It occurs to me that, even with 99 positive reviews, if the 100th one is negative, that’s the one which will stay in the sitter’s mind and worry them.
Just a suggestion to turn this to your advantage: when applying for your next sit, draw attention to this review with a comment like “unfortunately my high standards did not match those of the HO (or sitter if you’re the HO) which resulted in a misunderstanding on both sides. Please be assured this has never happened before and I hope you will consider my application based on previous 5* reviews”.
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The more reviews you have, the less impact a single bad review will have. An odd bad review in amongst a sea of good ones says more about the person that wrote the bad review than it does about the person receiving it.
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I agree with Colin, I’d be more inclined to think that maybe there was something about the poster off the single bad review…
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This is a good point which I really needed to read right now! We just returned from a sit that we really enjoyed and especially enjoyed the pet and thought things went great. After a week, we finally received a review today which was a one liner indicating they returned to a happy pet. I felt something was amiss as we have glowing reviews and noticed they gave us a 4 star in the “tidy” category. We leave every place spotless and I wondered about this so contacted the couple. They indicated some of their dishes weren’t cleaned enough and the dog’s dish wasn’t cleaned enough, plants weren’t watered properly (they had loads of plants that were on the verge of dying when we arrived) and we tended to them every day. I felt slapped in the face. What the sitters didn’t know was that our son was hospitalized during this sit. My husband wanted to contact them and ask if perhaps a friend could step in but I didn’t want to let them down so we said nothing. Needless to say we went through a lot of personal stress during this sit but didn’t let them down in our minds, only to receive a review that certain things weren’t up to their expectations but they have no idea what we personally went through while on their sit.
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So, I’m sorry that you went through rough times during your sit and I hope your son is doing better. But if it’s going to impact the service provided then it’s best to coordinate with the HO to find a solution that will make you both happy. It’s neither of your fault that you had a personal emergency during the sit but it’s also not unfair of the HOs to be disappointed if things were less successful than they expected. Especially if you didn’t communicate with them that there was a problem.