There has been a lot of discussion lately about leaving honest reviews or leaving no reviews at all in some cases. Sometimes owners or sitters ask for advice on how to grade a specific situation. Some people say if the pets are happy, it’s OK. It doesn’t matter if the house wasn’t very clean or the dogs weren’t walked so much… It’s still normal to give 5 stars.
When I first started in THS, I had this idea that the star system would be similar to school grades, so a quite good sitting would get 4 stars, an acceptable one, 3 and 5 would be an excellent experience. Luckily enough, my first sittings were perfect, so I only gave 5 stars. I was not too specific in the wording as I was afraid that if I mentioned that I had been picked up at the airport or things like that it could set some kind of standard or pressure for the owner regarding future sits.
Then, I started to read the forum and realized that 5 stars was standard and that most people were afraid of retaliation. I also realized that it’s difficult to leave a bad review when people have been nice or when I don’t really know how to express that experience, particularly if it was a contrast with other reviews. After long thought, I didn’t write reviews for two of my sits.
The system is now blind but I feel we still have the old habits. Someone said recently that if they see a pattern of giving bad reviews, you’re not going to get chosen (or get applications in the case of HO) for fear of being reviewed negatively. Still, I think the situation is gradually changing. I have seen more 4 stars reviews lately, particularly in some areas like cleaning, organization or communication. I think some of us are afraid of using the system in a way that may be read differently from what we intended and that’s why I am very interested in your opinions, both sitters and HOs.
So, what do think? Is the way you write your reviews and the stars you assign the same or is it changing after blind reviews?
Do you think (in due time or in an ideal situation) it should be more accurate and varied ? I mean should 5 stars only be used when there have been no issues at all?
Five stars is basically a perfect score. If the five stars are accompanied with ample comments you at least get a sense of how things really went. But five stars should be reserved for the truly excellent. Everything went according to expectations and more and the comments will highlight the aspects which were in the “more” category. I’ve seen that so many times when evaluating employees. You tell employees for whom you had great expectations that they fulfilled expectations with a “met expectations” rating and they are disappointed, even mad. We live in the era of the superlative and people are not pleased unless they get a “best job ever” rating. It’s a bit sad really. 
The main change is that I used to wait until the HO wrote their review.
The other thing is of course that categories were introduced in sitter reviews. I think I have always given five stars in the categories too. I have been pretty happy!
I use 5-stars as the default setting for reviews. Significant issues are subtracted.
If you grade it like in school, where 5 = A, 4 = B, you’re forcing it into a bell curve, which means most HOs/sitters would be expected to get 3 stars = a C. Average.
I disagree. 5 stars should be “nothing bad to report”.
We’ve completed almost 30 THS sits across 5 different countries and have given and received all 5 star reviews. Since the blind reviews have come into place I haven’t needed to deduct stars or write less than positive reviews of any of our wonderful experiences, several of them repeat sits for lovely HO’s whom we’ve formed friendships with.
However, there was this one sit we completed, before the blind reviews came into place that looking back on now was actually quite a horror sit for us in The US. I would definitely write a more honest review of it now since the reviews are blind with less fear of retaliation. We were new at the time on this site and the review doesn’t accurately depict our experience or help other sitters with the focus being solely on the positives. It makes me wonder if the next sitter they had were then influenced by our glowing review first to take the sit and then also to write a similarly positive one.
Of course I hope that we won’t have to write negative reviews in the future but I am no longer afraid of writing honest accounts, deducting stars where it’s due etc. Sure, we haven’t had to do so yet however as I mentioned we have done quite a few repeat sits with the only differences between previous ones being weather and seasons!
As a sitter, I’m still giving 5 star reviews and still receiving them since the blind system went live. A sit would have to be really bad for me to give anything lower than 5 stars so I’ve been very happy with the sits I’ve done and obviously the homeowners have been happy with me as well. I do realize that one of these days though, I may not get that 5 star!
I’ve been sitting for 10 years now and while I can’t remember the exact details of every sit I have done, with the exception of one sit 9 years ago that was problematic for a number of reasons (and I didn’t review), I can honestly say that most of my experiences have been pretty positive, and I don’t ever recall feeling like I had to hold back on saying negative things for fear of retaliation,etc… I have never written a review that I felt was dishonest, misleading or that left out ‘bad’ stuff. And since I am very discerning about the sits I take and rely heavily on intuition, which has served me very well, I have continued to have good sits that have not required any negative feedback.
