Hi,
I’ve recently finished a sit that went really well, and I left the homeowners a nice review.
I requested one as well but they haven’t written one for me.
Should I follow up with them?
It makes me think that they were unhappy with something.
What does everyone think?
@Crittersitter I can understand your frustration but please know this is not the norm. Most pet parents are happy to leave reviews…good or bad as they know it helps not only other pet parents but also the sitters themselves. If there was an issue, they can learn from it and make improvements.
Human nature is that some people just don’t see the need to compliment someone (kind of like tipping). I would ask one more time, and if still no answer, just chalk it up to a rare occurrence.
It depends on how long it has been since you finished the sit. It’s a really busy time for many people.
There are a few other posts discussing reviews, that you can find using the magnifying glass in the top right of the screen. Here is one: Reviews not reciprocated - #51 by geoff.hom
Thanks. It’s been a week. And as a sitter, I read feedback left when deciding whether to sit for people.
So I’d assume homeowners would as well.
I will follow up with them.
Sometimes petowners are a bit overwhelmed when coming back from a trip (catch up on bills, mountains of laundry etc.) and just haven’t had time to do the review. I think, unless you got some strange vibes from them, it’s perfectly fine to contact them and ask for a review. Mention how important it is to have good reviews as a sitter, and that if there were any problems you’d love to know about them so that you can avoid the issue on any future sits. For now, don’t overthink it. I’m sure you did a great job.
I can understand you would be disheartened @Crittersitter but, as others have said, it’s unusual but you shouldn’t take that personally and it doesn’t mean you’ve done a bad job. It could well be that the owner has been busy or, most unlikely but can happen,discourteous. In future, I suggest you wait for the owners’ review before you post your feedback. There’s no harm in you perhaps WhatsApping the owner saying you’ve left feedback for them and would appreciate a review as it’s important to you for future potential sits. Good luck!
I have had this happen a few times. I now don’t leave feedback until I receive the HO review . Ask them again, some just genuinely forget.
We always wait for our review before giving feedback. Sometimes we have to remind the host more than once. We often say in our request, (or in our reminder) that the host review marks the formal completion of the sit for us and is our main reward (in lieu of payment) going forwards. For the host the sit is already complete when they come home & all has gone well. Its easy for them to then just get on with life and forget all about a review. Therefore I do believe sitters place more emphasis on their 5* review than hosts do on feedback. So I’d suggest next time you delay your feedack till after getting your review! Keep your bargaining power!
We always leave our feedback as soon as the sit is finished and will continue to do so no matter what. We are leaving our feedback for the benefit of future sitters, not as an exchange for a review back from the home hosts.
It is always a bit disappointing when a home host can’t be arsed to leave us a review after the hard work we have put in caring for their home and pets, but thankfully the vast majority do and so, unless you are a brand-new sitter, it really isn’t that important in the scheme of things.
I would give it 7 days after the sit finishes then send them a reminder letting them know how important they are for you when applying for future sits. If they still don’t leave one after that then let it go.
If you leave the home host honest feedback and they don’t leave a review in return at least you know that you have done the right thing. You not leaving them feedback in retaliation for them not leaving you a review only has the end result of making you as bad as them.
As my mother always said - Two wrongs never make a right
Nobody will know for sure, but it could be the holiday season. People can be so busy and just forget about things. We usually don’t request reviews, but sometimes we didn’t get a review for 1-2 months and we were wondering if we didn’t offend them in some way (once my partner deep cleaned the very dirty stove and we thought that could be the reason). But then we got a great review after all!
I respect your point of view on this matter, and maybe because of some of our experiences we’re not able to be as altruistic as you, but…Its easy to leave feedback when everything has gone really well on both sides. But what if that’s not the case? What if you have done your absolute best in every respect but feel the host has misused you in some way? E.g leaving a dirty house or unwashed bedding, or a problematic pet not disclosed before or discovering internal cameras etc etc…(we’ve experienced all of these) -if you give an honest feedback which includes any negatives it is bound to backfire- either in a retaliatory review or no review at all. If THS had the airbnb style of blind reviews for 14 days it would be so much ‘safer’ to be really honest but that’s not the case. We work so hard for our 5* reviews and occasionally have to ‘swallow’ a lot (e g deep cleaning on arrival) before we are able to give our usual 5* service. The host review is the only reward (in lieu of payment) going forwards. Sometimes there are a lot of costs involved in getting to, or being on, a sit and I really don’t want to do or say anything to jeopardise our well earned review!
