We leave Thursday for a sit in California. At first, the homeowner was very responsive. But for the last four days, he hasn’t responded to any of our messages. We’ve messaged him almost every day. He hasn’t read any of them. We don’t know the address, we don’t know when to arrive or how to get the key. The sit starts Friday and it’s a two-day drive for us.
If we don’t hear from him by Wednesday evening I don’t see how we can make the sit considering all the packing, planning, and driving we need to do. I reached out to TrustedHousesitters this morning for help and haven’t heard back. Any ideas on how to reach Support besides email?
How do we cancel the sit on our end in a situation like this?
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Ugh, so sorry you are going through this. I had a similar situation recently, also a 2 day drive, and contacted support who were fully on board with my cancelling (and even went in and manually unconfirmed me from the sit when the owner didn’t do that-- which was important because then i could look for something else and the homeowner would not be able to “review” me). But support did take 24 hrs to get back to me, and I had a bit more time. Do you have the homeowners number? If not, I think you are well within your rights to just send them a message cancelling (but do get back in touch with support as well, to update them, because apparently cancellations are tracked if they aren’t for a good reason-- this is-- how the heck are you supposed to plan anything in this situation-- it’s just so unfair to you!). Honestly I’d cancel today. It’s completely unreasonable for you to pack up the car, and do all those other things that leaving town requires, when you don’t even know if you are leaving!
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I appreciate the thoughts. How did you contact support? No, we don’t have his phone number and he didn’t leave a Welcome Guide.
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Just through the standard email… they were very helpful, but there was a bit of delay in responding.
Unfortunately you’re learning the hard way how important it is to get the home address and telephone number as soon as you’ve accepted a sit. I do hope things work out well for you one way or the other
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Hopefully they are too busy cleaning! lol
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@Smiley I completely agree!!! A classic example of why THS should reveal at least the home address (phone number and email address would be nice too) when Sits are confirmed. Ridiculous that the Sitter and Owner need to remember that they need to communicate these facts.
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I agree, but think if they revealed the address they’d definitely want the phone number too. maybe I watch too many true crime shows, but if I couldn’t get in touch and only had the address, what, I’m gonna drive 13 hrs to the home to find?!?
Seriously, in my case I actually did wonder if something terrible had befallen the homeowner. Nope-- just inconsiderate and/or flaky
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I don’t think it’s down to THS to pass on the address and telephone numbers
This sucks, but you might’ve dodged a bullet.
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@denniscnewman That is a very stressful situation to be in. I would contact @Angela_L - here on the forum -immediately about this. She will connect you with the right person. Or will get someone to contact the host directly for you. I have always found i get a response much quicker via the forum.
For the future - its so important to get personal contact details immediately on confirming a sit. It sounds like you did not have a phone call or video call with the hosts before confirming. Next time make sure to do that. Many hosts don’t fill out the Welcome Guide where their address would be included so do ask for that right away.
In your shoes I would not proceed further until contact has been reestablished and all detsils clarified.
I hope it works out.
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@denniscnewman sorry that you are having this communication problem- member services usually will try and reach the person on your behalf as they have other contact information.
Were you given any other way of contacting them for example did you have a FaceTime or Whatapp call with them before the sit was confirmed?
Only the homeowner can cancel the sit or member services . There is no way for a sitter to do it .
If they are new members they may not even realise that you don’t have their full name, phone number or address . I say this because many homeowners ( even experienced ones ) assume that THS pass this information on to the sitter when the sit is confirmed and don’t realise that they have to do it .
I think that THS should send a message to each party as soon as a sit is confirmed informing them that they need to exchange alternate contact details and inform the sitter of the address .
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Hi @denniscnewman have you reached out to membership services? They should be able to help you. If not, either use the chat at the bottom of the Help page or email support@trustedhousesitters.com.
They say they did that but haven’t got a reply.
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@denniscnewman I’m sorry you are experiencing this situation, I’ve checked and this is with to the Membership Services Team who will email you directly.
The only communication we’ve had is through the app. He’s a newbie, but he is getting email alerts that we’re trying to reach him. He’s out of town on a business trip but he also said he’d have plenty of time for a phone call or video chat.
We messaged them again this morning, we’ve asked TH to cancel this sit.
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We can agree to disagree!
Maybe something terrible has happened to the Owner. I hope THS is trying to reach the Owner (they might have the phone number) to make sure that the Pets are OK!
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Thanks again to everyone who offered support and suggestions, and to the
Moderators who passed along our issue to TH.
Once we heard from TH they were on the ball and agreed we should unconfirm the sit.
Then a couple of hours later the host -still oblivious- contacts us using a different name from the one in the profile. Too many red flags for us.
Bottom line we ended things amicably.
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