Sure, there may have been some smaller issues here and there, but nothing worth mentioning in my opinion. Then there have been certain ‘negative’ things that are very easy to simply write in a factual way without being critical at all. For example, I had a sit a couple of years ago where one of the dogs had accidents inside the house and would wake you up at around 630 on the dot every day to eat. I mentioned these things in the review but was sure to mention that since it was a really small dog, the accidents were easy to clean up, and once you fed him, you could easily go back to bed as he would simply relax after eating.
The new review system is certainly an improvement in many ways, but as evidenced by many posts on the forum asking how to address negative aspects of a sit on either end, the nature of the previous review system clearly wasn’t the only barrier to leaving really honest feedback.
There is also the issue of people being afraid of hurting people’s feelings and wanting to avoid any uncomfortable encounters that may result from what they say. That most people will feel as comfortable criticizing the cleanliness of someone’s home as they would criticizing the service they received in a restaurant is unlikely. This is especially true if the hosts were really nice and you got along well.
Given the nature of this exchange, there may always be a risk of reviews not fully disclosing all the negative elements of the experience, and this is just something everyone has to accept. And while there may sometimes be omissions in someone’s feedback, I don’t think a lot of people would outright lie about something.
A sitter may not disclose that the house was really dirty, but they probably wouldn’t lie and say it was spotlessly clean. A host may not disclose they were disappointed with how the sitter left the house, but they probably wouldn’t lie and say how tidy and clean they were. So when positive aspects are specifically mentioned, I take that as the truth.
As far as what constitutes a ‘perfect’ rating, I think this really depends on the context. And in the context of sitting, I generally feel that so long as the sitter performed the core tasks well–took good care of the pets, kept the house clean, communicated promptly,etc…, a 5 star rating is warranted.
Looking at it any other way would mean perfect ratings would likely only be doled out for doing a bunch of stuff you aren’t expected to do.
My husband and I take excellent care of people’s pets and leave their homes spotless. We communicate promptly at all stages, are super-self sufficient and are very easy to get along with. I would be pretty unhappy if a host only left me 4 stars because I didn’t have a three course meal waiting for them like their last sitter did.
And as for sitters rating hosts, the same type of thing–if they fulfilled their core functions well, such as leaving a clean house, a good guide, communicated well,etc… they should get a 5 star rating. I don’t think they should be docked for not doing things they wouldn’t be expected to do like leave a fridge full of food.
If you really want to illustrate just how great the host or sitter is, the written feedback will allow you to expand on why you rated them the way you did.
I personally think that the reviews should just be the written feedback without the stars and categories.
I really appreciate the ability for Sitters to give Owners stars in various categories, and it has changed the way that I review Owners.
5 stars is the norm for me, with deductions for anything specific. I have only given a 4 star once (so far) in a single category, “cleanliness,” and I explained clearly in my review why I did that. Looking back, I probably should have given them a 3 in “cleanliness,” as the kitchen was pretty dirty when we arrived, and the rugs had not been vacuumed recently.
Explaining your reasons in the review is KEY.
Giving less than 5 stars with no explanation is not really helping anyone.
Also, there are some things that I tell Owners that do not go in the review, for example, “One of the house keys was sticking in the lock sometimes. You might want to check that out. It was a bit of a problem while we stayed at your house.”
Then you have no way to know who goes above and beyond. Five stars becomes a mix of good, excellent and exceptional. If almost everyone only gets 5 stars then what’s the point of giving star reviews? And that goes for owners and sitters. If we didn’t meet a sitter’s expectations we would like to know what we can improve. Our best review is for a sitter to want to come back, no matter the number of stars.
You can express superlative in the remarks.
Let us know when you choose a Sitter with multiple 4 star reviews!!
For the sake of argument, why does this really matter? Of course we’d all rather have an exceptional sitter than a good one, but “good” is still, well, good! My dog is still happy, my plants still thriving, my house still clean-- I don’t lose anything for not differentiating between a “good” and “exceptional” sitter. I have had both types of sitters and would be happy to invite both back. At the end of the day, confirming a sitter is a binary yes/no decision, so “good”, “excellent”, and “exceptional” all fall into the same bucket.
