I’m currently house/pet sitting in another state and agreed to a certain time frame. The owner is returning two days early. When she texted me that her travel plans changed and they’d be home sooner, I explained that my next sit is in two days and that I don’t have anywhere to go until my next sit. She said they’d find something else to do during those days. I just received a text from her that she’d be home tomorrow (two days early). What does Trusted Sitter recommend a sitter do in a case like this?
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You will most likely get some good advice from experienced sitters, here, but I would suggest reaching out the TH support line asap.
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You have a few options @Fpmeehan - you can ask her to pay for your “missing” two nights as it’s her choice to return and not extraordinary circumstances as per THS Ts & Cs; you could find an Airbnb and reflect the very annoying early return in her poor review; you could ask to stay and share the space for the last two nights; you could ask the host to go halves with you on last minute accommodation as that’s only fair; you can talk to MS and ask their advice. Ultimately it’s her house and she can return early. It’s not fair but it does happen. You can reflect the inconvenience in what you write. How good are your comms with her? Does she understand the cost implications? #ballsinyourcourt
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When that has happened to us, one HO has said we can stay in their home with them, another HO has offered to stay in hotel instead, or we’ve volunteered to head off for a different adventure at our own cost.
But there are many sitters on here that would simply ask them to cover the the cost of your accommodation, all they can say is yes/no, and it shouldn’t be reflected in your review from them that you asked, because they changed the conditions of your stay, during your stay.
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I wonder if this could be considered a partial cancellation of the sit ( it is in practice) for insurance purposes.
Can a HO change the return date on the platform once the sit has started or would THS have to do it?
Does anyone know?
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Hi @Newpetlover
According to THS support a HO may return early if it’s an emergency. This doesn’t sound like the case so @Fpmeehan is within their rights to ask for accommodation elsewhere for this period to be covered.
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No they can’t.
@Fpmeehan phone them TrustedHouse Sitters and ask them . They don’t read or respond to the forum.
There is a 24/7 phone line which is for Urgent Support . The number is on your dashboard . You will be covered by the Sit cancellation plan if you are a Premium member -
We have had this happen ( sit’s curtailed ) three times . Twice for genuine emergencies and once just because host got tickets for a social event back home !!!
Thanks that’s good to know.
A HO did this once, so they can. It was agreed with us before he changed, but yes, he could.
@Fatamorgana if the sit had already started he would have to had contacted MS to make the change ( and provided proof that you had agreed to the change )
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Yes, maybe you are right and he contacted member service. We agreed on it and told me he would change the dates and it was done within minutes, so I thought he had done it by himself.
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I’ve had this happen too. It was a lovely house with lovely people who just thought it wasn’t an issue - they’d planned to take me on a hiking trip, buy me lunch etc. But the TL;DR is that I didn’t want to do that, and I had a huge workload to get through.
What does THS do (there’s no recs from THS, they just a bot-ish)?
- Chalk it up to experience and vet sits for the potential this might happen again (ask about their travel plans etc in the video call).
- Book a place to stay for those days (see above)
But what did THS ‘do’ about it?
@BJane
Here is a link to the thread I wrote about it at the time
https://forum.trustedhousesitters.com/t/home-owner-curtails-sit-by-coming-back-several-days-early
and another one about a successful claim we made when last year a different owner returned home twos weeks early due to a serious accident ….
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If she did not inform you before the sit that she may return early, not offering you to use the guest room for the next two days is rather inconsiderate. I had a PP tell me before the sit that they may be home a few days early and is this OK with me. I would be driving my car to the sit and going home after and am retired so this was OK with me as I would have been there long enough to see everything I wanted to see. They never came back early.
If the area you are at is out of your budget for hotel costs I would just boldly ask her if you can utilize the guest room for those two nights. I would text her in a way that will show her she will still have her privacy when she returns. I would mention that if you work online to let her know you would be in the guest room with the door closed quietly working online. Or that you will be out sightseeing the entire time and only returning to sleep. I would not use her kitchen for those two days beyond grabbing a premade salad or sandwich from the frig and basically give her the house back. I would offer to still walk the dog if she will be busy running errands, etc. if she says no I would definitely mention in your review that homeowner arrived home early and declined my request to still sleep there for the next two nights causing financial damage to me.
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But a lot of people (me included) don’t want to use an offered guest room/stay with HO. It’s not ok.
