Home owners not responding within 72 hours

Owner Questions, Advice & Chat
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OK, there has been much discussion on the slow response by home owners that the pause after 5 applications was supposed to fix. Well, it hasn’t. THS T&Cs (not the code of conduct but the T&Cs we all agree to) state under section 5 REQUIREMENTS OF PET PARENTS AND SITTERS 5.1.13. respond to communications from other Members in a timely manner, but in any event, within 72 hours;

THS also state on their website :
We ask you to read our Terms and Conditions to ensure you’re fully aware of your legal rights, remedies, and obligations. It’s really important you take time to read the Terms and Conditions carefully because, by becoming a member, you’re agreeing to comply and be bound by them.

So why do owners not acknowledge applications within 72 hours and why do they get offended when we withdraw our application citing this? Even after a littke nudge “are you interested in our application?”. Both rhetorical questions, but I’m so over owners who are poor communicators. Not interested in being their sitter. If they don’t communicate well at this early stage in the relationship, then what are they going to be like when it gets real? It’s a huge red flag!

Please … home owners, no one is asking you to make rapid decisions about your sitter, just please be polite / decent / respectful and acknowledge a sitter’s application with a "thanks for your application, I will get back to you in [insert tine frame], It’s not that hard. Grrr…

End of rant. Thank you for listening!

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This is one of the reasons there is so much objection to the 5 application limit as Sitters have found it doesn’t actually speed up the application process and Owners still take ages to even read applications or messages let alone make a decision. I also find you get no response for weeks if they have decided on someone but want to keep their options open in case it doesn’t work out. Some sites have an average response time posted for Owners so you can see if they are responsive before you apply.

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@Crookie, I feel you should have posted this in the Owner Questions and not the Sitter Questions where you are directing it to owners. Maybe a moderator could change it to there if you wished this?

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Wholeheartedly agree @Crookie - hanging off on an Italian sit for 6+ days, nothing but :cricket:, then a rejection without any communication. By then we’d picked up a sit that we’d previously been interested in but lost out on (but with some great communications).
I just left the other one hanging but should’ve said we were no longer interested for your reasons above. There are so many things to juggle even if you aren’t full time sitters, such as accommodation etc etc. end of my rant too :blush: hope you’re enjoying the heat in Oz, we’re back Dec 23 - go Broncos & go Lions :lion:

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Actually that’s a great point @temba I will adk for it to be moved

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@Verityandjulian waiting 6 days is generous!

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I completely agree with your rant. As I said once before on here, if owners and sitters had 5 points to start with and got docked a point after 72 hours of not responding, as Aussie & kiwihousesitters’ sites do, they would soon alter their behaviour. It seems to work on those other sites as, low and behold, you usually get a response when they know they’ve been penalised. With those sites it’s after 5 days.
A sit I applied for back in July never did respond, I withdrew as got another sit. He’s been ‘reviewing applications’ for those March dates and earlier October dates ever since, although I doubt he actually is reviewing anything. Who knows though if something has happened to the owners? People do get seriously ill and die……

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Couldn’t have said it better myself. Would love a reply rating like Aussie & Kiwi Housesitters! They even nudge you by email if you haven’t responded in like 48 hours.

We’ve applied for about two dozen sits in the past two weeks and the amount of unresponsiveness is frustrating. We’ve started sending follow up emails and still…nothing. We always reply, even if it’s just to decline, within 24 hours. And we’re juggling 12+ applications. Surely 5 is manageable??

I will say, this seems to mostly be sits in London, whenever we apply for a sit on the mainland we get a response almost immediately. Funny that.

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I withdrew an application last year when the HOs took too long to even acknowledge my app. I told them the reason and they replied with something like “well, we’ve had great sitters so far, so we must be doing something right” :frowning:

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We are currently 5 months and counting, waiting on a response from a HO regarding our application!!! The sit has been sitting as “Reviewing” for the same amount of time, so we are amongst 5 other sitters in limbo land.

Fun sport at this point.

