I just got the email. 10 EUR for every sit you confirm. You need to pay before you can press confirm.
If I may use an oldish Irish slogan:
Don’t register, don’t pay 
(In Ireland, the government changed their mind about introducing water charges, after a major number of people just refused to pay)
Exactly what happened to me.
That’s why I was forced to click on Accept.
I didn’t want to log out because I have a sit coming and obviously I don’t want to accept without even reading.
Handed very very badly.
Next step will be an application fee for each sit. Non refundable of course
It’s a little late for community discussion, I fear, when you’ve already rolled this product update out. I’ve been a beta tester for other new/potential THS feature updates - why couldn’t the community have been consulted on this one too?
It’s a bit of a shameful money-grab, THS, because as others have noted - I’ve only used the ‘services behind each sit’ once in 17 sits over 1.5 years. If the platform has grown beyond what your team is able to support - you should be fundraising, developing your business model properly, or implementing low-hanging, value-add features that members have been asking for for a long time - not reducing the size of your customer base by adding additional charges that will lose you customers. The optics aint great.
Transparency with product changelogs is super important - and no less because your community members have recently been targeted by scammers. When your official Product Update is initially questioned as a scam - this should be a strong indicator you’re losing the support of your platform ambassadors.
It’s not really about the money - it’s about the principle.
Sincerely,
a sad house sitter and advocate for community-centric platform building.
Horrible idea! But even the message title tries to spin it as something positive (“..To support every sit”. )
We already pay an annual charge to have our sits “supported”, both as HOs and as sitters. There is no way THS can disguise this; it’s simply a price hike. And it penalises those who rely most heavily on the platform the most. And to introduce it unilaterally.. All that debate about far less significant stuff (Photos in listings… Ticking all the boxes.. etc etc) feels, to this old ex hack, like a diversionary tactic.
If they persist in this back-door money-grab, I’m out. I’ve just turned auto-renewal OFF.
There are, after all, options.
from a business point of view, either someone has just made a critically bad decision (so bad it feels like an april fool) that will tank THS, or, THS is already in such trouble that this was deemed the only way forward. whichever it is, that’s a shame, but there are plenty of other services waiting to expand with people leaving.
This! I couldn’t click through to open the Ts&Cs on the mobile app so I switched to my computer to see if I could open them there. So sneaky. So many people just click accept without checking them - to be honest, including myself! - but because I’d seen someone post elsewhere asking if it was a scam… I paused for a beat and switched to the laptop…
Today’s announcement of a booking fee for each sit has been the final straw and I will not be renewing my membership.
I plan to submit a Data Subject Access Request to retrieve all personal data that THS holds. This includes reviews I’ve received from pet owners.
A request for reviews of your performance as a dog sitter would be considered a data subject access request (DSAR) under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), as this information constitutes your personal data.
Here’s why:
Personal Data: The reviews and opinions expressed about your performance directly relate to you as an identifiable living individual, which falls under the broad definition of personal data.
Right of Access: The UK GDPR grants individuals (data subjects) the right to access all their personal data that an organisation (data controller) holds about them. This includes information held in HR records, emails, databases, and written notes, even opinions.
The organisation holding the data (e.g., the platform you work through, or the client if they are a business) is generally obligated to:
Respond to the request within one month.
Provide a copy of your personal data free of charge.
Besides, we were just coming out of the discussions about the non transparent communication of price changes. This is how they learn to communicate better?
Well there’s a huge savings for THS right there by not having to give away free months anymore (from referrals)
Please change the subject.
This is not a product update.
A product update would be adding new features or solving the many bugs.
This is a price update.
fyi, this has just been announced this morning, and the fees don’t kick in until the end of anyone’s current membership period (i.e. my renewal is set to be july, if i chose to stay, i wouldn’t pay fees until then). so it’s probably not going to affect many people that immediately, and i’d definitely recommend reviewing your listing! 
I have a difficult time seeing why sitters with basic plans would be discarded by owners in favour of those with premium.
An owner will pay their fee regardless of the status of the sitter.
It’s a while since I posted on this forum. I learnt loads from it, and the wisdom has been priceless. But I find the ‘badges’ irritating, patronising, and a tiny bit sinister. Plus, it spooked me a bit to find another member was collecting and analysing my stats, however well-intentioned.
Anyway, I’m dropping in to say I won’t renew my membership next time. I said I wouldn’t when overlapping sits were stopped, but when the time came I caved, as enough of our sits are off TH to make overlaps possible for us, and I wanted to keep my options open.
But this crosses a thick red line for me, emphasising how TH has evolved from a caring, collaborative community to a cynical, greedy shareholder service, using home owners, sitters and animals as units for profit.
I’ve seen up close other greedy corporations, the more their profits increase the greedier they get, cutting roles in the name ‘efficiency’ so service becomes worse and worse, and remaining staff become stressed and fearful.
This is not a business model, or a worldview, I want to support. My future house sits will be based on relationship and reciprocity.
As my partner and I have increasingly sat off TH, our key learning has been to agree conditions that are important to us and the home owner at the outset, so everyone is less likely to take liberties with no ‘rules’ to stop them. This has generally worked - and where it hasn’t, I simply haven’t gone back. It’s taken us a while, but we’ve both now built enough repeat sits that we know and love; that feel like authentic, relational community.
This is totally inappropriate, greedy, disappointing and upsetting.
The spirit of this kind of platform should be completely different: THS is acting like Airbnb did in the past, becoming what now is.
Plus , they don’t offer any support to the basic members: every time I needed support I didn’t receive it. The app is tremendously affected by bugs, and the annual fee is already very high. Justifying this costs with the service offered is simply ridiculous.
No way I’ll accept again sits though the platform.
Indecent! 
I book a lot of my regular sits outside of THS and this new booking fee will only encourage more full time sitters to do so or will effectively more than double the membership fee. It will also make short sits harder to fill for pet owners.
I am thinking absolutely the same! This booking fee makes absolutely no sense to me and I am not willing to pay this. This is just a cash flow for THS! I am really disappointed with this decision!
Just received the email @TheEnglishFlaneur
I didn’t see this coming, very very disappointing.
I have a premium membership, I don’t have to pay the booking fees, but I wonder if the premium amount will increase as a consequence at some stage.
Yes, and it’s so sad - yet familiar. I’ve watched so many ethical start-ups cut more and more corners over the years as profit becomes more important than values. The ones who hang on to values long-term, with profit as livelihood rather than primary driver, are few and far between. It just seems to be the way of the world: gradual enshittification, but with new, ethical alternatives springing up all the time.
If the pet owner cancels the sit does the sitter get a refund of the booking fee?