I find this quite confusing. You had unsuitable applicants so you declined them but told them they werent necessarily unsuccessful and then they applied again? If I’ve understood that correctly, you needed a clearer message for the definitely unsuitable ones: ‘Thank you for applying, but I dont think we’d be a good fit so I’ve declined your application. Best of luck applying elsewhere’.
I am confused - how would merely reading your application help you in planning?
if you feel a HO is taking too long to make a decision (or read) your application, you can withdraw it. Or you can leave it pending but continue to look for other sits for those dates.
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@LauraJ13 after the handover with the home owner we use a reminder app or our calendar app to put in reminders about EVERYTHING to do with the sit. Depending where we have been in the UK, there can be 4 waste bins to be put out on 3 different days, some weekly, some fortnightly on alternating weeks. Then there is what food and amounts to feed each pet and when (we often have 3 pets) and their medication and when the cleaner or gardeners are coming. The list goes on! I understand your request. We would hate to forget something so we utilise current available technology.
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Thanks Lassie, please read my reply to Ketch. I believed I covered all your questions in detail.
I fully agree with your points that only we can control our actions and be specific in outlining what we’d prefer (e.g. that we would appreciate a response by a certain time), but I think making it a site requirement/rule is a beneficial action that would mandate every owner to read the applications within a week of submission. By making this a product feature, we would institute a necessary control on the owners’ actions. Doing so would help the sitter applicants become aware of how much time they should spend worrying about their application. Imagine if the owner didn’t read the application for over a week, but you are still invested in arranging travel plans for that destination and thus still patiently wait for the possibility that you should not move on yet (because if you move on too early, you could be spending money in hotel stays that would not have to have been spent). Also, sending a follow-up message when the owner hasn’t read your first message won’t make a difference because the owner either doesn’t have notifications on or just spontaneously/randomly reads the applications. So no quantity of messages will require that the owner reads your messages within any deadline.
Here I will also explain how owners reading the message helps specifically:
-I volunteer through multiple sites (THS being my favourite) and have seen firsthand how my message being read makes a difference.
- It shows me how communicative the owner will be. If they respond very late, they may repeat this pattern of lacking communication throughout the sit/stay., (and technically one week is considered a generous window of time).
- For destinations that have few sits open, having an application read would mean significantly more to the applicant than for destinations where there are many sits open and thus many more options. The reason I am suggesting owners to read and not necessarily reply within 1 week is that replying could take them a bit more time since they would have to read through all their applications and sort out their own plans first. But reading is much more low-stakes and takes much less time, so your application being read is a sign that your time invested into it will not be wasted, you can choose to do point A (moving on) or point B (following up) if you wanted to now that you know the owner has read your message but does not see you as a good choice based on how long it takes them after reading to reply to your message.
Edited to meet posting guidelines
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Feeling so frustrated by the lack of search filters on the house sit search function. I end up spending an unnecessarily long time trying to find a potentially suitable house sit only to discover you need a car, for example. It would be so helpful to have extra filters, such as:
- Sort by sit start date;
- Filter in terms of whether you need a car;
- Filter by number of dogs;
- Filter by small, medium or large dog;
- Being able to search multiple countries in one search.
Charlene
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Thank you for your feedback, all contributions are always appreciated. I have moved your post here as our product team do look at this thread on a regular basis and are more likely to see it.
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Oh, multiple date search ranges would be incredibly useful!
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While I know that most sits are probably filled by owners posting a listing and sitters applying, rather than owners reaching out to sitters, from what I have read on the forum it seems a good number to attempt to find sitters this way. But between the limited search filters, the way location is used,etc…I imagine most aren’t successful given the size of the membership.
Some of these may have been mentioned before but a few helpful changes based on how other sites operate could be:
-
Filter sitters by countries they have indicated interest in. So when a person on these sites search for sitters in Costa Rica, they see people who have indicated they want to visit Costa Rica.
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Add a filter for ‘local sitters’ that is populated by people who have ‘opted in’ to being featured on this search. On the one site I use, sitters do this by checking a box indicating such and entering an address or general location on a map (this information is not public.) When owners choose a ‘local sitter’ search, they are also able to choose a radius from their location. So whether someone want to do house sits in the country in which they live or wants to book more assignments in a country in which they are currently housesitting, owners can zero in on these people specifically.
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Expanding filtering criteria for types of sitters would be useful as well–age range, couple or single,etc…
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Either being able to filter results by how recently a sitter has been active on the site within X amount of time(not booking a sit but has just logged in or been active on their dashboard–not sure of the different ways sitter activity can be tracked) or THS being able to create an algorithm that automatically puts these sitters higher up in search results. Obviously a sitter is keeping their membership active if they are appearing on the search results, but if their last sit is from years ago, it’s unlikely they are actively seeking assignments. While an owner likely wouldn’t contact someone like this anyway–provided they checked their most recent reviews–filtering them out automatically would save people time in even looking at these profiles.
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I find this very frustrating, the default always defaulting to force me to choose ad infinitum. It would be so nice, well said, Timshazz
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Not sure but I do believe this is a premium membership benefit.
