We haven’t had any of that to be honest. We’d feel the same as you. Lots of reviews, loads of experience, working professionals, home owners ourselves should all be enough. I’d be dodging as many of those ones as possible……hope it improves!
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I’m not a sitter but if I was I would point out that I couldnt pass on the contact details of a previous home-owner without their prior permission. That would slow things down and maybe the requester would lose interest. It’s unlikely to be a high priority for the previous home-owner. (Sitter contacts previous home-owner… HO takes time to respond… Sitter passes on info if allowed… Requester contacts previous HO… HO takes time to respond.)
(As a home-owner I’d be quite annoyed if someone gave my contact details to a third party without my agreement.)
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My husband and I just applied for a sit where the owner asked if we could provide a reference. This question doesn’t offend me nor is it some huge ask.
But for me, it isn’t the action or request in a given situation, but the thinking behind it . We have 59 reviews–they have used the site before so are aware they can only be submitted directly by an owner,and they responded positively to the sitter feedback so it seems they had good experiences with all of them --and if that, coupled with a video interview, is not enough for them to feel comfortable choosing us, their mentality regarding this process is different than the one with which we feel more comfortable.
I trust my intuition and any time something doesn’t come together easily and smoothly, I know it’s not the right opportunity for us, and I am okay letting it go. Sitting full time gives us a lot of flexibility in choosing assignments so we have a lot of options. That, combined with our extensive experience usually resulting in being chosen for most sits to which we apply, we don’t need feel the need to jump through any extra hoops for any particular sit.
I let her know I appreciated that some owners feel comfortable doing that, but that we are more comfortable with a process where the HO bases their decision off our prior reviews and the interview. I then withdrew the application.
So for any HO reading this, know that some sitters who decline this request–especially if they have a lot of reviews, meaning they are very experienced–are doing so not because it is unreasonable or particularly burdensome, but because they feel it is redundant.
If the owner doesn’t trust the reviews, and the interview enough, to make a decision, again, it might speak to a mentality about the process that won’t gel with a lot of sitters here, especially more experienced ones.
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KC1102 - I’d be curious as to why the HO was wanting a reference, and regarding what specifically. Surely their questions and concerns would have been answered from your reviews and video chat.
Did they happen to say?
@PetSitterBug She had mentioned doing the video call and the reference in her reply to my application message so we actually hadn’t connected yet on an interview. So I just let her know politely that that approach really didn’t work for me and we preferred someone who was comfortable basing their decision on our reviews and interview alone. I then withdrew the application. She didn’t respond to that message, which is fine. I didn’t expect her to.
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I was asked for references when I first started housesitting and didn’t have many reviews. I would have no problem providing contact details for my previous homeowners after checking with them first. In fact, I am amazed at how trusting some homeowners are. If I was allowing a stranger to stay in my house I would personally want to check references, get copies of passports etc. As a sitter, I like to have a telephone or video chat if the owner has few, if any, reviews and I think it is such a shame that we cannot contact previous sitters.