Considering I had a sitter crash into my garage door & cause major damage, not to mention let several strangers drive my car which I had not authorized, also into my house, I don’t think it’s unreasonable. You are allowing someone to live in your house & drive your vehicle at a minimum they should be willing to give you their drivers license, this is all I ask for when someone drives my car is a copy of their DL.
Kudos to you for thinking to ask owners and sitters! We just wrapped a sit where the HOs clearly didn’t take the input from prior sits. It’s not charity, it’s mutual! Good luck with your sit coming up and in the future!
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@Myka, gosh that’s terrible to hear.
But I’m curious on how your extensive list of questions would aid due diligence for damage to your garage?
As experienced housesitters of many month+ sits, we have never encountered such granular questions. There’s some really great questions in your list but also some padding and oddities. The sheer granularity would deter us as suggests a mindset of employer-employee (nope) and/or micromanagement (nope).
If insurance is important to you then perhaps you should hire a professional rather than seek a fair trade with a volunteer housesitter.
We find video calls to be an essential. But as we learn, we carefully add specific questions to process … and likewise remove needless ones. After reviewing the listing, we typically have identified specific potential concerns and so determine specific questions to seek related insight.
Regardless we hope that you raised the housesitter issues with support@trustedhousesitters.com.
Hey there, thanks for that reply, honestly that litany of questions is a rough guide, I mean a very rough guide for me, I usually package a bunch of questions into one & for the most part we just chat. I’ve realized that I actually use more of a vibe & connection or chemistry when I determine my sitters, and I never ask about insurance. I don’t care, I have USAA, so anyone I give permission to drive my car, as long as they have a valid license is covered. Also I have a 2013 Santa Fe Hyundai and I love the car, but it’s not exactly high blue book value, so I’m pretty open & free when it comes to letting my sitter use my car. It’s just in this case, I can’t, I’m taking Mishoo (name of my car) cross country, it may be it’s last hooray, but it does have a new engine (2022), so it’s still a really good car.
Regarding the crash into the garage door, yeah that person to my knowledge got kicked off THS, they did an investigation & she is no longer on the platform, not because of the crash, because she had multiple people in / out of my house and allowed complete strangers to drive my car. She was awful, I actually feel sorry for her, I think she was truly spiraling down out of control.
THS handled the situation, professionally, I wouldn’t say promptly, but they did their due diligence.
Re: The questions I actually got from another sitter & they put it on the forum, so I just copied it & have it available in case I want to reference it. Like I said, for me, it’s more common sense & gut feeling selection, also rely heavily on THS reviews.
Thank you, I’m asking my current sitter if she can write down suggestions, or things for follow on sitters to be aware of to get more information on, it will be refreshing to get it from her perspective. And it will help me with future sitters. She is really great & it was a long sit, 3 months.