I am able to have unlimited saves by dates and locations. Just tested to create and share.
The name of the saved searches are my own labels. But each one has a different time frame.
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I was just going to scroll by this entry, but, I feel compelled to respond. I think this is a horrible idea. It seems to me almost like this same or similar conversation could have been had when THS ended up putting in the 5 app rule. Generally speaking, I don’t think that forcing behavior is a good idea. I think it far too likely that there would be far too many unintended consequences with such a rule.
Anyway, how in the world could an app ‘require’ one to read the email? If an owner doesn’t read the email within a reasonable period of time, at least I know its a non-starter for me. If somehow they are made to read it, but not reply, I wouldn’t know. Then I would have false hopes because they read it, but then i would loose how much time waiting for a reaction?
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I wish the search bar actually worked in the Favourites and Inbox sections—am I using it wrong?? No matter what I type (using words I know exist in my favorites/inbox), I get the message, “No conversations found.”
For example, I just favorited a listing in Chicago, then did some research on the area and realized it’s not quite where I’d want to stay. I went to the My Favourites section and entered “Chicago” in the search bar…zero results. There’s a dream sit in Seattle I saved about a year ago, and I want to revisit that listing, so I search “Seattle”…zero results. I clicked on the Inbox section and typed in the name of a HO I sat for when I first joined…zero results. What does the search bar do, if it’s not finding words within these sections?
Ideally, the search would pull up any words in the listing, so if I have a very fuzzy recollection of a listing I’d saved months ago, but remember that the pet was a corgi, I could simply search “corgi” and have it appear in the results. But at minimum, I would expect the city name to work in the Favourites search, and the city/HO names to work in the Inbox search.
I’m almost hesitant to submit this comment, because the search box is so useless that I’m convinced it must be user error on my part—if that’s the case, please feel free to laugh at me…and then enlighten me!
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Wondering if there is a solution to this issue, or if a moderator from THS may weigh in.
When I post a sit, I receive emails notifying me that someone has saved my listing. I often go in to check profiles of those who have done so, and sometimes I reach out to them.
My question is, those saved listings aren’t organized by dates received, and the emails only include the small profile pic of the potential sitters. I end up scrolling through three pages of people who have saved my listing trying to match the profile picture. Sometimes it’s not so easy.
Is there a way to organize those so you you can see the most recent potential sitters who have saved your listing?
Or, if anyone from THS reads this, why don’t you include the name of the potential sitter in the email along with their profile pic?
Thanks for any help!!
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Hello, @jangelo1969 I would like to wish you a very warm welcome to the forum community. Thank you for taking the time to post. I have moved your post to this thread as it is monitored by the Product team and members can still reply and answer your question.
You have some good ideas, including owners being able to see the most recent/date order sitters that have favourited their listing. I am not aware of any way to be able to change the order, but the Product team will see this suggestion.
As a new member of the forum you can add your THS home listing link to your forum profile for other members to view, here is how:
https://forum.trustedhousesitters.com/t/how-to-add-a-listing-or-profile-link-to-your-forum-profile
If you need any help just let me know
We have 2 laminated checklists and a dry erase marker in our printed material for
“Home Departure checklist” and “Sitter checklist,” so certain details do not get overlooked at the end of the sit.
We don’t have a need for an hourly checklist but thought these checklists would help communication at the close of the sit.
Happy to send you copies, if you would like.
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Often in reviews and feedback, repeat sits/sitters don’t leave multiple reviews for the same sit. This makes perfect sense to me as being a repeat sit/sitter is, in itself, a positive review!
The only issue is that it can appear (on the app) as though the person didn’t want to leave a review/feedback and that could be interpreted in various ways, including negatively by new potential sitters or homeowners, when a repeat is really a huge compliment of how great the sit & sitter are.
What if there was a watermark, icon, or badge programmed into the reviews/feedback sections to celebrate that this is a repeat sit? It would be so much better than a blank space or having to ask someone to keep reviewing when it’s the same great setup! This way new sits/sitters looking into the opportunity would know it’s really good and there wasn’t an issue that led to lack of feedback.
I’ve done some computer programming, and you all are great about making a super useful site & app, so it seems that would be totally doable. My husband and I have also done tons of repeat sits and would really love this so people don’t have to scroll 10 sits back to see that the blank review is from a person who has actually worked with us multiple times and really likes us.
Thanks for your time and for considering this 
Edit 1: added “on the app”
Edit 2: fixed a typo
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This is a great idea!
It is uncomfortable to keep asking people to write repeat reviews and indeed to write them. There is only so much information we can share.
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@Audra I actually don’t think you see a blank space… If someone doesn’t leave a review for the HO, the website doesn’t show who sat for them & when.
For example, I did a sit for someone who had THS sitters before (and after me) but no reviews on their listing. And to be honest I didn’t leave them a review either…because I put quite a lot of effort into that sit due to a ‘special needs’ cat and the owner never left me a review despite reminding them multiple times.
So yes, in that case you have an HO who’s had multiple sitters but their listing will show no reviews at all (rather than blanks)