This should be reported to member services as homeowners should not be cancelling sits ( without a good reason ) just as sitters should not abandon pets.
You can either contact them through live chat - ask to speak to a human not the chatbot.
Or send an e-mail to support@trustedhousesitters.com send screenshots of the messages where the homeowner cancels .
Member services will update your dashboard with this cancellation for these dates so that you can apply for a replacement sit
I agree with you that if the HO and sitter had come to agreement on revised departure date that is fine. I think that Angela was talking about sitters who had not discussed leaving early with the HO
and leaving the pet and house unattended.
Hi @Carla
This is great but I noticed that if a HO has a few dates posted and with clashes one date with a sitters already accepted sits then you get the warning.
We all saw it coming following the marketing strategy.
Irresponsible members will always be irresponsible members.
As per usual a hammer is being used to crack a nut. So sad.
Well, I guess there will have to be more creative workarounds to keep up the lifestyle THS previously provided.
Couples, who often do overlapping sits, could ask part of the home owners to officially shorten their sits. Like this nobody from THS will know that the dates are actually overlapping.
@Angela_L Given that this issue seems to be primarily concerning irresponsible/reprehensible couples, what’s stopping the other partner of a lifetime banned couple from taking out a membership? After all, only one person is vetted, no matter how many - solo, couple, or family - are on the membership?
This doesn’t affect me as I leave long gaps between sits, but some of the reasoning behind changes from TrustedHousesitters are just difficult to digest.
@Angela_L when the company has the tools to single out those who are endangering the pets, why penalize the whole membership? If it’s because the incidences are increasing at an alarming rate, then surely TrustedHousesitters needs to step back and assess their quantity-over-quality approach to their post-pandemic marketing?
What IS going unheard by TrustedHousesitters is the outcry from experienced, dedicated members. As much as you are outraged about the bad apples, members are outraged at not being heard or not being respected.
Again, this particular change doesn’t affect me, but the overall approach of TrustedHousesitters these days is so disheartening.
If that’s the case there other means to solve it. A sitter did this to me months ago. They didn’t double book that I know of but maybe they did as the sit they took started a day or two before mine. For me it was a last minute sit. They came by. Picked up keys and wrote me a few hours later claiming a health reason (asthma which they thought came from my litterbox) that would have prevented them from staying over but kindly offering (heh heh) to do dropins for pay. I told them I would never impose on them or risk their health under those circumstances. I cancelled the sit and reposted. It was 4 days before, but I got a sitter. They dropped off my keys AND picked up some stuff they’d left at my apartment when they came by. Months later I checked their profile and found the review for the sit she did that would’ve overlapped mine.
If THS was serious about stopping the cancellation issue, they would be setting up a system to track when a confirmed sit is cancelled, sending automatic surveys to both parties to collect data on why it was cancelled, and counting if those HOs or sitters have frequent cancellations. They are NOT doing any of that. Instead, if one party suspects something that party can dispute by contacting THS who will “investigate” whatever that means.
Still, 2 examples does NOT warrant a change that affects 10’s of thousands of sits! We are on our 51st sit…of those at least 10 would have had to alter the actual sit days. So, taking all sits in consideration, that’s a 5th……that’s a lot of changes to be made.
Hello, I have some answers to some of your questions, thank you for bearing with me while I found out further information.
@temba I am happy to update you that sitters can apply for sits where the listing has multiple dates and they will be able to apply to any of the dates that they are available.
@richten1 I just saw your comment about this further down the thread, that should be okay now, but let me know if it is not. Feel free to DM me the listing as an example. Thank you
@Snowbird@systaran I raised your concerns about the current way owners need to cancel confirmed sits and the process around changing dates not being as easy as everyone would like. The Product team has said that this is currently being looked into as part of the new message and application (inbox) work they are doing and there will be future updates to make this easier.
Not yet, but this is on the product teams radar and is something they will be working on in the future.
@Snowbird thank you for your feedback around this, it is not exclusive to couples, it equally is solo sitters doing this as well, but I will share your concerns about the other couple member potentially signing up with a new account to the wider team. This is all good feedback!
