On the THS platform there exists an inherent fear of retaliation in response to a negative review that one member may leave for another.
This fear has led to a huge problem of undeserved 5 star positive reviews left by members protecting their own credibility at the expense of the community as a whole. To circumvent this pattern, THS went so far as to modify the review system to be “double blind” meaning that neither member will see the review until after they’ve left their own, thus encouraging members to be more honest in their reviews when a problem occurs during a sit.
While the double blind review system has minimized the fear issue to some degree, it still persists because of ongoing concern of negative reprisals in reply to a negative review, which often results in mutual mudslinging. It becomes a “he said/she said” scenario where future members must play judge and jury based on scant evidence. They may very well choose to pass on both members rather than risk having their own problems.
In an ironic twist the same member base who themselves are reluctant to leave their own negative reviews for the reasons described here, who would benefit from well intended warnings in the form of a negative review, may be skeptical of a negative review when the member who wrote it has a less established positive history on the site than the member they are reviewing. The member leaving the review may even have one or more past negatives of their own, which further damages their credibility, especially when the negative review they leave is against an established 5 star member with an apparently umblemished record, who may have been spared past honest negative reviews by the fearful community thus perpetuating the problem with each additional undeserved 5 star review. The more positive reviews (regardless of their authenticity), the more likely a sole negative review will stand out like a sore thumb and other members may reasonably conclude that the member leaving the negative review is “in the wrong”.
There is a solution:
If a member cannot reply to a negative review, not only is the expectation of retaliatory feedback gone, but an added benefit is that since a member has only one opportunity, they may be more inclined to put their concerns in the initial review rather than thinking “If they give me a negative, I’ll just explain what happened in my reply”.
The ongoing fear of retaliatory feedback that results in dishonest, misleading false positive reviews by selfish members who are not acting in the best interests of the THS community can be further reduced by eliminating a member’s ability to reply to a review.
I don’t think it’s an ongoing fear, I think that fear only exists when things have actually gone wrong, and that’s when they post on the forum to ensure they are doing the right thing, so not to harm themselves, but I think that’s only natural for them to think that way at that exact moment in time, it’s their real-life situation that’s gone pear-shaped.
I think it’s good they get on the forum first for a bit of advice or to vent, it’s what it’s here for, and we all pipe in to tell them to stick to the facts when writing their review or response to a review, and not to get personal.
We’ve sat for a few with the odd negative review, they’re lovely people, just sometimes things go wrong.
If only there were more success stories on the forum, all the 1000’s of sits that go amazingly well, because that’s what happens in the majority of cases.
I don’t believe this suggestion improves the system in its current form. Removing the ability to reply essentially “silences” one party, even when they may have legitimate reasons to correct or clarify the narrative in a review.
Being able to see both perspectives, the review and the response, allows future sitters and homeowners to evaluate the situation themselves and form their own balanced conclusions. Eliminating replies would remove valuable context and could lead to an incomplete or even misleading picture. Just MHO.
Responses are really important information. I don’t automatically pass on a sit that has one negative review. I read the reviews of both parties carefully and how they respond is critical to whether I would apply to the sit or not. If a HO has a negative review, but has a good, level-headed response, I’m likely to go ahead and apply (assuming everything else looks good). If the response is a long, petty, emotional rant, I’ll pass.
It’s also unfair to the party receiving the negative review to not be able to respond.
Reviewing is very subjective, your five star clean may not be my five star clean. That comfortable bed that I like may not be comfortable for you. I’m sure most sitters sometimes take a sit because the location or dates are perfect whilst some other parts are not quite as good but you accept that trade off.
When either side lies or misrepresents themselves that’s when you get into trouble. You have a melting pot of people here, impossible to standardise. I actually think people feel mean to give less than five stars even if warranted. We have stayed in Airbnb where they specifically message you requesting a five star review, mostly they are for us as we screen carefully but sometimes you just have to say this doesn’t quite meet the mark. An explanation of why is always useful, what is an issue for me may not be an issue for you. I realise I often don’t pay much attention to the stars, it’s all about the review for me and a very short one would have me digging deeper.
While well-intended idea then we suspect this may be overthinking situation, and may create unintended consequences.
We’re concerned about this idea throws the baby away with the bathwater, so to speak. The blind reviews, and single reply seems to work effectively in vast majority of instances. Approach seems much improved over prior protocol. Removal of reply function may have unintended consequences - some bad actors may be inappropriately cruel in review knowing that there is no capacity for counterparty to reply.
In most cases, we do not reply to Pet Parent reviews of us. No need as reply content would probably duplicate message in our review of PP.
In THS Forum threads where members have asked how to move forward from a negative review then common advice has been to smother the bad reviews with many fabulous reviews. We applaud this proactive, positive mindset. If we were interested in a listing and PP had one challenging review then we’d simply ask them about it and incorporate topic into our decision process.
