My renewal is coming up, and with it will come the additional booking fee. I was wondering what the experiences have been like this past year with the addition of booking fees. Worth sticking around?
As af full-time sitter, I upgraded to premium. Like anybody else, I did not love having to pay more moneyāI was ābasicā-- but worth the price given how much I use the site.
The difference between the basic and premium membership is about 130 dollars or so I believe-- the cost of 11 sits.
If for your average use, the fees work out to less than upgrading your membership, only you can determine if spending a max of 100- something bucks a year extra at most, is worthwhile to you, depending on how you use the site, what types of sits you do, how many,etcā¦
Or you can let it lapse and see if you get the āpremium for basicā offer. You have to not have any sits booked to do this.
You definitely get offered a (substantial) discount if you turn off auto-renew; you donāt even have to wait until the subscription expires. But as you noted, you can only turn off auto-renew if you have no sits booked past the expiration/renewal date.
I pay Ā£99 for a basic membership, premium is Ā£249, a substantial difference. I wonāt be upgrading, definitely not worth it for me. Quite a few members do repeat sits off platform now, or find sits from free Facebook groups.
I hope to receive an offer. I donāt want to leave THS but refuse to pay booking fees so have turned off auto renew. My repeats are happy to do sits off platform but do like to see new places. Ive contacted THS support but they havenāt replied.
My experience was that an automated offer occurred immediately when I turned off auto-renewā¦but I was also already on a Premium subscription at the time. It re-set my renewal rate to the lower amount as soon as I accepted the offer (although I didnāt have to pay immediately; it will bill the new rate on my actual renewal date.)
Edited to clarify: the offer occurred within the app ā it wasnāt an email or anything that came later.
I saw the 20% discount when I switched off auto-renew so I emailed THS support asking if this discount could be applied to premium. This was months ago, they never replied. After 50, 5*sits and member for over 5 years, I expected a reply.
Thanks, I did try that and there is an offer to renew at a discounted rate for the membership I already have. So I guess that does save some money, but I would still be paying the booking fees.
I have only paid the booking fee once since I renewed in March (I also downgraded from Standard to Basic at that time).
I worked hard to confirm multiple sits throughout the year but they werenāt subject to fees as they were booked prior to renewal. Some of those sits later had date ātweaksā but we didnāt amend them because a fee would have been triggered.
Iām pretty sure I only got the premium for basic offer after my membership had fully lapsed. It was kind of a stay with us/come back to us type of thing. It was strategic on my part in this instance. I donāt expect to sit enough in the future really to make it worthwhile to me.
Iāve never upgraded from a basic membership as Iāve been with THS for 11 years and have almost 60 reviews so I donāt feel it necessary. I paid two booking fees recently for two international sits. It was worth every penny as it would have cost me about $400 a night in hotels for the city I stayed in for sixteen nights. I donāt begrudge paying the booking fees at all.
How do you know?
If you have sits booked beyond your renewal date and try to turn off auto-renew, you will get a pop up message advising that you will need to cancel those sits first.
Yep, thatās what happened to me, I had a sit booked past my renewal date, when I turned off auto renewal it said I would have to cancel the sit.
So did you cancel the sit then?
Yep, I had been a bit over enthusiastic booking it anyway. Good sit, but I was trying to make my dates work too far out. Iām sad I missed out on those dogs because they looked lovely but Iām actually going to be in a different country at that time now. Not on a sit, just travelling.
I got the offer but when I tried to use it it didnāt work. 
Had to send an inquiry.
(Also I thought they stopped doing that. Is it still a thing?)
Did you get a reply from enquiry? I didnāt.
I did it maybe 2 months ago, Iād sayā¦? When I check my settings now it shows auto-renew turned back on & the next renewal date, with the discounted pricing that Iāll be charged at that time.