I’m interested in a sit but there are no internal or external house pictures. They’ve had one review which was fine but I would like to see inside before I decide to apply.
What are others thoughts on this?
Such a listing should not have been allowed.
But chances are that it is very nice. It is mostly rich people that try to keep quiet about their gold faucets etc 
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I’d ask if I thought the sit might be a unique opportunity. Otherwise, skip, skip, skip, because there are countless sits.
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I thought it was mandatory for hosts to add pictures of the house, I would definitely ask.
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I’ve noticed several sits recently without internal photos.
I’ve seen this question come up before on this forum and one answer I saw was something like… “could you please provide photos of where I’ll be sleeping and which bathroom you prefer me to use.”
No photos is a bit of a red flag for me.
Is there staff on THS that do quality control to check the profiles or is that way too big a task to expect something like that?
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You can apply and do a videochat. (Which I always recommend before confirming from both sides)
And when the first introduction is done, you can casually ask if they could show you for example the pet, the pets place where he always sleeps, your bedroom?
We often start the video conversation with a little chitchat (what are you doing, where are you going, items that comes up very spontaneous, like a first time seeing eachother on a birthday party).
If there is “a click” on both sides it mostly turns out that the HO already offers a short tour of the house.
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You can forward the link to member services and they will contact the host and request that they add a minimum of 5 internal photos .
E-mail : support@trustedhousesitters.com
According to THS a new member’s listings are checked before they are published , but for members who joined THS some years ago there were no requirements for internal photos at the time .
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that’s great to know, thank you @Silversitters
Thanks - I didn’t know that.
Ditto! And it’s often concerning sits where they’ve have had sitters previously, so it’s likely they’ve never posted pics of the rooms which sitters would use.
Ah, I wasn’t aware of this.
Not necessarily. I suspect that at least some owners remove interior pictures after they found a sitter. And then they “forget” to put them back next time.
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I did a sit without seeing any photos of the house, and it turned out to be absolutely beautiful. I applied for the sit because I was vaguely familiar with the area and knew that the location would be nice, and because the dogs looked gorgeous. I never met the home owners, and don’t think I even spoke with them on the phone beforehand - we just exchanged a few messages via Whatsapp. I also don’t think they had any reviews.
In retrospect, I was fortunate that things turned out so well, but I also just got a sense from the communication that we had that it would be a good sit. They left me some delicious treats and some cash to cover travel expenses, and were obviously as pleased as I was with how things turned out as they offered to pay me to sit over Christmas later that year. They had unfortunately had some bad experiences using sitters in the past, and more than anything I got the sense that they were looking for someone discreet who would respect their privacy.
If it’s a relatively short sit, you could just take the ‘lucky dip’ approach!
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We just say:…
‘Would you please post photos of the rooms which sitters would occupy?’
It’s not a big deal really, to ask. If they don’t want to show us, we don’t want to sit there.
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There are not countless sits in all areas. Many of us restrict our sitting to certain regions. Eg Asia has relatively few and they ore often taken in minutes.
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Yes, we all know there are some places that are more popular or scarcer than others. Whether each individual sitter chooses to pursue those is up to them.
Personally, I’m not focused on Asia, so I don’t even bother looking for those on THS, where I know they’re scarce. I have landed an Asia sit via Nomador, but while it’s nice to have, I also could live without it. So again, for me, there are plenty of sits that I might be interested in — many more than I have time to do.
Just be totally open, you have nothing to lose anyway, because you aren’t keen on stepping foot into a house that you have never seen (and potentially have to mark them with 1* for cleanliness???
So personally I would ask to see images of their home, because of the new review system at the end, which says is the house as described, but without images you can’t complete that part or something along those lines.
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I agree with the suggestion that you contact THS Customer Service and ask them to contact the Home Owner. The HO is supposed to include pix: it shouldn’t be on you to ask them to do it, perhaps making the first interaction awkward.
However: also quite possible the HO does it out of caution. After all, everyone in the system can see their home… They may only share more pix with a sitter they’re considering.
But after you apply (which you can do while waiting for pix to appear) you can and should also request a video chat.
We backed out on one where the pix seemed fine (nothing special but a decent home.)
Who knows when those pix were taken because during the video chat WOW what a difference from the posted pictures. The house was in chaos in every room - which we ONLY saw because the host needed to say something to a kid & carried on with the video chat walking thru’ the house.
I don’t mean “messy” as MOST families get.
I mean obvious signs of disrepair and neglect.
It is important to know what you’re agreeing to do and where you’re agreeing to stay.
Protect yourself.
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In fact: everybody on the internet.
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Interestingly there was a sit here in Turkey @ASASG that had zero internal pics & 8 of the dog with lots of good reviews. We asked HQ three times to tell the HOs to add pics and it still didn’t happen and then the sit just disappeared altogether 
#strangerandstrangerthoughtalice
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