I had a sitter who double-booked herself. It was Thanksgiving, and when i returned home it was obvious that she hadn’t stayed in my house. When i asked her nicely - even acknowledging that it wouldnt matter once fhe cats were cared for - she denied it. She made unlikely excuses for the fact that my bed hadn’t been used, nothing moved in the fridge, trash exactly as i had left it. Then i noticed that another HO left her a review for the exact same dates. I contacted that HO and we concluded that J had stayed in her house, not mine.
If she had admitted this, i might not have done anything. However, because she lied about that, I don’t know what else she lied about so I contacted THS. They removed her from the platform after investigation.
I can only guess that she double booked to amass good reviews. That certainly backfired
How could they double book when THS prevents this from happening once you book for dates those dates are blocked and you can’t even apply for other sits…I’m perplexed how a sitter can possibly double book.
@Silversitters, yes thankfully. A previous local sitter agreed to do the last minute sit. Forever gratedul to them.
I reached out to membership services for advice and mangaged to speak to a rep. I told them as the sitter was refusing to advise of their travel plans to my place AND had double booked a previous sit I wasn’t prepared to go forward and cancelled. THS informed me they were on a ‘watch list’ I assume some kind of probation. Yes, the sitter is still active on THS.
@temba
I think so… at the time when the double booking clause came into effect I tried to post with this example (always careful not to identidy gender, location, pet etc) but it wasn’t approved at the time for posting.
I have never seen a 2nd review posted for the same period sit, other than this one. Thankfully it helped me dodge a bullet.
@carpediem16 before the no-overlap rule was introduced mid-December it was common practise to overlap sits by a day or two- especially for couples who were able to split between 2 sits that were not too far apart. We did that a number of times to avoid gaps in our schedule. Always done above board- with agreement of both hosts. No one suffered. Nowadays sits go unfilled because perfectly suitable sitter couples are not even able tomake contact with hosts to perhaps negotiate dates to make it work. Its a negative policy for both sides. I do not condone single sitters completely double booking-as per the examples above- that’s morally wrong as one person cannot be in two places at once. But a couple can. I also think that completely double booking is a whole other league from couples simply splitting for a night or two to manage a short overlap rather than the host having no sitter at all.
@Manunited I have seen two reviews for same dates for a (single) sitter on several occasions. It appears that it used to happen more often than you would expect .
As a couple who could have overlapped without any neglect of pets or home we never even thought of trying to apply for overlapping sit dates as we assumed that the platform would prevent it .
Maybe I’m lucky - I’ve only had 1 sit that wasn’t fine (of 70+). And although I do look at sit reviews I do take on sits for new members. I do talk with the HOs before accepting any sits. And look closely at the pictures.
I think @Manunited was saying that the one HO was allowed to write two separate reviews for this one sitter by THS when it was found out what they had done @Silversitters.
As a HO I hope that catdad can share with us who that sitter was. I do not always see all the reviews of sitters prior to their applying. Also, I do agree that overlapping sits or bringing one animal to another sit job is horrendous as you do not know how that new animal impacts the environment of the others, causing other behavioral problems.
Are home owners allowed to contact each other? I’m sure sitters don’t have that privilege, even if there is a justifiable cause such as not having left a review.
I am sure that it is “allowed” but not easy. I could contact the HO because I am also a sitter and she had new dates listed. I contacted her by “applying” for that new sit.
Similarly, as a HO I could contact sitters to ask about their prior sits. I could contact them via an invitation to sit from my HO profile.
@weltenbummler generally speaking hosts can’t contact other hosts- same as sitters cannot contact other sitters.
The only exception I believe is if a host is a dual host-sitter member. In that case as a sitter you could contact another host but only when they have live dates and you hit ‘apply’ its not pissible at any other time.
Unfortunately there is still no direct contact button between members. This has been requested for years.
As a sitter, I cancelled a sit scheduled a few months away because of a bad review and, when I checked the app, a string of no reviews. I also checked the sitter’s review. Piecing it all together, it seemed that the sitter’s behaviour was totally unacceptable and she should have been removed from the platform if she hadn’t already left. However, I was very uncomfortable with the way the HO dealt with it, plus red flags of an indoor camera and the daughter visiting the house. Thought long and hard before cancelling but it just didn’t feel right and I would have been prepared to fight my corner if I had been reported.
We nearly had a sitter (on another site) who said they would get their friend to help them find flights etc over the weekend. We never finalised the sit with them. They emailed us back to say they had found flights to co-incide with a music festival which was held in March, two months before our sit in MAY. I emailed pointing out their mistake (while scratching my head). I was just as pleased not to hear back from them - until a week before our departure- telling me they had their flights booked and paid for and would be landing soon. I told them we gave it to another couple 3 months ago. They wrote a really bad review for us including wishing bad Karma on us and praying for sitters we had chosen. Were we wrong? We have always gotten 5stars.