I have been house sitting through TH for about 3 years and I love it. I even have a few 5 star reviews. What about the HO who are happy and tell me I did a great job and don’t leave a review? I follow-up a couple of days later and they will do it and never do. I think TH sitters give a window of about a week to post a review. I end up feeling like the owners really aren’t happy and just don’t want to leave bad a review. How much coaxing should I give them before the consider me a pest and completely block me? I also think that TH should leave the review window open longer.
Actually the window is 14 days not one week.
I am sorry to hear you are having issues with that. I have been sitting for a very long time and while I can recall a couple of instances very early on where hosts did not leave a review, it has definitely not been any sort of regular occurrence. So having to follow up with hosts about reviews is not something I have had to do with any sort of regularity.
I can recall only one instance a few months back where I followed up with the host because it has been just over a week…she had just been busy and forgot and did it right away. So for me personally, that is probably the point at which I would make initial contact. As for how much I would follow up, not sure. I may again closer to the time the window closed so probably two times max for me.
It is possible you have just had an unlucky streak of hosts who don’t understand the value of the review. But it could also be helpful to reflect on whether it is possible you may have fallen short in any way and in at least some cases, the lack of review is because they are perhaps unhappy with something. You may want to ask some of these hosts directly and see if they offer any feedback.
If someone is not planning on leaving a review for this reason, you repeatedly asking them probably wouldn’t make a difference in their decision. But if I suspected this was one of the possibilities I wouldn’t keep pestering them to leave one since I would be concerned my annoying them might make them change their minds.
Also, if this is something you are running into a lot, and you are confident you are doing a good job, you may want to discuss this with hosts prior to confirming, letting them know you have had this issue and it is important to you that they are willing to leave a review after the sit is done.
Moving forward, I’d recommend thoroughly checking the profiles of HOs to see their review history, both in terms of reviews they’ve gotten and left for others before accepting future sits.
if they have a history of not reviewing then that’s very telling and for me, a red flag as reviews are very important on this platform.