Hi everyone, I was a member for a year and after a negative experience decided to let my membership expire. However, my last sitters finished a day before my membership expired, and I wanted to leave them a positive review, as they did a great job and have zero reviews because they’re new to the platform. Unfortunately, I could not review the same day the sit ended, 16 June, and the next day, 17 June, when my membership expired, I was no longer allowed to review them.
I’ve contacted the online help chat, and their response was as follows:
"We understand your concern about reviewing sitters after your membership has expired. Unfortunately, once your TrustedHousesitters membership expires, you lose access to certain features, including the ability to review sitters. However, all your profile information, including reviews, is securely saved for when you decide to renew your membership. Here’s how you can renew your membership:
- Visit our website and go to the checkout.
- Enter your card details to purchase another year’s membership.
Once renewed, you can leave a review for your sitter. We value your feedback as it helps our community grow stronger. Thank you for your understanding."
This only reassures me that I made the right decision to leave THS, but I’m sorry for the sitters who just started their membership, did a FANTASTIC job, and are being punished because of this. I specifically set the sit to end the day before my membership ended so that I could review them. Does anyone have experience with this?
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Write and email them a reference letter that they can add to their profile
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You could write them a reference. Not the same as a review, I know, but better than nothing.
Or THS could do the right thing and let you write the review…
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This is infuriating!! THS, you can DO BETTER!!!
This should definitely be an EXCEPTION to any rules about what former members can and cannot do.
Of course, you are not going to pay for another year’s membership fee simply to give the review that was honestly earned.
Where is the COMMON SENSE?!!!
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Or if you do decide to renew and review, I wonder whether you’d then be able to cancel within a certain time. You’d need to read the Ts & Cs carefully to make sure you don’t get caught out, but hopefully THS would allow you to honour your part of the reviewing process, for a sit that occurred whilst your membership was still active.
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Last year we had an owner leave us a review after their subscription had expired, so unless THS have changed something, then it is still possible. They couldn’t do other things, but they could review us. But so many changes have happened since then, so I have no idea if you can still do that.
We have experienced this problem, but we were the sitters. In our case the homeowner’s membership expired during the sit. (I didn’t think this could happen, but it did) and although they wanted to leave us a really positive review they couldn’t. They also contacted THS to explain and got the “no can do” response.
Rather than loose the opportunity for a review completely I requested a reference from the homeowner and they gladly did this, so at least that is on our profile.
It still pi**es me off though that we no longer have a 100% positive feedback record for our sits, as for me any sit with no feedback is a red flag.
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I remember a discussion on this forum about this very subject about a year ago or so. I’m pretty sure you can find it if you search.
And yes, I do remember people confirming that one could still review even after the subscription had expired.
It appears the rules have (silently) changed.
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We’ve just finished a sit where the hosts subscription expired during the sit, they contacted THS and they made it possible to do the review! I can’t understand how they could do it and you can’t
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This is good to know. After reading some other posts, I think that I need to email member services and not just rely on the response from the chatbot. THS really doesn’t make it easy, but the sitters deserve the review!
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I tried posting an update of the official email correspondence with member services, but the forum administrators say this is not allowed. Strange that my communication with member services isn’t allowed. Apprently, I have to give a summary in my own words, so here goes: Thanks, but you can’t leave a review because yo’re not an active member, pay us, and you can leave the review.
Also, I just received an email asking for me to review THS and tell them why I decided to leave.
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I really want to let this go and move on, but to add insult to injury, this morning I received an email reminding me to review the sitters.
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I would forward this e-mail you have received to member services - point out the discrepancy with the advice you’ve previously been given by MS and request that your query is escalated to a manager .
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Thanks for the advice. I’ll do just that.
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MS responded apologizing for the confusing email and reiterating that I cannot review because I am not an active member.
@MalloryEchols is it still within 14 days of the sit ending ?
If so here is a workaround.
renew your membership - post a review - and then immediately cancel your membership for a full refund .
“ Your membership is here to be enjoyed and so if you haven’t used it within 14 days of joining or auto-renewing, you can cancel it. This means that you can request a full refund as long as you have not either applied for a sit or have live dates published on your home listing within these 14 days.”
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Good idea, and I appreciate the sentiment, but I no longer trust ‘Trusted’ Housesitters and don’t care to spend any more time or energy on this matter. I believe I’ve gone above and beyond what I as an HO could/should have done, and I will just write the sitters an external reference and wish everyone on this platform all the best, because when managed well, it is really beautiful 
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I’m looking into this as I’m in the same predicament! It says
" To be eligible for a refund, you must not have used your membership within 14 days of joining or auto-renewing. This means that you can request a full refund as long as you have not added dates to your listing, applied for any sits, or messaged other members within these 14 days."
I’ve read through T&C’s and can’t see any further elaboration than above. So I assume I can reactivate leave a review and cancel? That’s not “messaging” is it?
Looks like it would work for you @Jemima worth a try ?