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I can recall three instances where a host came home early.
The first involved some sort of serious issues with their son–they didn’t go into details and I didn’t think it was my business to ask. I know it must have been something big since they decided to come home to the US all the way from Paris after only being there a few days. They offered to let us stay but we didn’t take them up on it–it was very kind of them but I imagine that with whatever they were dealing with, they didn’t need two people hanging around their space. And we wouldn’t have done it anyway. We decided to visit with some family for a few days and then found another sit to fill the short gap before our next one was to start.
The other two times the hosts came down with Covid–one was coming back a day early and the other 2 or three days early. The latter was supposed to visit with friends the last part of their trip so obviously that was no longer an option. And in this case, them offering or us asking to stay–which we wouldn’t have done anyway–clearly wasn’t an option.
To me, this is just one of those things that can happen with housesitting and I personally wouldn’t ask hosts to pay for my accommodation. I probably wouldn’t ask them to stay either.
If they offered me to stay, I may do so depending on the type of home, the rapport I had with the hosts and other individual factors of that particular sit. But most likely I probably wouldn’t.
I am not sure what actions THS would take against hosts who come home for any other reason than some true emergency. I think there can be lots of legitimate reasons a person can end their trip early that doesn’t involve some dire circumstance where they have no other choice but to come home, and again, it is just one of those things that can happen. If they have a really flaky reason, that sucks, but again, just something that can happen.
It probably wouldn’t be a good look for the company to be kicking hosts off the platform left and right because they had changes in their travel plans.
When hosts offer up their homes to sitters, it is not as if they are entering into any sort of binding agreement to provide them housing for the dates they have booked them. While offering to pay for accommodation would be a nice gesture, it is not something they are obligated to do.
In the grand scheme of things, I think hosts cancelling trips or returning early is relatively rare, and things usually will go as planned. But on the off chance they don’t, sitters need to consider what they would do if they were in such a position. While sitting is a great way to save money, it isn’t a totally free activity in most cases–there are expenses associated with it. If sitters have limited financial resources, that really isn’t the hosts’ issue to deal with.
Obviously this is just my personal opinion and how I would personally approach the issue, but there really is no right or wrong here.
It depends on what you feel comfortable asking for. A lot of what people believe the hosts ‘should’ do, or would be the nice or ‘right’ thing to do in these circumstances are in no way anything they are obligated to do. At the end of the day, whether one thinks it is fair or unfair, the reality is that it is ultimately the sitter’s issue to deal with.
Good luck!
Pay for the higher level THS membership in advance of agreeing to a sit. It covers such situations as yours for up to 10 days should you not find another nearby sit.
In cases similar to this, THS usually suggests that the sitter work things out with the host. That’s because in reality, there’s nothing THS can do if you don’t have premium, which would probably cover the shorted days up to $150 for a hotel or such. They can’t force a host to stay away from their home or to let you stay after their early return or to pay or subsidize a hotel stay for you.
If circumstances allow, a considerate host would try to help, rather than just put a sitter out early. But that type of consideration is voluntary, not obligated. Of course, you can review them accordingly. Few sitters would probably apply for a sit if they knew that the host might cut short their travel without an emergency or such.
From my sitting across two years — 23 sits done — I’ve had two sits cut short. In one case, the host was severely injured in an accident and needed to come home for surgery and follow-up care. In the other, the hosts scrambled to return early to say goodbye to their beloved dog when she had to be put down. She was 15 and in poor health, then had back-to back seizures that incapacitated her.
In both cases, the hosts offered to pay for hotel stays for me (two days in the first case and six in the second). I appreciated their offers and consideration even during emergencies. I declined in both cases and paid my own way for hotels. If they had not been emergencies, I would have accepted.
To me, if you’re a good host, you don’t randomly come home early if it’s not an emergency, because it obviously creates at least an inconvenience for a sitter. And for some, it creates a financial problem, sometimes seriously so if they lack resources. (In my case, I can afford hotel stays or to go home early in a pinch. I ended up having to throw away opened food and otherwise leaving unopened groceries, which was simply a waste.) And for telecommuters, it can create disruptions if someone has meetings, work or such planned, if they suddenly have to scramble to clean, pack and find alternative housing.
Note: THS says that no one should cancel without a good reason, though they’re toothless about that unless they kick people off the site, which rarely happens.
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