New HO. Got an interested party (same state) who asked to get in touch thru my phone. I replied yes, then nothing after 3 days and an additional reply from me. Got 3 weeks left before the sit is needed.
There are better sitters out there for you. Just move on. They weren’t right for you, plus I notice you haven’t had any applicants, so if they haven’t bothered applying to you through THS, so they can’t be that interested anyway, I presume you reached out to them.
But it looks to me like there may be more obvious reasons…
Hope you don’t mind me saying this, but just a couple of tips, in the intro on your profile you say “please be patient with me” but that may put a lot of sitters off. I’d remove it. You are invisibly saying to a sitter that you may not respond to their messages in a timely fashion, so they’ll move on to someone that will. A sitter isn’t likely to put their life on hold for someone they don’t know as yet, which is what you are invisibly asking them to do.
Also you may want to tweak the responsibilities section of your THS profile (not your forum profile). At first glance/skim, a sitter may think your dogs need a 5 miles walk each time, or they need to drive 5 miles just to walk your dogs, when it’s very green and leafy where you are, I’m sure there’s walks on the doorstep.
Hope that helps
1 Like
If you want feedback (in addition to great feedback from @HappyDeb - this is a mutual exchange site where sitters apply to appealing sits to care for pets in exchange for accommodation.
I’d respectfully suggest you do some work on your listing to attract sitters:
i) the photos are poor quality/blurry, esp the interior shots. Replace with higher quality.
ii) read up on responsibilities required from HOs and represent how your sit meets them
Good luck
3 Likes
@findingzzero1, I’d take great comments from @BJane a step or two further.
Seems that you have a lovely property and two cute dogs. But listing contains poor quality photos and incomplete content. It is possible that housesitter applicant may have been concerned about unclear information. For example, encourage consider:
- Vehicle. Seems dogs enjoy spending time in dog park that is 5 miles away but no vehicle is provided. Are you expecting housesitters to take your dogs to park in their own vehicle - this may be dealbreaker for many housesitters and terminate interest by non-local housesitters
- Pet responsibilities. Approx distance/time pets walked each day and ballpark timing (one dog has “much energy”)
- Pet sleeping. Where? (dog beds, human beds, etc)
- Pet separation. How long can pets be left attended?
- Attractions. Information seems very summarized. Unsure if non-local person would understand. Be specific (attraction, distance, need car?)
- Transit. Any?
- Airports. Nearest?
2 Likes
re your original question: this sounds shady to me. I would not go off THS messaging until I received an official application and had some contact back and forth in the Inbox. Once you establish that they might be a good fit you can suggest a video chat or phone or whatever.
If you both decide to do the sit you will officially confirm them through the app and they will confirm as well. It sounds as if they may have withdrawn their application as sitters normally can’t contact hosts without applying but you have no applicants. Some mysteries here but hopefully with an few updates to your listing you’ll have new and better applicants shortly.
2 Likes
Thanks for the suggestions!
1 Like