Hello. Is there anyway to put favorites in folders, either by location or dates? Like that found on AirBnB, recipe websites and beyond.
I’m brand new to THS and this is my first post, so apologies if this has recently been discussed or if this is the wrong category.
You can favorite sitters you are interested in. This doesn’t mean much and is more a way to remember them. There used to a labelling feature on the messaging/email system so you could label sitters. This was very handy if say you went with someone else but it was a coin flip and then that someone else cancelled so you wanted to return to what happened when you were choosing a sitter. I also used to use it to avoid publicly listing and instead going back through sitters with whom I’d had positive interactions even if they didn’t wind up sitting a previous time. When they “updated” and “improved” the email/messaging system they elminated labels. It’s now very difficult to “find” people in the mailing system. There is no search!
I travel a lot and often try to offer dates to previously vetted sitters including both people who’ve sat for me before and people who didn’t wind up sitting for me but with whom I had positive interactions and would trust if the timing was right.
Nowadays I either check through my WhatsApp to look for previous chats and conversations to refresh my memory or I try just scrolling through the email and archives. Really, the best way to do it would be to create an offsite document/spreadsheet and include the sitters name and profile and a label and brief summary. You’ll find as a member, you may need to develop a lot of work arounds for issues having to do with the app and website.
I think the company may purposely want things this way so that homeowners use the public listing system and there are more perceived opportunities for (new) sitters.
As an FYI for you and others, there is a search feature on this forum. If you chose to not use it, the forum software will do it for you and lists some of what you would have found at the end of the thread you started. Quite a bit there on this question.
Hi. Thanks for your reply. I actually did look for “folders” and “favorites” and found nothing exactly related. I’ll look again.
Hi Marion. Thanks for detailed response. Your experiences with the app confirm my frustrations, for sure. Hard to believe its shortcomings. I’ve also noticed that not getting message badges on the app icon, despite my settings marked for that; while, at the same time, I’m getting emails from THS alerting me to messages, yet I had that setting declined! So, who knows? We’ll see how it goes.
Thanks again,
Richard
It’s good you are getting informed about messages at all! BTW, sitters can only contact you through the THS mail when you have an active listing that is open to applications. So it’s not like a sitter can randomly contact you and say, “Hey I’d love to sit for you.” Given that you are in NYC, that’s a good thing. If you don’t have an active listing, the only way for you to reach out to sitters who you hope might apply in the future would be to invite them to sit. (You can invite someone to a fake date, let them know the date is fake and you just want to know about potential interest.)
If you list a sit, the best thing to do is to just check your THS email at least once a day to see if peope have applied. In NYC, you are likely, except for Christmas time, to get five application quickly. If you can rule someone out, you can decline them, and then hit “manage” to “unpause” and get another application. I live in NYC, and while sometimes things have gotten a little tense with a sitter confirming and then cancelling, or lots of sitters with “red flags,” I’ve always managed to get wonderful sitting houseguests!
Hi Marion. Glad to hear you are a fellow New Yorker. Thanks for all the info, but I’m actually a would-be sitter, not a pet-owner. But your insight has been terrific.
Best,
Richard .
I also sit, but not in NYC.