I am a sitter in San Francisco. Can you explain to me why I am suddenly receiving an influx of housesit requests from other states? This has never happened before.
Perhaps because fewer international sitters want to travel to the US.
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Maybe the THS algorithm ended up displaying your sitter profile on the first page or such. It rotates profiles.
From my experience as a sitter based in the U.S., I’ve received invitations from across the country, starting when I joined two+ years ago (well before the most recent U.S. presidential election, so I’d consider that irrelevant).
As it happened, the first sit I accepted was on the opposite coast from me, offered unsolicited. And I’ve since received others. If your profile and/or reviews are strong, that’s even more likely. By the time I got my early reviews, I even received an unsolicited invitation from Hawaii, and I was living on the U.S. East Coast at the time.
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I’d guess it’s new hosts that don’t know how the app really works.
@puglieseme, suggest no cause for concern. Politely decline as appropriate. Unless it’s a large volume then hopefully quick to respond.
We receive a steady trickle of unsolicited invitations-to-sit from pet parents in various countries. Some look lovely but dates dont work so we keep in touch.
Homeowner here. When I logged into my account a few days ago, the first thing I saw was a list of sitters that were looking for sits in my area. Have not seen this before. Can only assume homeowners are acting on this, and reaching out to sitters as they have shown an interest (search?) in their part of the world.
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Do you know if they are members who have marked your sit as a favourite?
On the non-official FaceBook THS forum, there is a thread on this topic and it is inferred by the Op that “apparently THS is doing marketing without sitters permission or consent using our profiles.”.
Many sitters have confirmed they’ve received high numbers of house sit requests from within the US.
My uneducated guess is that there’s a huge unmet demand for US sitters due to the current governments anti-immigration policies and the increased risk of being turned away at the border is deterring large numbers of sitters and creating a void in the available number of sitters leaving hosts with no options on the THS platform. So they’re resorting to more aggressive means of marketing to the sitter base, and some sitters feel their privacy has been violated, others are not happy with the slew of unwanted solicitations.
To me, it seems that THS is just trying to connect more hosts and sitters and I don’t see a problem with it.