fee?
Hi @Saltrams - I understand what you are saying.
The figures will constantly change but what concerns me is that the figures are misleading. To prospective sitters it appears that there are more currently available sits than there actually are.
The listing for France in the footer jumped from 500 to over 1600 in a couple of days but the actual available sits only changed from something like 78 to 81.
My concern is for new members who are upset that they see many listings before they sign up which aren’t there when they are paid up members.
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Hi All,
Am looking into the issues outlined in this thread. Will keep you all posted once I have an update.
Once again thank you for all your input and for flagging these issues.
Ben
Isn’t it this easy? E.g. number of available sits 100, sits under review and/or paused 50, sits without current opportunities 500. Certainly both members and potential members should see the same figures otherwise (whether deliberate or not) it suggests that this is a rather crude and cynical marketing ploy.
Absolutely see the problem @Twitcher; my point was how to address it, just from a system/software management POV? I think most reasonable folk would agree with the issue but I haven’t seen any comments covering just how hard it would be to fix it.
I see what you mean but there is still ambiguity in the words: Does ‘available sits’ mean available to apply for (ie advertised and not paused for new applications) or total available in theory because paused ones may become unpaused?