I’m curious if my situation is being felt by others.
Firstly, I am not currently active on THS. I haven’t applied for a sit in over a year. My membership is coming up for renewal and I won’t be renewing.
But, I am being inundated with invitations to sits - sits I have no connection to, sits 4-6 hours drive from my house, sits a 2 hour flight away. So I’m curious, are these owners just sending out masses and masses of invitations hoping to find a sitter?
I suspect this is a reflection of reducing sitter numbers, as THS increasing fees are pushing sitters away to other platforms.
Normally I simply reply politely thanking for the invitation and declining. But a recent invitation was for six large dogs, then the most recent one that was a 5 hour drive away - and the dog could not be left alone. I did reply to that host that I was not interested in considering a sit where a dog could not be left at home alone for any time at all. It’s not surprising sits like these are struggling to get applications.
EDITing to add - i am speaking about personal invitations - though the text hasn’t been personalized, more generic/blanket. it doesn’t bother me getting invitations, it’s easy to quickly response. I’m just surprised ny the number and “randomness” of the invitations.
Are you maybe suspicious that the THS organisation algorithm is perhaps trying to get you to renew? Are these individualised invitations or personal messages or simply THS suggestions? I’m curious.
@Auscal, thanks for sharing your experience. We receive a steady trickle of unsolicited invite-to-sit requests from unknown pet parents. We typically politely decline and move on.
As someone that disables almost all digital notifications then the concept of inundation, on any topic, sounds unpleasant. A tactic that we use, that seems to have decreased number of unsolicited invites, is expanding the content on THS profile.
In your case, if you are not currently seeking housesits then you could state that at the top of your profile. For us, our profile provides details of future confirmed sits (not specifics, just Month YYYY - Location - Pets - Number nights). We’re almost fully booked until early 2027, clearly evident on our profile.
For what it’s worth, we don’t mind unknown pet parents reaching out to us. Some portion of such enquiries match with our preferences (geography, pets, property, etc). It is possible that there may be opportunity for mutual benefit at a future date. But, for us, it has never been inundating. Kudos on your seemingly attractive THS profile/experience!
There’s definitely Something Going On here. I love getting invitations, but - in three pretty active years with THS - have had precisely three. One led to a great sit, which turned into a repeat. The other two were completely unfeasible.
Yup: There’s a rat away - as my grandfather was fond of saying.
If you think about it, for a HO who travels a few times a year, it’s worth taking a chance with THS. You only need to find a sitter once and you’ve saved money. That’s my hypothesis as to why there are so many sits in undesirable locations, with demanding pets,…
I am a NEW sitter with only 1-5 review (we are combined member after 1 year of HO only). We received THREE invites in just 2 months. One from a neighbor of the sit we did who is also a THS member (9 hour drive from our house), one from another expat couple that we do not know living in Mexico (like us) who is several states away would require a flight, and the 3rd invite from a stranger within a hours drive of where our homebase is listed on our Sitter profile near Chicago. I politely declined all 3. I don’t mind getting the invites but I certainly was surprised given our sparse reviews.
I agree with this right here – THS is luring in Homeowners who dont understand the equal exchange part, I predict some cancellation and refund requests within the alloted timeframe.
They are personal invitations to specific sits - but are not exactly personalized - more just a generic invitation that I suspect they are copying and pasting and sending in bulk.
I could make a note at the top of my profile - but I suspect it may not make a difference. Whilst I would like to think it was happening because of my stellar produce and reviews - I am more realistically thinking hosts are simply copy/paste and send invitations en masse. There is nothing in the invitations to even suggest they have read my profile.
To clarify, the invitations don’t bother me, I’m just a little confused why they have started to hit so frequently just in the last week or so, after being many many months since i have even had one.
maybe you do have a point, THS may have some sort of algorithm where my profile is being “bumped up” in an attempt to have me renew
Not sure of your location but there was a thread earlier this week with guestimate data (none published by THS) that suggested that there may be a material disconnect between the number of US pet parents and US housesitters. Seemingly many non-US housesitters are avoiding the US due to legal risks or other reasons. Given this, and steady trickle of THS Forum threads, it seems credibly possible that US pet parents may be struggling to secure volunteer housesitters from a limited pool. Bless.
We occasionally receive invitations but really not that often. We change our listed location frequently to deter invitations to the wrong areas. However we’ve received 4 invitations this week alone, all with messages attached, 3 of which mentioned us by name and commented on our impressive review history All were UK hosts so I’ve now listed us in France to put a stop to it!
One of the hosts we declined specified a 2 hour time limit on leaving the dog. We were not available for other reasons but in our reply we mentioned we would not apply for a sit where we could only leave a dog 2 hours- it would not feel like a fair exchange. I said many other sitters would feel the same. I suggested they state the reason, in their listing, for such a short window or, if they were flexible, they change it. They read our response but did not reply again. Next day I checked their listing and Hey Presto! The dog can now be left 4 hours!