Thank you for all of your feedback and suggestions. I am happy to answer any more questions that I can, but more product-related ones will have to wait until after the weekend now
At the time I didn’t. It would have been easy as they left that message on the system email! However, I had no solid proof they were taking another sit, so I accepted their reason and cancelled the sit. I’m sure had I reported theiroffer, they would’ve just b.s’ed their way through claiming they were trying to be helpful. I really felt like I had dodged a bullet because the interactions were off. It wasn’t until months later that I discovered the review during the overlapping dates. I don’t want trouble with this person who knows where I live and has been to my home. The person has more than 10 five star reviews. I don’t think THS should be relying on HOs to police sitters. They should have the tech to prevent this kind of behavior. The new “update” is NOT that tech.
@Carla Thank you for your prompt response. However, given the length of time the review system is taking, I have no confidence that the necessary streamlining of the process will be anytime soon (to use a popular word here), given it’s part of the message and application overhaul.
Instead I will take the approach suggested by @MaggieUU (#159 here) and contact Membership Services. However, if everyone does that I can imagine they will be inundated and overwhelmed.
@Sittersue@ExploreDreamDiscover Just to jump in and assist you and help those reading the thread who may be thinking that it was changed just due to two cases, the two sitters mentioned were examples, however, they are very sadly not stand-alone cases as mentioned in Angela’s post.
Of course sitters cancelling one sit to take another sit is a big problem. Just ask almost ANY homeowner on the site! But my theory is those sitters usually contact the homeowner and give a “good” reason to cancel, which the HO promptly does, and then the unscrupulous sitter is free to accet the “better” sit. They don’t need to book overlapping dates so the update won’t solve this problem.
Until cancellations are tracked, this problem will continue. HOs have no way of knowing whether a sitter’s excuse is legit or not. Neither does THS. There is nothing in place to keep a sitter from requesting a cancellation and then confirming a different sit immediately afterward.
Maybe I’m just super unlucky, but a very good percentage of my sits (50%+) change dates after agreement, and that’s even more this year (5 or 6 originally planned sits), and pretty much all of them agree dates different to the original listed dates before confirming.
So far this year I’ve been asked to leave a week early, a month early, had one sit cancelled after verbal agreement, one a few weeks before starting, multiple owners come back weeks early but allow me to stay, etc etc.
Even before this update it was clear THS prefer a one-size-fits-all tunnel for sit agreements, but almost none of my sits end up exactly the way the listing initially shows, and just doesn’t seem suitable for such personal agreements, but so far it’s worked well enough.
And yes, I did contact CS who removed the confirmation allowing me to apply for more sits, but looks like I’ll be doing that quite a lot now. Eg. Even the sit I’m on now changed plans, are coming back early, and in theory I could go to another sit but as far as THS are concerned I’m “unavailable” (thankfully home owners are happy for me to stay the full time, which isn’t always the case).
Thank you for writing a thoughtful and in-depth post that covers the perspectives of sitters as well as HO’s. I feel like this site has progressively become more HO focused and left sitters feeling like a “service” rather than this being an equal exchange. You made the very real point that if a large number of sitters are not available to offer pet/home care, then HO’s will have to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars on Rover or other sites to get the same kind of care.
As a sitter who also used to have a profile with my partner, I am strongly considering leaving THS when my yearly account expires because of the new changes in Terms & Conditions. Especially because it already frustrates me that HO’s don’t need to have background checks performed when sitters do and it feels like these new restrictions on sitters are put in place to get more money out of users by forcing couples to create two accounts if they want to sit full time.
I personally think a very quick fix to this issue for HO’s and sitters would be to add mandatory questions for the HO’s when they are creating the sit listing such as:
-Are your dates flexible?
-If dates are flexible, can you provide the date range in which you are flexible for travel.
-Can your animals be left alone for up to 8 hours?
-Are you open to a couple or sitter taking an overlapping sit?
The questions and answers could then be shown on the sit listing and allow for a little more transparency for sitters. If the HO responds yes to flexible dates, it should be a no brain-er that the sitter who has agreed should be allowed to apply for an overlapping sit by a few days on the front or back end of the sit date range. Obviously confirming or booking the other overlapping sit would require acknowledgement that the dates work with the original sit.
The other questions are really more of just a way for the sitter to see if the sit would even be feasible. I’ve had sits that make no mention of behavioral issues if gone for more than 6 hours but then come back to find the cat has pooped on the bed. It would also be nice to know if advance is an HO is strongly against a sitter/couple doing overlapping sits so we don’t waste our time applying.
- ask to speak to a human not the chatbot.
(thankfully home owners are happy for me to stay the full time, which isn’t always the case).