That’s beyond bonkers! @Jenny surely that’s a MS executive with no training. No one should be telling sitters that a Dorset sit is in fact London? #recipefordisaster
THS seems to often operate illogically.
Just spotted a listing where the HO describes upfront in the first sentences how their dog has already bitten a sitter… I’ve alerted THS support.
Thank you so much for reporting that to the team @BonnyinBrighton 
Was it a Turkish 
sit @BonnyinBrighton? 
#justcurious
No it was Perth Australia.
Has it been taken down @BonnyinBrighton?
No longer showing 
I have to say that this is a serious pet-peeve of mine atm. Searching for and applying for sits is a time-consuming process; even more-so for competitive sit locations.
I’m traveling to the UK this Spring. Having to check Googlemaps at every notification for a saved search, only to find the sit is an hour+ drive from London, significantly wastes my time at least a dozen times a day. Every. Single. Day.
I actually spent an hour writing up detailed use-case examples wrt how disruptive this is, along with suggestions on how it could/should work (postal codes anyone?)…only to have the browser eat my post due to the recent interface & formatting bugs I’ve been experiencing with the Forums.
These are the type of things that seriously test my patience. 
@MerryPuppins school holiday times will see London families away in droves, we had 2 X two weeks in great locations last summer. But they might not advertise too early as they don’t have to.
Thanks for that, @Cathie ; I’d been thinking the same myself so not getting too pfaffed that I’ve not seen the right sit as yet. I have a good bit of flexibility & I’m not dependent on a sit to make my trip work — I’ll be going regardless, as I have tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show this year (long-held bucket-list item, so absolutely thrilled.) 
The real issue I have is spending the next 2-1/2 months jumping at every notification day & night, only to find that 90% or more of the listings are for nowhere even remotely near the city in any realistic way, or by any stretch of the imagination. Who wants to waste an hour or more of every day, cumulatively, researching inaccurate listings?
Search is the most basic functionality of this platform, and yet it’s so very broken — and in the year I’ve been here I’ve not seen a single indication that it’s being looked at from a development perspective. I love THS for enabling me to live what I consider a charmed life, but this kind of thing completely baffles & frustrates me.
Maybe I’m doing something wrong…?
Type it into a text file and copy/ paste it into the reply box.
Stop, I’m getting dizzy ! 
I dont think you are doing something wrong, but here are my two tips to controlling notifications (just in case you dont do them already):
Set the search area by zooming the map, not by writing a location.
Adjust the other parameters as tight as possible - pets, dates, minimum length of a sit etc. When there is a plenty of time, you can be super picky.
Also sometimes a city search (only on the computer I believe) will give you a list of hosts that are not right now looking for a sitter. This is tedious work, but you can look at listings you like, check if they go away every summer/last summer, and like the ones that work for you. In general it is not wanted by hosts that you contact them about future dates, but if they do post earlier dates, if you dare, you can write them that you are already looking for summer dates (just withdraw your application immediately ao that other sitters can apply and so that host doesn’t need to do anything more than read the start of your message and forget about you if they are unpleased with you reaching out).
Pretty sure that will not retrieve the text I lost…ergo, not helpful.
“Set the search area by zooming the map, not by writing a location.”
Thanks. I do some of these, but I’ve been unable to see a way to save a search once you’ve zoomed in via the map — even if I go back to the Listings view afterward. I use the iPhone app almost exclusively…does this only work via the browser? (Being lazy at 4:40am, I’ll go check when I’ve had coffee! 
)
“Also sometimes a city search (only on the computer I believe) will give you a list of hosts that are not right now looking for a sitter.”
I’ve also noticed that this sometimes works & sometimes does not. I use the app so it’s not just a browser thing. I’ve even seen it [work, not work, then work] in three successive searches, without changing any of the filter parameters at all. It was one of the things I wrote up in the lost post.
I think that when you zoom in with the map on iPhone (at least - I use one) you need to go back to the list, then add one another criteria, such as sit length / which pets. Then it maybe lets you save it.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear which is why you found a pefectly good solution to be “not helpful”. If you type your intended post into a text file, it’s saved there and you can copy it into the post if it’s lost after replying on the forum.
I’ll walk you through it. If I had the issues you were experiencing, I would type this entire reply including your quote into a text file. Then I would copy it into the reply box on the forum, and submit it. If the post didn’t reach the forum and I couldn’t retrieve it, I would repeat the process until it did. It’s a bit more work requiring a couple of extra mouse clicks and I wouldn’t suggest it on every post, but certainly on those that took some work to put together.
@MerryPuppins maybe favouriting would work best. When I am bored I do a search of a location and favourite a bunch that I like the look of, then I get those notifications. I only use the app so the map is tedious. I like to be organised early but sadly not everyone does.
Thanks @Cathie. It’s a good strategy…I do that as well. (It’s also how I noticed there were nearly 700 active sits listed for London, while only maybe 1/3 of them were within an hours’ travel from the city center .)
I’ll slog through it as I would really like to find something during my trip. I just wish Search weren’t so ridiculously unstable. It doesn’t seem like it should be this hard.