My spouse and I have noticed a trend when we get invites to sit and have to decline. Once we decline and send a message accompanying the invite, the home owners will not reply back even with a single thank you.
Please, don’t be that person if the sitters on the other side were courteous instead of just hitting decline & archive.
Everyone wants reciprocity when it comes to mutual respect… if you send out invites and you get a proper note accompanying a declined offer, please take two seconds to say thanks.
Respect is truly a wonderful gift to keep on giving.
IMO it is enough if it is one question (to sit) with one answer (decline). I can relate to why some hosts would find that sufficient. I’ve declined several invitations and it hasn’t occured to me that the host should answer my decline to sit, really.
As an owner, i have sent invites, and always reply to declines. I agree that it is common courtesy. I have several sitters that do not reply at all to an invite, and i think that is also rude.
I haven’t been tracking, but my overall impression is that I usually get a thank-you for letting hosts know when I’m not available for their unsolicited sits. Like that happened today.
I typically reply almost immediately, so they say thanks for letting them know right away.
I have gotten many invitations to sit and accepted absolutely none of them because none of them were remotely appealing, and some sounded outright awful.
At first, I would send a note to the HO’s to say something polite while declining and sometimes recommend that they wait for people to apply who were interested in their sit and available. But I never got any response back except from one woman who kept insisting that I sounded perfect for her needs so almost demanding I take the sit!
So now I usually just decline with no note and I expect no response in return. (I’m talking about people I’ve never had contact with, not someone asking me to come back who I’ve sat for before.)
So getting no response from these people seems to be the norm. My take on it is that these are mostly people who are new to THS and don’t understand how it works or else people who are kind of clueless about how un appealing their sit is which is why no one is applying.
I have done the same thing in the past…reviewed their listing and made a few suggestions. Some owners did not even respond at all! I guess they did not like my unsolicited advice! LOL.
As a homeowner, i would like to know WHY the invite has been declined. If it is something in the wording of the invite, the pets involved, the responsibilities, the location, the days of the sit, etc… I’d like to know the reason. It’ in the name- " Trusted housesitters". How can you have trust, without honesty?!!
Im kinda in that situation. Ive invited several people for sits, and all have declined. I REALLY want to know why. If the sit is not appealing, i want to know why, so that if its a misunderstanding in wording, or whatever, i can naybe correct it.
I rarely mention why I decline an unsolicited invite. I suspect some hosts would be offended. Plus, there’s often nothing they can do about improving their chances.
The last two unsolicited sits I declined, I could’ve done timing wise, but they looked unappealing — I’d rather stay comfortably home and would never sit for hosts with such demands. It was easy to for me to see why they hadn’t gotten applications.
Personally, if we had the time and were closer I’d love for my spouse and I to be able to do your sit.
I think the only request that can be a little hard for your sit are the weeds… some people have hand issues and weed pulling can be a no for someone with neuropathy.
Definitely look into local sitters.
Ps. You might just see an application from us one day. I have been looking at SW listings like a kid wishing for a gift on xmas.
Sometimes it definitely is easier to stay home… We got an invite once for an overnight and it wouldn’t have been worth doing it because we have to get a sitter also.
That’s awesome that you’ve had polite folks inivting/replying. Out of all the invites for us, only one lady said thank you and was shocked when I replied telling her we were working during her sit.
I’ve got a cut and paste bit of text I now share with a request to sit HO if I think they’re new to all this ie no reviews. Recently I added I could see a few ‘red flags’ and they invited me to detail these which I did. They were very thankful which was nice. The red flags made the sit unappealing to me and probably others as the dog couldn’t be left more than 90 minutes! I suggested they might be better to pay for a sitter.