If you give feedback first and the host does not reciprocate with a review then they do you a disservice. From their side the job is done & dusted and they can move on (with or without feedback) but for the sitter it is incomplete- like not getting paid for a job well done!
We’re always happy to give great feedback when due but would only feel able to give honest feedback with negatives AFTER securing our own review.
That may seem ‘calculating’ in a way but you can blame that on THS for their review system! We have to take care of no.1 in such situations regardless of how honest we would love to be for our fellow sitters!
We actually rarely see anything other than great 5👍 feedback from sitters. The occasional 4👍we see as a hidden code. It seems that many sitters decide to give no feedback when something did not go right. We’re not condoning that- we’ve done it too at times. But the review/feedback situation is a tricky one…
We usually wait a day or two before leaving our feedback because we know the HO will get a message with we do and will probably think “Oh I need to do that!” But we don’t want to add something to their long list of things when just returning.
As such, if we haven’t gotten anything in a week we’ll send a WhatsApp to follow up. This seems to work for us.
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I leave a review a couple of days after the sit ends. The only time I haven’t is the one time I couldn’t think of anything positive to say. I like to lead with all the positives and then try to be constructive with things that didn’t go well. I have learnt, through this forum, how important reviews are to fellow sitters. As people have said, I can’t afford a bad review in retaliation as this would affect my chosen lifestyle.
It’s up to the pet parent if they want to review or not. In my mind, one reminder is ok. More than one becomes pushy. It’s disappointing not to get a review after doing your absolute best but “that’s life”.
Lately it is happening. None of my last 3 HO although asked, put a review.
I’d wait until after the new year to remind them.
One HO took many months to post her review of me, and I saw her regularly! 
She’d just put it on the back burner.
If a sitter feels this strongly about reviews, then I think they should make that clear before agreeing to the sit. Would one agree to a paid sit without actually confirming that they expect to be paid and how much?
@geoff.hom You have taken this quote out of the full context of my message which is a little unfair and makes the comment unbalanced.
From the many comments I’ve read on this forum it does appear that reviews are very important to most sitters. The more great reviews you have the stronger the profile- we have 57 (5*) reviews and we appreciate every single one of them. Some hosts say they chose us because of our experience (and/or our age) They find it reassuring. We’ve worked hard to build our good reputation.
I see you have only 2 reviews so perhaps you are someone who does not place much importance on them- and that’s OK but I think you are in the minority.
I have actually seen a couple of sitter profiles where the sitters have mentioned their expectation of a review afterwards- perhaps they have felt let down in the past by not always receiving one. Its not such a big ask- a few minutes to write a nice review when a sitter has spent days/weeks taking loving care of home & pets for free.
These days we always do a little research for each potential sit- including looking at the review and feedback history. If the host always leaves nice reviews for their sitters we would not feel the need to ask in advance. But if they don’t always leave reviews its a bit of a red flag so we might ask why/what happened? Often there’s a very valid reason. If too many past sitters don’t leave feedback its also a red flag to us. There is a lot you can interprete from a lack of reviews/feedbacks.
At the end of the day we all want to feel appreciated and acknowledged, and a review is part of that.
Sadly this is a fact of life. This has happen to us on more than one occassion. Some owners for some reason systematically do no leave reviews although yes it hurts when they do for some and not for others. I personally believe that a review one has to beg for is not worth having. and save my energy appreciating the many who do
I think that there should be an option for a reminder of a review request being sent. That of course can be done by sending a message in your message stream to your HO, however it seems more relevant to do it as part of the review process.
We continue to be in contact with owners via phone, WhatsApp and messages, in some case Messenger, and have on occasion sent a message to those HOs to see if the request had been received. As someone mentioned in the forum, owners do get busy and things do get forgotten. In most cases this is what happened with us and in time the review was forthcoming.
But as suggested perhaps a ‘review followup’ option?
Hi @prholst
I will certainly send the idea of a ‘review followup’ option on the website to our product team.
Thanks