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@Crookie Completely agree. There should be some accountability for homeowners in regards to response time. Many platforms show response time. I applied to 4 sits a week ago and 2 of those remain unread. It’s a huge waste of sitters time to apply to sits for HOs that don’t respond in a timely manner.

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@PetSitterBug I’ve had some of those too. They just sit in ‘reviewing’ status for months. I used to withdraw my application, but I’ve taken to leaving them just to see how long until the HOs do anything. As you say, it’s become fun sport. :laughing:

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It does make me think, though… how many others sits are in “Reviewing” status?

Wondering if THS ever thought to monitor those? :thinking:

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I’m the same, if a HO doesn’t respond within a reasonable time at the start, it puts me off their sit. It’s a huge red flag for me. I don’t like going at someone elses pace in life, especially when they are complete stranger at that point. If I reach out to respond to their ad, the HO needs to respond soon or I start to naturally go off their sit, in favour of ones that respond within a reasonable time frame.

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There is a four-week Christmas/New Year sit that I applied for over a week ago. My application is marked as read.

I don’t really mind. It is far into the future, I do not have definite plans for that period yet. I might stay home, even if these HOs accepted.

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Good question @PetSitterBug. Supposedly one of the reasons the auto 5 pause was introduced was to speed owners up on deciding but it certainly hasn’t done that in many cases.

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@PetSitterBug i monitored my favorites for a month. The results showed about 10 to 20% over 1 week. About half of those for longer.

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After 4 weeks, I finally removed my application for a sit because it was still marked UNREAD. I gave them some slack because the sit was for late December, but really, why post the sit if you’re not even going to look at the applications?

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Oh dear…just 72 hours…. this made me laugh.
A couple of years ago I did an experiment. I left a couple of applications up till I got a correspondence. I usually give the pet parent a week then take it down.
The first got to the date of the listing then disappeared. Who knows what happened.
The second was bizarre. Almost a month later I got a message from the pet parent asking when I can arrive. I answered sorry, but I am no longer available. Then they went on a rant about time wasting and I should have told them and now they were in a tight spot etc etc. I had no answer other than pot calling kettle black.
(This was on another site)

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Hi everyone, I’m relatively new to THS and new to this forum. I am an ‘owner’ and may be guilty of this offence. For me, time gets away from me when I’ve got a lot to think about , which tends to correspond with planning to go away unfortunately and I can literally lose days! So if I do not respond in a timely manner, this is just because my life has become a little overwhelming.

I know there will be some that will say that this is no excuse etc and technically you’d be right, but rather than waiting and thinking the worse of the owner, I would appreciate and respond well to a prompt and some info that lets me know how quickly you need to get the answer. I am not doing it on purpose nor do I mean any disrespect.

I have CPTSD which can be a little like ADHD with regard to falling foul of overwhelm and terrible time management and trust issues. I find the whole process of choosing a sitter\s really stressful, which adds to the overwhelm.

My husband works full time and some, I am building a website, we are project managing a house renovation, I have 4 cats, an unwell car, am learning Bulgarian as we are relatively new to the country and so am also learning the culture, which shops do which products and am planning a trip to the UK to please relatives. These are just some of the things that are going on in my life just at this moment and a part of the reason that the time is whizzing by.

I had understood (been told by someone) that some owners don’t even reply to applicants and just correspond to the ones they are interested in, which I could never do as it seems so rude. I am glad to read here that this is not the accepted way to behave here.

I did read the T&C when we signed up but have evidently either not taken it all in or simply forgotten bits.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I am not taking this thread personally and defending myself, I am actually grateful for the reminder and clarity that it has given me. Rather my intention is to bring a different perspective to this subject so that we all feel a little better about it.

I realise I am leaving myself wide open for criticism in order to do that, but I just think it is easy to feel slighted, disrespected or that people are just being rude, which isn’t a pleasant feeling for most of us, when it’s difficult to imagine what else might be going on in someone else’s life.

I hope it helps and I promise to do better in the future. I will say that the auto pause on applicants feels uncomfortable for many reasons and I don’t like it. I hadn’t realised the reason for it but I doubt it helps. This forum has been far more helpful to me.

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