We are very keen on joining Trusted House Sitters as a Combined member.
Mostly, we are looking to do a bit of travelling in our retirement as pet sitters, but may also (less frequently) need people to look after our own pets (two dogs and a cat).
I have had several auto-generated messages from THS offering a 20% discount for new members, but this only seems to apply to sitters.
Does anyone know if you can also get 20% off as a combined member too?
Or can we join as sitters and then switch our membership to Combined when we need to?
I see you have to pay upfront for a year and itās quite expensive, so I want to be sure weāre signing up to the right option.
Sorry to bother you with this, but Iāve emailed support@trustedhousesitters.com but not received a reply: and thought somebody may know!
I would say read the forum, see the experiences people are describing. Consider if this matches with your vision of sitting. Personally I would say where are you interested in sitting? US or UK plenty of options. The rest of the world is only a fraction of those two. Things to consider before you shell out your money. For the record all my sitting experiences have been excellent, likely this is the usual experience, but not always.
Reading the forum is really useful but thereās a bias towards negative experiences as most people come for help or to vent.
I would suggest searching for sits in places of your interest and reading listings and reviews, both the reviews given by Hos and sitters. Like that you will be able to see if there are sits that fit your needs.
@Newpetlover is definitely right about the negative bias, so it should not put you off. Definitely a good idea to check out sits in your preferred area.
I presume you were sent a code for the discount? Or is it just a link, where you can click & it only gives you the option of a sitter account?
As an aside, if you DM any current member here on the forums, we could send you a referral link that should give you 25% off any membership type or tier you choose.
(That said, I might still follow the advice of @Newpetlover and sign up as a Sitter first to try it out, unless you have a planned trip already for the near future.)
When you click to accept the 20%offer, see if there a tab for Home owner and combined. There usually is, in my experience. If the 20% is applied it will be obvious.
Thatās hard to say, depending on the individual hostsā circumstances and preferences.
From a sitter perspective, many of us avoid āsplit sits,ā because accountability can be messy with them.
Say you leave a home and pets in good shape, but the next sitter doesnāt. Or say someone else stole something or did damage? It can end up in pointing fingers, bad reviews, etc., even if you werenāt responsible for what went wrong. Or say the sitter before you leaves the home and pets in bad shape. How could you tell whether it was them or the hosts? How would you deal with that and how would you review?
There are plenty of sittings for two and three weeks.
No no - split sits are not a good idea - there are threads on this subject - use the magnifying glass and key in āSplit sittingsā and you will see what has been said in the past
Someone might consider you for a sit if you could do 80% of it but very unlikely to say yes to 3 weeks if itās an 8 week sit. Also, long sits are loved by digital nomads so theyāre in high demand a will go fast. If you only want shorter sits you should find plenty depending on location. #keepsearching
After I joined THS three years ago, I quickly started receiving unsolicited invitations from hosts. One of them was for a six-week sit that sounded great, but I didnāt want to be away from home that long. So I asked whether theyād split the sit and they agreed to ā they found another sitter, whom I could bookend with sitting for roughly two weeks on each end.
My sits turned out to be great, with the exception of my returning to find that the other sitter seemed to have cut corners, leaving the sit early. Like there was a large pile of kibble, with gnats, and there was a lot of debris in the water bowls.
The dogs were elderly and normally ate fresh food (which the hosts had prepared and frozen), with only a little kibble. The dogs were off their feed for a couple of days after my return for the second half of my sitting.
Also, while I was away, the other sitter asked whether I had broken a vase. I hadnāt and the host later said it probably was the regular cleaner and it didnāt matter.
Given such, I decided I wouldnāt do split sits going forward. I was too green to know when I started (that was the first sit I had accepted), but since figured that a lot could go wrong and I just got off easy.
The more HOs need the sitter, the more likely theyāll be to accept split sit. So if youāre really, really interested you can follow the listing and see if they donāt have many applicants. You can also see if they have had back to back sits in the past.
I donāt accept split sits and, in your case as a newbie, itās even more risky, as itās important to gather a few positive reviews in order to improve your options.
I am actually on a split sit right now, my first ever. It wasnāt exactly planned, either. When we confirmed the sit, I didnāt realize it was a split arrangement until I started mapping out my travel. Oops! Due to a rather complicated travel route and a bit of miscommunication, I ended up arriving two days before my leg of the sit was officially due to start.
As a result, the other sitter and I spent those two days together, and I absolutely loved it (I hope she did, too). We explored the area, went out to dinner, shared a bottle of wine while discussing ālife and all its trimmings,ā and, in short, had a wonderful time. Iād do it again in a heartbeat
p.s. I am a solo sitter and traveler. A bit of company now and then (as IĀ“ve found out) is very appreciated
I occasionally think that it would be nice to share a sit with another person, organized by the host. Or even by the sitters themselves, being able to advertise a future sit they have. Especially a demanding one. I would like to offer a night here and there to fellow travelers, maybe they have a gab between two sits, or just need one night.
However, it would bring a lot of risks. To spell out one of the issues with split sits is, that if you unclean something, break something, etc, who gets the blame?
Even with my partner, I arrived to a sit early, and they left it late, and obviously they could not clean the apartment back to its original state, as they had never seen that. No biggie, just some drying rack in wrong place and pillows mismatched on couches.
On another sit, the hosts father came to the house for the weekend in the middle of two week long sit. Again, who would have been liable?
As some will know Iāve just completed a split sit for a 12 week sit of two older dogs (the HOs were visiting family downunder). We did the first 3 weeks then handed off to the other couple who did 6 weeks then we returned to do the final 2 weeks. All three sits were 5*.
There were crucial things we all agreed that made this a low risk arrangement. The cleaners came on each of the handoff days, we each made video reports to the HO at handover. The other couple and ourselves were in contact via WhatsApp. We had a video chat together with the other sitters before agreeing to do the split sit.
It worked because we made it work and both they and us had lots of experience. The HOs were new but we coached them throughout the process. Would we do it again, probably not, but for other reasons.
I was going to ask if anyone had gotten that survey. I filled it out. They asked a lot of questions that seemed like the responses could be used in future marketing materials targeting prospective sitters; a few questions related to what type of support THS could provide to solo travelers (not software-related, more like new dedicated Forum Topics/Channels.) Everything was multiple choice; no real room for free-form answers or elaboration.
Iāve had a suspicion THS plans to cross over into the Travel/Tourism vertical; this survey didnāt dissuade me from that idea. Recent travel/tourism studies show Solo Travel to be the fastest growing tourism segment (and primarily among women of a ācertain age range.ā)
