Educating the people who are not on this forum about the things that change is difficult enough. Getting them to do more things, outside of the scope of what is normal, what a nightmare
1 Like
So much this! It is a lot and because it never goes through the system, they really don’t know.
Well THAT is absolutely ridiculous! There is NO reason why you cannot finish one Sit and start another Sit on the SAME DAY.
In the other thread, it was announced that SAME DAY was possible. But that is not really the case?
Please clarify THS. We should not have to learn by trial and error.
3 Likes
…and there it is. We will listen, we will answer but we won’t consider a change or compromise.
The irony is that the final nail in the coffin of many responsible, reliable, pet-loving trusted housesitters is that trusted housesitters don’t trust their housesitters!
It would be laughable if it wasn’t so awful.
This decision will cost the hundreds of full-time trusted housesitters hundreds if not, thousands of pounds each year in accommodation costs that could quite easily be avoided.
For some, I am guessing it will put an end to their pet & house sitting adventure.
To say we are disappointed has to be the understatement of the year.
8 Likes
Not even shortened! Sits where the dates include a handover day, or altered dates, or really ANY CHANGES AT ALL.
This is making things so much more onerous for all parties, and I think we’re all aware that customer support will be inundated with help requests.
3 Likes
@Sittersue
I do not know if the offenders have been removed, but I think this is to prevent it from happening in the first place instead of allowing the possibility and then removing someone .
This is very serious. One incident of a pet losing it’s life would be awful.
1 Like
But this issue needs to be addressed on its own! If a parent and child sometimes sit together and sometimes don’t, it’s perfectly understandable for THS to want them to each have a membership and a profile ($$, safety, liability, etc.)
However, it’s not very helpful to lump this issue in with the very real UX problems of this platform that have to do with the complexities of date changes, calendaring, having to handhold new HOs in the process, and honestly, taking sits off-site altogether.
I’m all for fairness, and if there needs to be a new category of sitters + one or whatever, then that needs to be a separate issue. I am not looking forward to the amount of work it’s going to take to deal with what should be minor tweaks to dates being a 5? 6? step process.
1 Like
@PVGemini it’s okay, we can still finish one sit and start another on the same day. The support person I spoke to has since confirmed that’s the case, and so has Carla. I think not all the support team had clarity about this yesterday.
3 Likes
@Colin with the growing number of sitters and HOs , safe measures to prevent incidents have to be in place. Would a second membership be an affordable option for you to avoid the high accommodations costs?
1 Like
@pitcherplant yes, inaccurate dates , etc , are issues I would like to see addressed.
1 Like
I presume that the sitters who did that have had their membership cancelled and then blacklisted from re-joining in future? It is unacceptable behaviour and should be punished.
3 Likes
Hi @cat.tails @Sittersue @Silversitters to reassure you and the community any sitter who abandons a pet for any reason whatsoever is immediately suspended.
Each situation is investigated by Membership Services and depending on the outcome of their investigation this could and has resulted in a lifetime ban from the platform.
I think most people agree with you that pets should not be left alone while sitters work two jobs at once. I don’t think there is any serious argument about this. Even with the solo sitter example I gave, which personally as a cat pet parent I might be okay with for a day or so at the end of a sit, I understand why it would be a problem if sitters thought it would be okay to ask and put a HO on the spot after they’d been confirmed. Just as sitters object to listings that are for “daycare,” HOs are right to expect the sitters to stay in the home at night.
However, the proposed fix if it is simply changing one thing, will cause problems with other things. So there are systematic changes that need to be made in order to ensure a smooth easy experience for both HOs and sitters which solves a problem without creating new ones. Scheduling shouldn’t be jumping through hoops, or having to ask other members to jump through hoops. Or even opening up a second account that won’t contain the reviews on the first one and will require a lot of explaining to HOs.
This is an issue, that THS has created in part by advertising and recruiting and basicaly overpromising to new sitters – many of them very inexperienced because that’s what the advertising targets. This is an issue that THS has created in part by leaving it up to the HOs to discover what unscrupulous sitters are doing and having them report them, sometimes after animals have been left alone or harmed, and then not doing all that much about it.
Saying “this is all about the pets” is a way of shutting down the conversation. All of us here are all about the pets. That doesn’t mean there is only one way to resolve an issue.