This proves that the guessing I wrote about on another thread was correct, at least in some cases: setting so limited options for “pet left alone time” and such a large scope of choice for arrival and departure times can be counterproductive for both sitters and hosts.
I know many sitters, like myself, are put off by unreasonable requests and I think some hosts feel they should get as much as they can, if THS offer the option, perhaps that’s considered normal, why not just ask the sitter to arrive at the most convenient time, stay as long as possible with the pets and walk the dogs as much as they’d like?
I thought it was just me, or a fluke — but I’ve also been getting a growing number of random sit invites of late — mostly local, but some from across the continent! Most seem at least somewhat personalized (ie they read my profile), although the notes were usually short — so I assume they were using the scatter-shot approach to proactively find a sitter vs waiting for applications.
When I was newer I used to be happy to do local sits for the reviews, or even recently if someone seems to be in a real bind & I can accommodate them — but these recent requests were for weeks/months out, and several were 2-3 weeks long & fairly labor-intensive sits (multiple dogs, long walks, can’t be left alone for over 2h, etc.) While I always reply politely & offer advice or suggestions for securing a sitter, these invites have seemed of a different sort, such that I finally started replying that I don’t generally do free sits in my hometown as I prefer to spend time in my own house with my own pets & family when I’m not traveling.
I dislike the idea, but it’s getting to the point where I’m thinking about making a note in my profile that I only accept unsolicited invites from hosts I’ve sat for previously…but I still can’t help wondering why there’s been such an uptick in these invites all of a sudden.
I too get some random requests that are not a good fit.
I wish the HOs whose sits I’ve favorited would reach out though! My first sit was from an HO who I favorited and she immediately reached out. That was a pleasant surprise.
@Newpetlover, @Lokstar - gotta laugh. Remarkable that pets can suddenly now be left for 4 hours instead of 2 hours - abracadabra
We’ve commented on other Forum threads about reality use of the recent new features of ‘pet left time’ and ‘pet walk time’ and ‘arrival/departure times’. These features, while presumably commendable in intent, seem to be nonsense in reality. We often find significant inconsistencies between related information stated by pet parent in their listing and same information stated by pet parent in video call. And the times aspect is often flexible towards a win-win outcome for PP/HS rather than needlessly determined upfront.
We largely ignore the information in these new listing fields. We perceive primary value-add of these new fields is not their contents but as an application filter for pet parents that have expectations that we deem unreasonable / unattractive. Or for pet parents that approach pet care responsibilities with an elevated do-as-I-say rather than do-as-I-do mindset (i.e. PP typically walks dog 30 mins but asks HS to walk 2 hours, say out of guilt) - which we find leads to issues during housesit (e.g. calorie deficit).
I’m not saying it’s THS fault. At least not the implementation of these features. It’s true they had been widely demanded on the forum. The problem raises in the way they have been approached. It’s clear to me that they need to be readjusted.
Research shows that most people want to fulfill general expectations if THS gives a scope of walking time or time to be left alone that seems not to fit pets’ routine, it’s highly likely that owners will get closer to what’s expected of them and generally considered best for the pets. This being a newly implemented system, many will just forget that somewhere else in the listing they have written otherwise.
I sometimes send out invites to HS for sit dates but I typically only send them to
folks who have favourited our listing,
folks who have previously sat for us, or
folks we have favourited (usually those we considered for a previous sit but weren’t selected in that instance).
We also are in a desirable location so it makes it a bit easier and usually I’m not scrambling to find someone. That being said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with HO reaching out but I’m also aware there’s a learning curve for everyone on how to make yourself desirable for a match…same can also be said in a lot of other contexts as well to be fair!
If you find you’re getting a lot of unsolicited offers, you could add to your intro what you are open to/looking for or simply say you’re not open to unsolicited offers. Some will read, some won’t.
I feel like these are great use-cases for the “host invites sitter” scenario, & would love to see it happen more often.
Personally, I’m not upset by the unsolicited invites, but they can get time consuming since I personally reply & genuinely want to be helpful. Mostly though I’m just puzzled, particularly by those long local sit requests for 2 months from now. It just feels like it never occurred to them to wonder why ‘random someones’ would want to perform free petsitting gigs in their own backyards.
Last, I think the other big question is why there’s such a sudden increase in their frequency of late.
review (we are combined member after 1 year of HO only). We received THREE invites in just 2 months. One from a neighbor of the sit we did who is also a THS member (9 hour drive from our house), one from another expat couple that we do not know living in Mexico (like us) who is several states away would require a flight, and the 3rd invite from a stranger within a hours drive of where our homebase is listed on our Sitter profile near Chicago. I politely declined all 3. I don’t mind getting the invites but I certainly was surprised given our sparse reviews.
All were UK hosts so I’ve now listed us in France to put a stop to it! 