We have/had a sit scheduled but medical issues force us to cancel our trip. Our sitters know we cannot leave town and asked us to remove the sit. I spent 20 minutes looking for a way to do this. The “Edit” function doesn’t work. How to I cancel a sit? Thank you. P.S. We’ve been using THS for five years, referred several friends and LOVE the service!
@Riffi you have to “unconfirm “ the sit in your inbox .
As well as unconfirming the sitter, I think you also have to remove your dates, otherwise your listing will still be live @Riffi.
The sit was supposed to start today but I came down with a stomach bug yesterday. I contacted the sitter to let her know it was iffy and, when not better this morning, texted her first thing. I can see where I confirmed the sit in my inbox but I don’t see any way to cancel since it has supposedly already started. Nothing there is ‘clickable.’ Should I just let it go and leave her a nice review regarding her pre-sit communication and explain the circumstances in my comments? I’d want to leave her a full set of stars in categories I had not been able to evaluate.
@SusanR Your sitter can’t look for a replacement sit until the sit is formally cancelled. She also won’t be able to make an insurance claim for alternate accommodations if the the sit is not cancelled. If you can’t unconfirm (if today is the start date you might not be able to) contact member services to have them cancel it.
Thanks @systaran . Just to provide more detail for others… I did have to contact Member Services to cancel the sit since it had already started. I used the chat and was asked to show evidence that the sitter and I had communicated and both agreed to the cancellation. I was not able to get that from the THS inbox because I had texted her outside of the platform. I ended up taking a screenshot from my phone, emailing it to myself, pasting it into a Word document that I saved as a PDF, and attaching that to the chat. The chat did not have a way for me to copy/paste an image and it did not like the Word docx file extension. Hope others find that helpful.
@SusanR you might well have just invalidated her insurance claim doing that
Thank you for this information!
Yet another reason not to trust MS.
The only reason for them to ask that that I can think of would be as a defence against the sitter’s insurance claim.
Hello @pietkuip & @Enjaybee I double-checked this with Membership Services and if it is a sit that has already started then they need to check both parties are aware that the sit is being cancelled before they remove it from both member’s dashboards. Otherwise, if they removed it and the sitter was not aware it could come as a bit of a surprise!
Therefore they check messages in the onsite message system and if that is not available they ask for evidence that both members are aware that the sit is being cancelled.
If the messages show that the owner initiated the cancellation then the sitter can still put in an insurance claim. It is more to check that both parties know what is happening before they cancel the sit. This is not a comment about this specific case but just to reassure you all of the process and reason
Thank you, but still a bit strange.
So up to the first day of the sit, the HOs can cancel sits just by clicking in the interface. Without any need to talk with MS.
The sitter may be already be on the way. They may be unreachable in an airplane, totally unaware. And then: surprise!
I do not quite understand why this is becomes so completely different when the sit has started. Except for what could be claimed on the insurance.
@SusanR last minute cancellations like the one you had could be extremely stressful to the sitter. If the sitter had back to back sits, it’s almost impossible to find a replacement. If he/she was a premium member, stating to membership services that you both agreed to cancel could mean the sitter’s insurance claim is probably invalidated. Some sitters spend alot of time energy and money to get to the sit. I hope you considered all your other options such as you staying in a motel, camper if you had one, etc to keep your committment to the confirmed dates.
Thank you @IHeartAnimals for those suggestions. Had the circumstances been different, I would have considered those options and your post is helpful to others who have sitters travelling from out of town. In this case, the sitter was local and actually had family coming into town unexpectedly so the cancelled sit was actually a blessing for her. She and I communicated the night before so there were no surprises.