I have completed my first sit recently. Whilst looking at other potential sits I am surprised to see that some sitters don’t leave a review at all. Should I be suspicious?
Lots of sitters don’t leave reviews for lots of different reason. In some cases it might be because they didn’t have a great experience so didn’t want to leave a bad review and then deal with the owner’s retaliation in terms of a bad review of them. But I think there is also a belief that owners (especially in good areas) don’t really need reviews to get sitters so why bother if there wasn’t anything showstopper. I used to only leave a review if an owner requested one just as I would request one from them but the system is a bit different now. Ultimately reviews are only helpful to a point and I have been misled by them in the past because I didn’t read between the lines or spot the code words or whatever. The most important thing is that you do your own due diligence on what is important to you (cleanliness, communication, home etc) and, most importantly, go with your gut.
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Not necessarily. First of all, the feedback (all very good) from the sits at our previous homes somehow disappeared a while back. No idea why. Second, we had one couple who did a previous sit for us and posted the review many months after the sit. Not sure you can do that under the new review/feedback system, but they were able to do it at the time. I’m guessing some people move on to a more challenging sit and don’t have time and then forget later, or perhaps life just gets in the way.
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Sometimes people who aren’t used to the website post reviews in the wrong place, as responses to a sitter’s/owner’s review of them. I’ve actually seen that pretty often. Do a little digging. If it’s a pattern of no reviews, that’s different
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I would be suspicious if a Listing had many missing Reviews. I would look at everything much more carefully.
For those who are new, the Review system changed a few months ago. Currently, there is a 14 day period after the Sit is finished, with a hard stop after 14 days. The Sitter and Owner have a chance to leave a Review within the 14 day period, and neither can read the Review until both have left Reviews, or at the end of the 14 days.
Everyone should always write a review, positive or negative. With the recent changes, it should be much easier to be honest.
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@Ellie.P hello and welcome!
Reviews in one way or another are a hot tpoic on the forum…
What do you think about asking the home hosts why some of the reviews are blank?
Could be an interesting converstion topic…
Also, it would be interesting to see if the home host reviewd the thsitters with blank reviews.
Did you take a look at that?
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I think reviews are important, and everyone should leave an honest one. There is only a 14 day period now to leave them. As they are now blind, there will be less retaliatory ones. Some people do leave them on Trust pilot by mistake. If I were a host, I probably wouldn’t want a sitter who never left reviews. Click on the sitters profile to see if they have left one for others.
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I skip sits if the host has several missing reviews. Better safe than sorry. And there are plenty of other sits.
Once, I almost talked myself into overlooking that, because of a tempting location, but then thought the better of it and withdrew. I dodged a bullet, because the host apparently let things slide — I heard from them maybe two weeks before the international sit, when airfares were ridiculously high. They said they’d only gotten around to choosing a sitter and wondered whether I was still available. Crazy cakes.
Happily, I’d instead landed a terrific sit with hosts who had their act together. It turned out so well, I’m going to repeat the sit, even though I usually don’t repeat, because I like variety.
And I’ve since landed a sit in that tempting city anyway, except in a much nicer home, and with only one cat.
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I’ve noticed a few review blanks recently, where when I click on the sitter’s name to check our the review the HO has left for them - equally important, I think - the link won’t work. i just assumed that, when a sitter leaves the site, their reviews show as blanks. Can anyone confirm (or deny) this?
I have asked HOs in the past about missing reviews and have received information which has helped me make a decision.
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I’d recommend skipping listings with too many missing reviews. If it’s just one or two in between lots of good ones, it might be that the sitters just forgot or never do reviews. If it’s a few blanks in a row I’d definitely skip the listing.
I am a sitter and if I don’t write a review, it does mean that something was wrong.
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If the same sitter has done repeated sits for the same homeowner then they may chose not to write a review each time .
In my experience it would be unusual for several sitters not to have left a review so this might be a red flag . @Ellie.P has the homeowner left a review for the sitters ?
If there are missing reviews , click on the sitters profile to see if they left reviews for other sits that they have done (it takes some detective work ) if it’s only this sit that they didn’t review then that to me would indicate there was an issue .
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@Silversitters makes a good point about repeat sits. If someone hasn’t left a review, take a look if there is an earlier one from them. If someone came back, that’s actually a good sign!
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I don’t think this is the case. Why I say that: I check the history of sitters sometimes when I’m assessing a host they sat for. What I’ve seen at times is, there’s a sitter review, but when I try to click on the sitter’s bio (to see how they reviewed other hosts), the clicking doesn’t go anywhere. That leads me to think that reviews hang around on a host or sitter profile even if whoever wrote it is no longer a member.
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As HO, I have a review from a sitter who is no longer active, it still shows up.
And re: OP, I have one missing review but a little digging will show that he left a brief review under my review of him. He also got tricked by the old THS TrustPilot review link and left a nice review for us there. Thankfully they seem to have “fixed” that glitch.
So yeah, a little detective work may be recommended if it’s a sit you really want.
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Thank you for clarifying that, @Shafofo .
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On the HO side, we are missing A bunch of reviews. For our first four sits, the HS, just didn’t leave them even though the sits were all really good.
The first two were a repeat with the same HO, which is obviously a good sign. The next was a short sit and totally fine but sitter didn’t leave a review and then the one after that, they gave us direct feedback that was very positive (they even mentioned that there were tears involved when leaving our dog as they would miss him 
, but yea, no review.
I think a lot of people don’t realise that it is helpful to EVERYONE when you leave a review and my guess is our HS’s just didn’t bother, even though we left reviews for them.
All the reviews that have been left for us are super positive and I think people can tell from our profile and what’s in our profile that we provide a solid experience.
All this to say, just because there is no review doesn’t mean it was bad so I wouldn’t jump to conclusions…sometimes it’s just people being lazy or not realising it matters.
One thing I find helpful is looking at the other party’s page and see what review that person left as well OR just ask about the missing reviews. The person may lie about it but hopefully you’d at least get a vibe or context based on their response.
Would you apply for a sit where the previous pet sitters left 2 positive 5 star reviews, but the HO did not review them?
Our main reason for joining THS is the sit opportunities . If the sit looks great and it’s in a location we want to visit - we wouldn’t be upset by not getting a review if we knew beforehand that the homeowner doesn’t leave reviews .
When we started out it was important to us to get reviews for every sit to build up our profile . I would recommend that sitters new to THS avoid a sit where the homeowner doesn’t leave reviews .
Now we have sufficient 5 star reviews and we get many requests to sit . So if we didn’t get a review now and again, it wouldn’t worry us .
A “missing” review does not show on a sitters profile so there’s no negative impact for not getting a review .
If we saw that a homeowner had not left any reviews previously , we would likely ask them about it during our video call to understand the reasons why they have chosen not to leave reviews of previous sitters. If that conversation raised some red flags then we would withdraw our application at that point.
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Probably not. Reviews are a bit the currency on THS. The window on my most recent sit has just expired today. No big deal, but a good review would have been useful for me.
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