@pips fantastic suggestion. That would solve so many issues for both sitters and home-owners.
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It would massively help when people need someone at short notice and it would be really useful around Christmas. In December, people seem to end up going into meltdown and desperately inviting anyone who has a THS profile!
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Thank you @Pips I will relay this to our product team.
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Hi @ArjunaTHS.
I wish sitter profiles on desktop showed their photo captions. More info at this topic (or search for similar topics):
For example, in my sitter profile, a lot of the photos may not make sense without the captions. And certainly my sense of humor wonât come across as well and could be easily misinterpreted. I think fixing this would definitely help PPs decide whether a sitter is right for them.
Also, I donât know how many sitter photos have captions, but if itâs not a lot, then perhaps itâs because theyâve learned that their captions donât show up on the website! I think I used TH for over two months, after adding my initial captions, before I learned that they could actually be seen (but only on the app(!), which I rarely use).
Another example: I recently saw a sitter photo where a couple mustâve carried their brown dog while hiking through the mountains. Such love for their pet! But it was honestly hard to see the dog and I almost missed it, because the people were small in the photo, and the dogâs coat matched the background. If I couldâve read the caption, I wouldâve caught on immediately.
Edit: And also, from a sitter point of view, I would like to be able to see the PPâs captions on desktop. Maybe then I wouldnât have to guess which bedroom or bathroom Iâm looking at.
Edited to meet guidelines
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Search criteria, the USA is a big place, same for Canada. It would be nice to search by at least East and West. I second someones comment about adding location/country to sitters âavailabilityâ.
One of my biggest issues is applying for a sit and then NEVER hearing from the owner. Is there an auto decline? Owners post for a sitter 6 months from now but donât reach out for months. It makes planning/scheduling very difficult.
There was also a recent thread about cancellations. We have been cancelled on twice in a dozen sits. And the sits just disappeared, there was no notification, again I had to seek out the owner to figure out what was going on. Seems like maybe a simple percentage would be nice to know w/o pointing out specific sits. I donât know, just a thought.
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I would like to see what area a sitter is looking for, not just country, because the United States is a pretty big country. New York? Chicago? Los Angeles? Northeast? Midwest? West Coast? Southern States?
Sorry to hear about these cancellations without notification- did you contact member services at the time ?
I agree that some information about a HO/sitters past record of reliability would enable more informed choices.
Thx for the email. I was not aware of it as we are fairly new to this. The irony of course is the same day I made this post, I was reported for cancelling. To be clear, I did not cancel, I just didnât confirm their acceptance of my application because per THS advice I had applied to multiple sits and I was in talks with another sit application for a similar time. So I a lovely email thread with Member Support to clear things up and advise on future communications. I have since updated my profile to say, I will not accept any sits without first talking to the home owners. As I had not had any communication with these owners before they sent me the acceptance link. I am learning that is a very important step in the process.
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What happened with the âreportâ against you? How was it handled?
I guess the wording is confusing for some people and perhaps THS needs to clarify. If I apply, thatâs a not me âaccepting the sit,â itâs an offer to engage. Just as with a job application.
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I donât think that YOUR communication needs to improve. I think that Owners need to understand the system better from a Sitterâs point of view. How ridiculous that an Owner complained because you did not accept an invitation!
@PVGemini @Katie @Silversitters @jeccadawnvagabond âŚ
Can we remind you to please stay on topic the original purpose of this topic is to get feedback on improving sitter profiles âŚ
Thank you.
As I am new to this⌠This is truly a question⌠is this not on topic, because to improve a sitterâs profile would be clear communication that just because I am applying does not mean I am committing to the sitâŚ? So like I mentioned I did update my profile to reflect this.
Should the commentary be moved to a new thread as it seems that this process of âreportngâ is unclearâŚ?
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Hi @jeccadawnvagabond thank you and communication is important of course but the topic is asking pet parents what improvements they would like to see on a sitterâs profile and of course we welcome all members to comment on the suggested improvements.
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+1 to the manual driverâs license. It could be a subset of âSitter has a driverâs licenseâ which I am sure many would also find helpful. Iâm concerned about a sitter who âkind ofâ knows how to drive manual overstating their experience to get the sit and then grinding gears on my car!
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Thatâs not applicable to sitters with a U.S. license and, I believe, many others. Edited to say that it may depend on the jurisdiction. Itâs probably fair to say that the vast majority of US drivers have never driven stick/manual, especially if theyâre younger than around 45 and have not worked on a farm.
I learned on stick and drove a manual car for 10 years or so.
EditâIn QLD, Australia, you need to pass a manual driving test. In Victoria, itâs all the same. Not sure about the others.
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Interesting, I knew stick shift was more common outside of the US but didnât know it was part of the driverâs test itself in some countries.
Speaking as a US homeowner manual driving is actually very applicable to me exactly because, as you said, many people in this country donât have that skill. Itâs important to me because I donât live in a city with lots of transit, and in the event of a pet emergency a sitter would need to either bring their own car or drive my (manual) car to the vet. It is also for this reason that I donât mark my car as available to leave for the sitter even though I can leave it. I could also see this being useful information for a popular international sit attracting US sitters who arenât used to manual driving.
Either way, itâd be an easy optional checkbox for sitter profiles, and I donât think it hurts anything to add it!
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