To me, five stars are for when all reasonable expectations have been fulfilled. If people go above and beyond, that’s what comments are for. I’m not going to ding a host stars for not going above and beyond.
I check how hosts review before I apply for sits. If they give reviews less than five stars and don’t specify reasons that make sense to me, I’ll skip their listings. If they ding a sitter for not going above and beyond by giving four stars, I’ll skip their sit. I’ll also pass if they don’t post reviews for sitters.
So far under the blind review system, I’ve continued to get rave reviews. But I figure the longer you sit, the greater your odds of getting a bad match. And if or when that happens, I expect that reasonable hosts will see an outlier review in context.
I’ve used the blind review system as intended, including deducting stars and being specific about why. I don’t care if that risks other hosts not choosing me. I hope the reasonable ones will recognize that I’m fair and transparent.
As it is, the hosts I down-rated responded rationally and politely to my review, acknowledging how they should be more transparent about their pets going forward. (One cat would randomly try to bite or scratch, which the hosts didn’t share till they were walking out of the door.)
After another sit, I called out how the hosts’ pets would be better off with a couple, because their year-old pup needed nonstop attention and tried to attack the cats. That meant I had to separate them and the sweet cats got shortchanged. They were all lovely pets, but too much for a solo sitter when it came to optimal attention for the pets. The pup would bark and whine in outraged jealousy if I spent even a minute on the cats. (Oddly, despite that, which I shared with my hosts during the sit, they still kept trying to get me to accept repeat sits.)
Actually my point is why give stars if the default is 5 stars? I’ve read posts in this forum from people that gave 5 stars in cases where they were really not warranted and people saying they don’t understand why sitters or owners always had 5 stars when they had a bad experience with said sitter or owner. What good is any review system if people do not give an honest review? We recently bought an item online that we never received. After a few weeks we wrote an email to the company asking when we should expect our item (which was a custom made product worth 200$). They responded it was delivered which it clearly wasn’t. They rushed a new product that we received and it was exactly what we ordered. When we wrote our review we gave an average note on the “expedition” portion of the review but we explained that the company didn’t question our word and promptly corrected the situation. As a customer, reading a review like this makes me trust this company more than just having a vague review with 5 stars because I know that they respect their customers and correct mistakes. It’s not about being perfect; it’s about doing the right thing.
So say you’re my host and you don’t pick me up at the airport and fill the fridge with food for me (examples of going above and beyond), then following your logic, I should give you only four stars?
You have raised quite a few interesting issues here. Basically things that I was considering when I started the thread but you have analyzed them perfectly well. I would like to emphasize two:
- “the nature of the previous review system clearly wasn’t the only barrier to leaving really honest feedback”
- leaving 5 stars for those who go above and beyond would set a high level of competition and would be very stressful for both HOs and sitters. The written feedback can do justice for those extras.
There is just a statement that I don’t fully agree with
I don’t mind about the stars but I think categories are important I even feel some kind of description should be encouraged instead of just the star rating.
I also think communication, organization and reliability should be assessed for both owners and sitters.
@gchampagne I’ll be honest, if a HO has multiple 4 star reviews, I would avoid applying to the sit. It means something’s not quite right.
On the other hand, if a restaurant has an average of 4 stars, I’ll dine there because it means it’s pretty good.
It’s not the same thing. In a restaurant, you spend 2 hours and you’re out. At a housesit, you spend days/weeks/months and can’t just pick up and go when you don’t like it. That’s why we need to be sure it’s 5 stars from most people, not 3 for average or 4 for good. Just not good enough.
Indeed.
I have a review where the HO gave me four stars (overall, and in every category) without a word of criticism. She was new, and I assume that she regarded four stars as the baseline for “good”.
But she must have seen that “everybody” gives five stars? For example when she chooses applicants.
(This was a sit at a very average home near Gloucester, with two big strong dogs that were quite a bit of work, that I had gone above and beyond with. I had enjoyed doing that, seeing how the dogs had been improving. It was a bit marred by that review.)
If I saw such a review from a host, I’d guess that they had unreasonable expectations and skip them.