You can apply for the sit that does not overlap. Just ignore that message and click on next (or whatever the label says)
Hello, @giuliana_elton Thank you for your suggestions, while the Forum team are unable to implement these changes, I am more than happy to pass this on to the Product team for you.
@lighthousekeeper Thank you for tagging me, as @anon47943759 mentioned you should still be able to apply for any sits that do not overlap if an owner had multiple dates. I can see that you are now in talks with the Membership Services team so hopefully they can help you with this
It does not give me that option. Where it used to say sometimes like apply anyway. It now says “I understand” then just went back to the listing. I filed an issue so hoping they resolve it.
Thanks!
@lighthousekeeper
Click on ‘I understand.’ It will take you to the listing. Click on the dates you’re interested in to apply for the sit. Note that you can only apply to a sit that doesn’t overlap with your already confirmed one.
@HappyDeb I agree. I went to message a HO to say I could sit of I could arrive the evening of the start date and then realised I couldn’t. Plus the word thing about this is that I have had a number of invitations to sit even though I am on sit already so clearly this only works one way! HOs can contact us but we can’t contact them.
The same happened to us. This new rule to avoid overlapping dates only protects and helps the homeowners, not the sitters.
We just received an invitation for a sit on dates we are already committed with another sit. This shouldn’t be possible. What happens if we accept it @TrustedHousesitters?
Besides that, homeowners usually create listings and often asks us to arrive a day before and stay a day longer so we could meet them and the pets and also we can wait for their arrival in case of a delay on their return.
This is extremely unfair with the pet sitters! We can’t have any flexibility and the homeowners can do whatever fits best for them, and THS supports this!
I’m sure this has been asked and answered (and I can already guess the answer), but a quick search didn’t throw up relevant info.
Does Premium Membership allow you to have overlapping sits? (my wife and I sometimes leapfrog to finish/begin a sit).
Thanks
No, it doesn’t.
Thank you, that’s what I thought.
That sucks
@Rhe no it doesn’t.
However there is nothing to stop your partner from signing up for their own THS membership ( with a referral code from you giving them a discount ) as a work around solution.
That is a “solution” but not a great one. If they take a sit a month out, how will they know which account to put it under? It leads to a lot of managing and hassle on the end of the sitter to have sits line up. This will result in HO having to cancel a sit with one account and relist to accept a sit in the other account, all to help the sitters line up and overlap correctly. What a pain! Many HOs will not want to be helpful like that. Many won’t even go in and change to the correct dates when they have posted with a date or 2 different.
As some others have said, and @Carla - this is of course an expected outcome, as people will try to find workarounds no matter what - (and on that note, I seldom face the overlapping sit issue, but I feel for those who are couples, split up to cover tail end & start of 2 nearby sits, and now can’t do that anymore), I think one of the things people have to start doing is:
- When you confirm a sit some time out into the future, do NOT go to the last step of accepting the sit. Agree with the HO & explain them why. HO takes the sit off the platform
- This keeps open your options of getting back-to-back sits with a slight overlap, fully agreed between HO and responsible sitters
- As the dates get closer, look at your upcoming sits and now contact your HOs such that in collaboration with them they can confirm dates in a way that you do not have more than 1 day overlap with another sit. E.g. you actually have a 2 day overlap, but you ask the HO to put in dates such that you only have 1 day or no days overlap
- And NOW finally confirm the sits on the THS website
Quite a workaround, but I think this is what’s likely going to happen for sitters that do many longer back-to-back sits and may be doing repeat sits as well.
@Bluehorse: Some hosts would balk at this, since this leaves their sit at risk without a documented acceptance till the last minute (or till whenever the sitter officially accepts) for THS purposes.
Why is THS introducing processes that involve people having to make time-consuming and often ineffective workarounds? Surely the point of a business is that it enables its customers (perhaps they have forgotten that’s what we are?) to interact with them in an efficient and straightforward manner that benefits all parties. I can see few, if any, benefits to most of the ‘improvements’ that have been made in the past eighteen months for either sitters or hosts.
Perhaps if THS could enlighten us on the thinking behind these changes with data to back them up it would become more evident as to what they are trying to achieve. So, for starters, how many pets have been ‘abandoned’ during a cross-over sit? Does the number involved really warrant a total ban on cross-over sits and the subsequent unexpected consequences of this policy?
Sitters who do overlapping sits are likely a small fraction of THS membership, since most sitters probably sit only sporadically. If so, THS probably doesn’t care about the inconvenience to sitters who do overlaps. Businesses typically make trade-offs that upset some users at any given time — no need or even possibility of satisfying everyone. And businesses typically don’t share data to justify changes to upset users — it creates a bad precedent if users start thinking that they have say-so when they don’t.
Of course, some HOs will never do that. But some people on this thread already talk about using this workaround & I can certainly imagine more people being compelled or drawn to doing it, especially where it concerns longer sits and/or repeat sits
That is a shame. I do a lot of short sits in small apartments in large metropolitan areas in the USA where you are not able to stay overnight on your last day of the sit because there is only 1 bed in the apartment.
Being able to organize yourself well enough to know that if one owner returns at noon and another HO across town would like you to arrive after 7pm, there is no abandonment and there is no conflict. You’re just saving yourself from getting stuck with yet another really expensive hotel.
@Pettastic
the new update does not stop you from applying for a sit that starts on the same day that another one finishes.
The overlap rule applies only to dates that overlap by more than the start or finish day.
This was stated by Carla in the very first post of this thread
I don’t like this idea at all. We have been housesitting for nearly 8 years full time and work with our sits to make sure they all work back to back.
We now cant apply for half the sits because we finish on the morning of 1 and another starts the same date which seems ridiculous!
@Fionabarton1970
the new update does not stop you from applying for a sit that starts on the same day that another one finishes.
The overlap rule applies only to dates that overlap by more than the start or finish day.
This was stated by Carla in the very first post of this thread