Are you a sitter? If so are the rating categories live?
The new owner ratings are live as of mid last week @kimshady.
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I think the new categories for homes is an important step in the right direction. But I think the new system even with blind reviews still has obstacles. On both sides, there is a restraint from criticism because both sitters and homeowners look at the reviews that a person has written and may be put off by anyone who seems too picky or even tends to rate low, and may immediately rule those people out. (I probably would avoid both sitters and petparents with standards I felt were too stringent.)
I’ve been to houses where I’ve felt a need to do some extra cleaning in the kitchen or bathroom for myself upon arrival, or before I left out of concern I’d be blamed for existing conditions. I know there are some sitters with less tolerance for these things, who might appreciate the warning, but I’d be concerned about looking like my standards are too high and putting off future hosts and/or hurting the feelings of hosts whose homes I’d probably return to, despite the mess.
As a petparent, I haven’t bumped up against any major messes or destruction upon my return, but some sitters clearly make more of an effort than others at tidying up, but I haven’t deducted stars by category so far.
In both cases if something were a 3 or 2 or 1, I’d give a low rating. But if it’s the difference between a 4 and a 5 in a category, I’d probably go with the 5. I admit it’s not great because it doesn’t warn people or even warn the person it’s aimed at to improve. Not sure what can be done about this.
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Hello @temba Therese is currently not online so I am happy to help with this one 
@Reliablesitter @Manfred The overall number of stars for sitters and owners is not prefilled and appears blank as per @Lassie screenshot. The member then needs to select the number of stars they would like to give overall. So for example, if you want to give 5 stars you click on the 5th star and all five stars will be filled in. This applies to both the app and the website.
Hopefully to offer some reassurance the way the stars are filled is in alignment with other review sites, there was also user testing on how intuitive it was to complete the stars. However, mistakes can happen so If anyone chooses the wrong number of stars then the Membership Services team are more than happy to manually update it for you.
@Manfred That does sound strange, please feel free to send me your registered email address via DM and I can get this looked into for you as you should not be seeing any prefilled stars when you leave a review.
I hope that helps and this is a good prompt as I am off to leave a review for my sit I just finished 
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@Carla if someone selects one star intending to then click each star until all five are clicked does this work or does the system take the first click as the final answer ( which would explain how some homeowners are “accidentally”giving one star ) ?
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Hello @Silversitters great point! I just tested this when leaving my review. You can click on each one up until 5 if you continuously click them 1,2,3,4,5, but I played around and if you click on 1 then pause slightly before clicking the next one it did take it as one star, but as long as I did not click on the ‘next’ I could just amend it. So it might be a case as can happen sometimes user error or a mistake.
Membership Services can always help edit it and I have passed this thread to the review team just for their awareness.
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@Carla, can you just click on the fifth star without going through the whole sequence?
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@Twitcher yes, you can just click the 5-star if you want, which is what I normally do. I just tested it the other way as well to try all the options!
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I just had my first not-quite-five-star review due to the categories included now.
I guess it’s a good thing, to have categories… but the host took off one star in both ‘organization’ and ‘self sufficiency’ despite a glowing review and my taking her sick bird across the city to emergency vet, and now my reputation appears tarnished. 
I did reply to her review of me but oh well, some people can’t be pleased enough. Wish she’d had the consideration to talk to me first, instead of leaving some stars empty. 
Idk.
@Jcat33 I don’t understand your post .
For sitters these have been categories for as long as I have been a member .
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Oh! I guess you’re right! Maybe hadn’t noticed because I’ve never had one star off in any category.
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I meant the categories…. Until recently our review would be a single, general, starred review, not including those five categories…now the subcategories show up as part of our review page. I’m probably not being very clear but I hope you understand what I mean.
@Jcat33 As @Silversitters said Hosts have always been able to rate sitters in 5 categories. The general (unspoken) understanding & agreement among hosts & sitters appears to be that you rate 5* everywhere unless something goes drastically wrong! So unfortunately a missing star sticks out like a sore thumb, especially when it feels entirely unjustified. The recent new addition to reviews is that sitters can now also rate hosts in 5 categories, whereas untill a few weeks ago the system was unbalanced and unfair as sitters could only rate the overal sit.
I know how you feel as we just got a great (written)review but with one star knocked off for self-sufficient. All we’d done was ask a few more questions than usual on arrival (to a blind handover)& during the sit, as the host had left entirely inadequate notes and not the promised Welcome Guide. We just wanted to be able to do our 5* best but got penalzsed for it which think was pretty unfair. We would never dock stars if the overal sit was great- it has to be something worth commenting on. If we’d had the same attitude as those hosts we would have a docked a star for them in communication! Instead we messaged them privately to recommend they make a proper Welcome Guide for future sitters. That is the friendlier way to operate imho.
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Thanks! Yes, the ‘absence’ of a star really is glaring. And I got one knocked off for the same reason— for sending a simple text about the dishwasher! Would they rather we don’t keep things clean?? Baffling. Host didn’t seem to care much, whereas I was devastated!
Looking back on my 40+ reviews, none of them show the categories— only this recent one! Why would that be?
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@Jcat33 - the categories for homeowners to review sitters have always been there but categories for sitters to review homeowners is a recent introduction.
@Jcat33 that seens strange- we have received reviews going back to 2018 and every single one shows all 5 categories with stars- right below the written review.
On our own reviews of hosts its only the 2 most recent sits that we have been able to review them in categories.
I wonder if you are mixing things up?
Omg! You are correct! My brain is mush!! I guess I never thought about it because I never saw a star out of place! Thanks for helping me realize….
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They did it- they FINALLY added the categories for sitters to rate homeowners on!!!
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Just used the new review system for my last two sits. It worked like a charm. While the sits went well and I had no need to dock any stars, with the double-blind system I felt able to add more information that will be helpful to future sitters without relying on the “read between the lines” method. That’s what I was hoping the change would do.
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The new process is great thanks
However, why can’t it be done correctly?
Today was the first day that both I and the HO could write a review as the sitting ended yesterday. So today was Day one.
We both completed the reviews before 9am.
However, I have just received a message (4 hours later) to tell me that:
You can no longer leave H … a review
The two week review window has passed but you can read his review of you.
So, introduce a new feature, but fully test it please to eliminate these nonsense messages
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