I am somewhat upset after my last housesitter, who has left me a horrible 1* review, and which I feel is extremely unfair.
I have been with THS since 2017 and have received about 27 5* reviews, and none rated less than this in any category.
The sitter claims that we had a major flea infestation in the house and that the nasty bites all over his body were caused by fleas from our dogs. Because of this he gave us 1* for cleanliness, and 1* for hospitality, despite my having left him a cooked casserole of haunch of venison and a bottle of claret, and inviting him to help himself to any food in the fridge or kitchen cupboard and bottom shelf of the freezer.
The house was extremely clean. Not only do I employ a very competent professional cleaner weekly, but I also always make a special effort when Housesitters are coming and aim to leave the house to a ‘good hotel’ standard of cleanliness. It is only myself and my husband living here, so it never really gets dirty. The three small dogs live in the kitchen and rarely go upstairs.
In addition to this, the sitter smeared me in the review as a detestable person!
The dogs had been treated for fleas the week before the sitter arrived, bathed and given clean bedding. It was during a very hot period in July; we live on a farm with a hay barn in the back yard and I do not deny that the dogs may have picked up a few fleas, however, it was ridiculous to claim, as he had done, that we had a major flea infestation and that the house needed fumigating.
If the bites were indeed from dog fleas then he must have had a particular sensitivity or allergic reaction. I have heard that this can be linked to blood type, but when I mentioned this to him he was furious and accused me of trying to put the blame on him.
Nobody else had or has ever been afflicted with flea bites in my house, including a couple who had stayed in the same bedroom the night before he arrived. Nor my 9 year old granddaughter who had stayed a couple of weeks beforehand, and who would be vulnerable as she suffers horribly from mosquitoes and midgies.
This was very upsetting and I asked my cleaner to go round that day and check the house. She took him some soothing ointment , re-bathed the dogs and performed various flea tests around the house. She assured me there were no fleas.
My cleaner reported that he was sleeping with his bedroom window, which looked out over a field of maize, wide open, but when I suggested to the sitter that perhaps the bites had been caused by something else, say mozzies, midgies or harvest mites, he became extremely angry and defensive, and insisted they were flea bites from my dogs.
I made various suggestions, eg going to the vet to collect additional flea treatments, moving bedrooms, flea bombs, but all were declined.
He said that he had bathed the dogs, but when I asked him if there were any fleas on the bottom of the bath he said he didn’t know because he had bathed them outside!?? In other words, he didn’t bath them at all, he hosed them down with cold water! My darling little dackies must have been horrified!
It was clear that the sitter was indeed afflicted with angry bites, and as he had arrived fresh off a flight from Thailand, my cleaner and I became concerned that he may have brought some strange biting creature back with him, or that perhaps he had contracted a mystery illness, as he was also complaining of having Covid and asthma. I didn’t mention this, but asked him if he thought it might actually be a rash, but this too infuriated him.
The evening I returned from holiday it was clear that he was still fuming. He accused me several times of ‘knowing about it before I went’ and of not ‘taking responsibility’. He also told me he would be having a lie-in the next morning as he had not slept well the night before.
The next morning my cleaner arrived and at 10.30 I asked the sitter, who had been packing, if we could have access to his bedroom to perform more flea tests. I lay on the carpet in white jeans while the sitter stomped around me in bare feet. No fleas appeared anywhere. I then thoroughly hoovered his bedroom again - he said I didn’t need to as he had done it, but there were areas he had obviously missed. I then invited him to inspect the contents of the hoover with me, which I poured on to a white linen tea towel. He declined the invitation, finished collecting his belongings and walked out in a fury.
The day I returned, my daughter, who was carrying high-risk twins, was told that she needed a c-section within 5 days, so I really didn’t have much time for the sitter’s shenanigans. The twins were born 4 days later at 34 weeks, and since then I have been quite involved, hence my inability to leave the sitter a review. He waited until the last minute to leave one, which I thought was pretty calculating and vindictive, and by the time I got on to the website to leave one for him, the window had closed.
I now have his deeply unpleasant and unfounded review sitting on my profile!
