Hi @Catin88 thank you for your honest feedback, I’m sorry about your cancellations.
Member behavior is high on the trust and safety agenda and I absolutely agree with everyone’s comments around members who cancel without good reason. We know and completely understand that things can happen which are completely unavoidable and the vast majority of members do stand by and fulfil their agreed arrangements but even one cancellation without good reason is one too many.
No need to apologize, Angela. I would like to say that I think Trusted Housesitters is absolutely wonderful and I highly recommend the platform to friends and family. With the 3 flaky cancellations, I still had amazing sitters who came through. I feel very grateful to have found this platform as we know great pet care is very hard to find! It also is helping my finances tremendously!
That’s awful and really worrying, suppose you’d had a trip abroad booked, total disaster
Totally unacceptable. If they did it to you they will probably do it to someone else. I think their privileges should be reviewed and at least a warning issued.
I am sad to hear that this happened to you. I would only expect someone to cancel based on emergencies. I am on a pet sit now which I arranged to visit with my family safely during COVID and to help out other pet owners. With the exponentially growing COVID numbers in our area, I am mostly avoiding my family (excepted masked outdoor walks) but still at my housesit. I hope you will have more positive experiences in the future.
My last sitter just told me that her Christmas sit was canceled three days before it was supposed to begin and THS did not respond! I think this is unacceptable! Everybody knows about the pandemic and still quickly changing travel restrictions and a site, which doesn’t only provide a great opportunity to HO an HA but also makes money by charging them for their services, should at least be approachable by the members in times of need. If the regular staff is overworked there needs at least to be someone to answer the phone! There are people who would do the job if paid accordingly.
Hello. I will tag @Vanessa_A as she will be online tomorrow. If the sitter is on the forum, or joins the forum, they can also get in touch with Vanessa to discuss this further.
Francine, Volunteer Forum Moderator
Thank you @Snowbird. No, she is not on the forum and I don’t think she wants to join.
As they had booked plane tickets, they flew anyway and booked an AB&B instead and made a vacation out of the canceled sit.
My intention was not to get help for her (because even if it wasn’t what she planned, she made the best of it) but that membership services didn’t even answer the phone or react to emails.
Morning @anon39388349 … Hope you had a lovely Christmas.
It’s difficult to answer or check this without information about the sitters or what their query was around the cancellation.
As you know, travel has been disrupted by Covid as well as many worldwide flight cancellations over the holidays. The requests for people to test and isolate before travel have also added to the situation… Difficult times for everyone again with some uncertain outcomes.
If you can “direct message” me details that would enable me to find the sitters you mention, I will look into this as although reduced staff over Christmas, MS have been available. The phone I believe does ask people to send an email as staff are all working from home again.
Thanks @Snowbird for referring this 
Good morning @Vanessa_A , I hope you also had a lovely Christmas.
Thank you for answering to Snowbird’s referring to the cancellation.
Nobody knows better than me what disruptions in travel mean due to Corona as I had to cancel our holiday and therefore also the confirmed sit in December. As a flight attendant I am also highly affected by this pandemic.
My post wasn’t about looking into the details of my former sitter’s arrangement but that membership help didn’t answer the phone.
I simply wanted to say that I don’t understand why there’s reduced staff when there is at the same time, more travel over the Christmas holidays. More travel means more disruptions and more calls for help.