I’m also getting a couple per day. Unfortunately can’t do, all look nice but they are struggling to find a sitter. I’m in UK
@jac. Glad insight emerged. Given successful history and good listing then seemed likely that there was some atypical factor. Hope find a super housesitter and enjoy great trip. Cat curled on my lap as type 
. Ps feel free to send some Swiss snow to Western Canada 
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I know this has been resolved, but I wanted to share my experience, which differs because we are in different countries.
I personally find it more difficult to find sitters these days. I also moved from Chicago to a much smaller city in northern Colorado, near the Front Range of the Rockies, in the last year. I used to get at least one application a day in Chicago and didn’t have difficulty securing a sitter through THS within a month (except in the winter months, when no one wants to deal with that kind of cold). I think, in general, winter is a tough time to find sitters through THS, but even then, I felt like I had better luck in Chicago. In the last couple of listings (one for Nov and one for the end of Feb), I had zero applications after a couple of weeks, so I deleted them. I’ve had to resort to Rover and have had better luck with it in the last few months. I like to make sure I have secured a sitter at least 2 months before my trip. Finding last-minute sitters gives me anxiety, so I couldn’t depend on that with THS. As others have mentioned, U.S. border restrictions don’t help. Honestly, if I were in their position, I wouldn’t risk it either, especially with Latin American countries. Additionally, local pet sitters with experience prefer to get paid (there is a popular vet training school here, so there’s a lot of experience). I think I had a good run with THS during my time in Chicago, but now that I’ve found a couple of dependable local sitters where I live, I don’t see the point in renewing my membership. I don’t blame the service as much as I blame the current political climate.
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The passive aggressiveness is not just toward you and most of us native English speakers are finding his communications challenging. That’d all be fine if those communications were helpful. But alas.
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Yep. “Some” people need …
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Agreed. Some people are in such a hurry to post a reply that backtracking results (‘That’s not what I meant’, ‘I was joking’)…
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Now you lost me completely.
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@Jac its just a little bit of dry humour for some that post AAAALL the time 
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Geeee and here I was sure my English was just fine. 
thanks Ziggy for your explanation
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No wonder it is getting harder to find a sitter, I just had a request this morning to look after 2 horses, 2 dogs, 2 cats, sheep and chickens and god knows what else, photos show a lovely cottage in the forest but as it turns out, that is not where you will be staying, it will be locked up and you can stay in a very basic annex above the horse stables.
Good luck with that one, I am sure some youngsters will have a go, as a mature couple we like our comforts,
Looking after so many animals normally starts from £100.00 a night, thank you
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I would love to look at the listing. But only LOOKING. 
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I’ve received same invite. Looked interesting until I saw sitters accommodation. 
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We got invited to that one too! We thought the same- a lot of animals and being stuck in the annex! Not welcoming. I politely declined and some hours later got the same copy&paste invite again.. 
Edit- Since reading your comment @Dutchy I went back & read the listing properly. You are absolutely right- the expectations are way too much for an unpaid sit! and then to have to stay in the one room annex (with restricted headroom) with no access to the main house which will be ‘locked up & alarmed’! Total turn off.. and cheeky to boot.
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I’m curious @Lokstar where is this wonderful sit???
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I would not assume a small family (say, one parent with one or two children - or two parents with a child) would not be comfortable. The one time I visited London, my family of four very happily squeezed into a very small room with two beds squeezed right up next to each other, to the point that we all had to crawl over the beds to reach the bathroom!
. It was a lovely, simple guesthouse that was just a step above a hostel. We were on the 5th or 6th floor with no elevator. Did it matter? No! We had the BEST time! So keep in mind, we budget travelers are not that fussy, and I think as long as you’re comfortable having a child stay in your house (and you could certainly say age 8+ or whatever age you think is suitable if you have lots of breakable treasures or something), that would widen the pool - especially over the Easter holidays. Hope someone fabulous comes along!
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I’ll DM you the link!
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Hi Jac. I have complet over sixty sits now and the ast majority have eenwithiutany video call. In fact only about two werean actual video, others were just WhatsApp phone calls ordinary phone calls. But I would say that’s out 80% of sits Inave accepted were just offered message. In fact before the forums came into being all sits were offerd and accepted by message only. I think the video thing has come more from America and something done there rather than the UK.
I disagree. It’s very common for us to do video calls in the UK
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@Visit Not sure its so country specific. Covid was the turning point. People got used to Video calls during that time. Pre Covid we had only one video call (for an Australian sit) but all our other sits were done by messaging only or phonecall. Now it seems to be standard and expected.
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