In situations of material breaches to THS terms, THS has a Member Dispute protocol. We have used this once - bad situation. Reply-to-review was least of our issues at the time.
Replies to reviews are the ONLY barrier to outright lies and libel in reviews. Anyone who has bothered to read this forum for even a little while will recall hosts and sitters dismayed by outrageous falsehoods contained in a review submitted by a sitter or a host. Too often, the false reviews are a preemptive strike when the submitter knows they have committed an egregious wrong. Eliminating responses to reviews would set lies in concrete and leave no ability at all for a wronged host or sitter to correct the narrative in any way at all. The lies become the narrative. Eliminating the 1 review/1 response policy also eliminates all constraints on how outrageous the lies can be.
This is another terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.
People come to forums and say that they are fearful of leaving negative reviews because of fears of retaliation, yet a growing number of people both homeowners and sitters are beginning to leave more honest reviews since the blind review system went into effect. I don’t know if the few who won’t leave reviews – who actually understand that the other party can’t change a review later – woud suddenly leave reviews if no comments were allowed.
When people “retaliate” by writing a cutting response, they are generally doing more harm to themselves than to the person they responded to. So for me, I want to see those responses or if one is left at all. Not leaving a response or leaving a response that reads as sane can help the person who got the negative review. Angry responses hurt the people leaving them. I’ve seen mediocre reviews that wouldn’t sway me one or another but that when I read the response: so much drama!
I know that if I did receive a review I felt was unfair or not factual, I’d want to be able to respond. I might choose not to, but I wouldn’t want to have no choice in the matter.
Ok never mind. I can see the downsides to what I thought was a relatively easy fix to another big problem but it would create other issues so I guess THS is stuck with the fear of retaliation issue. There’s no way to solve it when there’s always the possibility of a response to a negative review.
There were several good replies, I marked yours as the solution.
I had a bad house sit who didn’t want to meet or even have a discussion before the house sit. Then once on the house sit, even though we were communicating amicably, ended the house sit a day early. I wasn’t made aware until the day they decided they wanted to come back. This is against THS policy and I was livid. And didn’t hide it. I’ve done 55 house sits. If you’re a pet parent who doesn’t know your flight details, then you don’t love your pets. Then, because they knew I wasn’t happy, gave me a bad review. And their review is all lies.
But THS wants to say that the review stands even though it’s all lies, and I have the proof via our communication that there was nothing hostile for them to end the house sit early. This was a 4 day house sit. I don’t do short house sits, only as a filler for the longer ones.
If THS isn’t going to protect us pet sitters from the shorter ones, I’m not doing them anymore.
THS doesn’t care about petsitters, and will be its downfall if they don’t rectify this.
That’s why you gotta play it cool. Let your anger and frustrations be known in your review of them. They knew you were upset, they expected a negative review so they left you one to pre-emptively cover themselves.
After recently sitting the first house where I’d consider it a less-than-5-star experience, I’ve spent some time pondering this issue. It wasn’t a terrible sit altogether & the hosts were nice enough, but the house was just plain dirty, didn’t reflect the photos/description, had no personal storage space for sitter, & communication / organization was quite bad — I had to practically hound the PP to get their travel (and my arrival/departure) times, up until literally the hour they left. I spent 2 days cleaning at the outset, & had to buy a number of basic amenities (including linens) just to feel comfortable staying there.
To be clear: all issues were surmountable things, but definitely not a 5-star rating. I had zero fears the PP would ding me after coming home to a spotless & organized house with happy pets and zero complaints from me during the sit, but I was still reluctant be entirely honest in my review. Why?
Although blowback to my review could have been a factor, I ultimately came to the conclusion that wasn’t really the problem. It was two things:
After building a relationship with the host(s), it just felt like it would be mean to publicly shame them by being specific about their (lack of) cleanliness, even though I knew that future sitters deserved an accurate picture of what they’d be facing if they sat for this host in future.
I realized I was mostly rather worried that future potential hosts would see that I’d dinged a past host, & it would make them reluctant to take me on out of worry that I’d ding them as well, or think that I was ‘difficult.’
I ended up mildly retracting some stars in certain categories and posting what I thought was a more-than-fair assessment of the home, focusing on ‘things that could be improved in future’ vs things that were awful or gross. My thought was that savvy sitters would read between the lines, even though every other review they’d gotten was 5-star (although half the sitters didn’t review them at all…which should have clued me in beforehand, tbh.)
So I guess what I’m saying is that I think the issue is more nuanced than just fear of retaliation, esp with the blind review system in place. It’s hard to write a thoughtful & honest review. It’s easy to write a 5-star one, and no one will worry you’re a problem child when you do…and I’m just not sure there’s any technological solution to that.
It’s not the right or fair solution to just write 5-star reviews, I know — but I did find it a thoughtful exercise, even if I can’t think how to get around it just yet.
