Well, everybody here suspects that things went wrong when there was no review.
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That’s extremely important question - it is quite unfair to give stars only for the overall experience. The sitters also should rate whether the house was clean, how the pet parents were, or many other details explicitly. Sometimes I have a good experience with the pets but terrible experience with the house since the homeowners are careless and there is no place to express it. I hope this feature can be available as soon as possible to have more balanced system.
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Just got this message and cannot wait. A blind review system should help in those situations where people may have minor issues - but are nervous about the other party reading their comments until the other has also reviewed.
What are your thoughts on it?
As a sitter, I think I must be missing something here as I don’t see how this will be an improvement at all. I don’t like the idea that reviews will be “hidden” for 14 days. I could leave a sit that I thoroughly enjoyed and give the homeowner a great review whereas the homeowner may be totally unhappy with me and much to my shock, I discover a horrid review after 14 days! I feel this may create more retaliation between a homeowner and a sitter. Maybe I’m just not getting this! How is it an improvement? I do like the idea of sitters being able to rate homeowners with the star system as sitters are now rated - that’s an improvement.
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Sitter/HO did not submit a review during the allotted 14 day period.”
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My understanding is that as soon as both participants HO and sitter have submitted their reviews, they will be posted simultaneously. No retaliation reviews. If either one does not submit within the 14 days then the review isn’t posted.
Perhaps moderator can confirm @Carla
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@Carla will both parties also have only the first 14 days to comment on the other party’s review or will that be open forever?
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@ACLRJM Thank you for helping @Globetrotter
Yes, you are correct 
If only one person submits a review it will be hidden until the 14 days have passed then will be published, but by then the other member will not be able to leave a review. If both members leave a review and they leave it earlier then the reviews will be visible before the 14 days are up.
So exactly as others have mentioned there can be no retaliation reviews, based on reading a review and then leaving a retaliation one 
@Crookie Great one to check: Yes - you’ll still be able to leave a reply to your review/feedback (even after the 14-day window has passed).
Also from your earlier question, we are sending more reminder emails over the 14-day period
Thank you for your questions and feedback, I am more than happy to answer as much as I can, apologise I am not able to answer them all, but I have passed them to the team that is creating the new review system and they know much more than me We will get some more updates posted.
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I can see how my comment reads this way.
I’m hoping that members that have bad or unfavorable experiences will review if things went wrong if they think THS will acknowledge it as a good sit if they don’t review.
Maybe the new review system will encourage people to do this. Currently people say they don’t leave bad reviews because of possible retaliation and no reviews sends a red flag message . I don’t automatically assume that no review is a red flag, I investigate more.
Maybe now reviews will not be 5 stars or nothing.
Members may now feel free to say " I really enjoyed this sit but the HO changed the date several times" “sitter took excellent care of the cat but didn’t send the daily updates we agreed on”
I guess we will see soon.
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@pietkuip although several members mentioned no review was a good way to say things went wrong without leaving a bad review. I don’t like that practice or think no review is a red flag
I’m approaching 2 yrs sitting and there were small issues, but I haven’t felt I should leave a bad review. For a bad review it would have to be a situation I would not want anyone to find themselves in and that I really needed to say something.
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I just looked at a listing from this evening’s email notification. There was revenge reviewing and there was an eloquent response by the HO. But there were also missing reviews, and those made me really wary. And it made me see lots of things between the lines of the other reviews.
I welcome the new system, but I do not expect that it will eliminate the reluctance to write negative things. “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Missing reviews will remain a red flag.
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@pietkuip hoping for the best. We shall see.
Thanks for the clarification on that!
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I agree with you. I’ve never left a homeowner a bad review but I’ve never had anything terribly go wrong - maybe some small issues that really didn’t phase me. As a sitter, I’ve never had a bad review either. I’ve had a rather “neutral” review and I personally texted the HO to find out what I could have improved on and I learned from that experience.
Thanks for tagging me in this topic and mentioning a point I made in my recent post.
I’m glad to see some changes announced but this change addresses a tiny portion of the overall review inequality problem.
I have read the blog post and here are my thoughts and questions:
-
What is the purpose of limiting review deadline to 14 days?
People travel, people get lost in life admin upon return. Why make it even harder to leave and get a review? Some people use -
What if one person doesn’t leave a review?
Sitters are those at the loss if no review is left because they need reviews more in the current system. Current search results show sitter ratings and hosts don’t have that.
To many HOs it doesn’t matter if they receive a review or not as it doesn’t have consequences on finding future sitters, since the rating is practically symbolic and you can’t see it in results. Whereas a sitter can spend 2 months looking after a home, pets, garden etc, and still have 0 reviews which puts them at a disadvantage when someone considers them as a candidate.
Sitter search results and filters
(clearly state the ratings, verification and HOs can easily skip those with no or lower rating)
HO search filters and results
(filters for HOs only include amenities and location details)
- Still no Rating for HOs?
Will sitters be able to add specific rating like HOs can for sitters? (cleanliness, communication etc)
As mentioned in point 2, there is no way for sitters to know such details (unlike the other way around)
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I’m really disappointed that the changes to the review system do not include adding categories for sitters to rate HOs as we are rated. These categories convey expectations and sitters know that we will be rated on these categories. Continuing to not include expectations for HOs in the reviews just reinforces the fact that there are no expectations of HOs and that despite the talk of it being a mutual exchange, THS heavily favors HOs.
I also think the 14 day timeline for reviews is too short and that it will end up hurting sitters far more than HOs.
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@Carla Since the term Feedback for hosts has been changed to Review like for sitters could you clarify if there will now be categories to rate hosts like there are for sitters? Many people/sitters are asking as this will make the review system more equal.
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Lockstar, when I asked about this early in the thread Carla_C replied that she heard it’s in the pipeline, but would need to confirm. I took that to mean that it is not included in the new review system.
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@systaran thats not good news. I saw your comment above that’s why I asked for clarity. (I also requested categories in my earlier comment further up the thread.) Why change Feedback to Review and then not include categories? Makes no sense to me. Sitters are still disadvantaged. It is still not an equal system.
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