I’m new to Trusted Housesitters. I already had a great Petsitter , Linda that responded to my messages to chat right away. Some of the other Petsitter’s, however don’t respond to my requests, don’t you get informed when I send a message?
@IGrome are these messages during a sit in which case I suggest that you exchange WhatApp numbers with your sitter and use this to keep in contact with the sitter during the sit.
Or are these are messages to sitters who have applied to sit for you ?
Hi @IGrome welcome to the site.
Are you sending out individual requests looking for a sitter? If so some are possibly just not able to do your sit and I guess are ignoring it. Not polite I know but also just the way it is with some people.
Hi IGgrome,
I have found that the messaging can be a little hit and miss.
Sometimes I do receive notifications immediately. Other times it has only been if I have logged into the site that I realise I have a message. And sometimes messages can come through a day late. With one owner once, she had sent me a message on the site and also on WhatsASpp. We arranged the sit over WhatsApp and then the next day, there was a notification of the ,message she had sent the previous day. Always worth sending a polite reminder. But sometimes people just do not rspond at all. I have applied for some sits and not had a reply a week later, whereas others, I have had a reply within an hour.
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As others have mentioned, we need a bit more context to really be able to provide information.
If you are contacting them to invite them to a sit, then I wouldn’t expect a timely response or any response at all.
If you are contacting them during a sit, you should exchange information to communicate in a more convenient manner as the THS platform is slow and inconvenient.
If you are contacting them in response to their application to your sit, there may be time zone issues so that could account for some delay in response. But if it’s more than a day then I would be concerned about how communication would be during a sit.
In all cases, expecting an immediate response is unrealistic as not everyone lives with their phone in their hand waiting for an alert to respond to.
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Great answer from CreatureCuddler.
Will only add in regard to answering «right away»: Many on THS have jobs to go to and families they are responsible for. Some leave their telephone in their locker while working, for instance, and can not be reached on their private phone during office hours. As THS is «all about the pets» and because some sitters are full time sitters it can be easy to forget that sitters (and hosts) have very different lives (and that they have lives! 
). So although some of us often can answer quite quickly, everybody is not in that situation that they are able to.
The terms of THS states that a member should answer within 72 hours to messages from another member. Many of us regard 48 hours as max.
I too wonder what kind of messages we are really talking about. My guess would be that it is a message to a sitter you have found on the site with no previous contact? In that case, such requests seldom work out. The usual way to go about is to publish your dates on your listing and then sitters will apply to you. That would then be sitters that would like to go to your location on your specified dates.
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There are many reasons responses are not instantaneous.
The sitter may be busy without access to internet
They may be travelling
They don’t have the answer quite yet but are working on it.
There are a few.
Before the sit is confirmed I like to message through THS system so I have the whole conversation in one place.afterwards it’s usually what’s app but sometimes it does get confusing as it’s usually only listed under Christian names and I have to check back on THS site to see who I am talking to. I have started putting their home town in what’s app which helps.
I try to answer within 24 hours and if I don’t have a difinitive answer I say so.
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Thank you ! All your advice helps me understand the website better as far as expecting a faster response!
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I did initially send out requests & all those politely declined or didn’t respond. You’re right the website is misleading & I didn’t realize I just have to wait for sitters interested to contact me
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Thank you , that helps me understand this new experience for me!
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You should link your listing in your profile and request feedback so that you can make sure it’s optimized to get the best response from sitters. You can reach out to sitters directly, but it has a very low chance of success.
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Thank you for your advice! Just confirmed with a delightful Petsitter!
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