The update creates new issues as has been pointed out here. Almost all those issues could be resolved by simoultaneously rolling out some other needed fixes to create a better user experience. I’m not a developer and can’t speak to the tech, but the desired functionality would include:
(1) Offering an additional tier or feature for membership for dual members whereby the secondary sitter would also be id’d/background checked and able to show Airbnb/Linked in on the profile. This could involve a small fee and would NOT be required for members who occassionally have a partner accompany them, but would be a benefit, as HOs would have confidence that both sitters were vetted and could handle the job. Only those sitters with the dual membership would have the ability to override the dates, and HOs would be notified, so it would be clear to the HO who would be taking care of the pets and whether one or two people would be caring for the pet. And it would be clear that both people were “qualified” to care for the pets. (This has been an issue on the forums with petparents concerned about couples. And yes I know couples who have been doing this for years will object to adding a fee, but honestly couples have had this advantage for years, and may be able to get more sits with more vetting, and the fee would be voluntarily for people wanting to maintain the dual benefit.)
(2) Adding “final date” features. There should be some feature for “proposed date changes on an upcoming or ongoing sit” – This shoud be something that a sitter and homeowner would communicate about and it would be very simple. After the homeowner calls to let the sitter know they’ll be coming back earlier or staying later, either party can send a “proposed date change” form which can be accepted or rejected. Once both parties accept, those are the dates. If the HO is coming back a week early on a longterm sit, the sitter would then be able to find a gap sit before the next sit. Problem solved. This feature would also take care of the many times when dates need to change without going through the process of cancelling an ongoing sit and converting to private dates and doing that whole dance. If a sitter was informed “Hey I’m coming back early” it would be very easy for the sitter to send the form to the homeowner, get a check mark, and free themselves for new sits.
(3) Ending a sit and starting a sit the same day should be okay within the same area, but should probably require an override or letting HOs know on both ends in case something comes up or if requires hours of travel since sometimes there are emergencies on sits and HOs can be delayed.
2 Likes
What’s the point of @Carla and her colleagues gathering feedback then?
In French they have a lovely expression for this: “Cause toujours, tu m’intéresses”, meaning “Please keep on talking, see if I care”
3 Likes
I totally agree that safety measures have to be in place but this is a total over-reaction.
The answer to stop shoplifting isn’t to ban everyone from shops. We could avoid any more road collision deaths by banning everyone from driving… I agree, ridiculous suggestions 
Personally, I don’t think two memberships are the answer, it is far too confusing unless THS can somehow connect them and I very much doubt that.
I have already suggested a premium for sitters that want to overlap, we aren’t talking about separate sits, just a day or two overlapping to allow a flow- but it seems, unfortunately, THS is not open to any compromise suggestions.
3 Likes
Exactly @Els and @Angela_L . What is the point of continuing this useless thread?? THS created this mess with their marketing strategy and the attraction of less than savory sitters. Now we all suffer the consequences.
7 Likes
I am 99.9% sure the people who overbooked themselves are brand new members (joined this year) and they are single sitters. By forum posts we often find out how new members are completely unaware of how THS is supposed to work. They booked a few sits, then found some new ones that are even more appealing and booked those too as a backup, without a care how are they going to impact the PPs and the whole community.
3 Likes
Well this is terrible. To start with, I currently have a sit that’s been cancelled by the owner, who hasn’t cancelled it on the site (can they even do this?), and I have no ability to cancel it on the site myself, and now I can’t apply for any other sits at all for this time.
Also, almost all sits “overlap” as the dates are rarely accurate to what the owners actually want after talking to them, and no one’s going to spend the effort to update the dates in the listing (if they even can), and even if they could you’re now asking sitters to spent time trying to convince owners to spend time altering technical details on the site just to avoid an issue on the sitters side. Who ever thought this was a good idea to implement?
5 Likes
Such needlessly evocative frustrating language here.
Imagine a cat that is aloof to your presence at the best of times, whose owner says “I’m arriving on a 6am flight, just put down some extra dry food and leave the night before if you wish.”
Who could ever do such a thing? I could, because both the pet parent and I have agreed to it. I’m sorry you feel that the only way I could have left the flat the night before the official end date of the sit was because I’m a, to quote, “a selfish and uncaring sitter.”
Slow down with the dramatics, and realise that the entire issue is about trust and communication between the pet parents and the sitter.
If the pet parents are visibly shown that there is an overlapping dates, and both the pet parent and the pet sitter agree, that should be enough.
11 Likes
@Marion, you’ve made some really salient points here, and offered sensible, constructive suggestions. Thank you for how you’ve thought all this through and expressed it. As Quakers say, ‘You speak my heart’.
1 Like