Trying to revise my listing to keep it accurate has become impossible. There are now thanks to updates, major differences between where and how the written text appears. Sitters see a ”Responsibility” heading and below that a new “Home Tasks” heading. But that’s NOT how it appears to the host when trying to write something. I kept having to toggle back and forth to find where the text that I wanted to revise was and to change it I had to then proofread the published version for consistency and then go back to the editing version to search section by section for where the out of place wording that I saw was actually located.
It was maddening. It was counterintuitive. And it’s still missing things that hosts should probably be encouraged to include like a short written picture of what the pet’s personaility is like.
I apologize in advance to sitters if something in my listing is missing or left out or repeated or just doesn’t make sense anymore. I give up.
Rant over.
They didn’t make things better. They made them worse and much more difficult.
Yes, unfortunately, that will continue. That’s because product and UX people and decision-makers who don’t know what they’re doing typically create problems that ripple. Plus, THS is scrambling to make money under tight timelines.
The above is why I decided months ago to quit THS. I’m doing my final sit, because I didn’t want to let the hosts down after committing. But once that’s done, I’m letting my membership sit unused till it expires.
I get it. I’m not there as it’s still easy for me to find sitters and I’m still seeing enough sits that I’m interested in. I have a long time before my membership lapses, and no booking fees unless/until they add them for existing premium accounts (2 years? maybe?) So I’ll continue until it becomes too hard to find a sitter or a sit.
It’s just so stupidly frustrating because creating a form to write a listing (with or without AI assists) is not rocket science. It’s pretty basic.
It’s funny maybe because of the places we wind up sitting or something but most hosts have been super smart people often in tech, design, etc and most have cracked leaving great guides using google docs and not the standard Welcome Guide.
Apologies, going off-topic here, but I would be asking for a pro-rata refund @Maggie8K Given the fact that we were presented with a new set of Ts & Cs mid-contract, and unable to view them without clicking on a button to ‘agree’ to them.
Thanks for letting us know. I have just written a post about the importance of consistent listings and it turns out THS is making it more difficult for HOs.
I will have to bear that in mind now, as consistency is one of the criteria that I appreciate as “green flags”.
I can only imagine how many HOs will be unaware of the changes or unable to manage them. You are a frequent user and still are having a hard time…
@moderators, will you please pass this information on to the relevant team? We would also like some feedback regarding the rationale behind all this mixup. Who is it intended to benefit? According to the vast majority of forum members, it’s just making things worse and people are just leaving THS.
I left. It’s true that I accepted the 50% off offer on premium just to gain time but I haven’t since applied for any sits, just losing interest. Other members have said the same, even though their membership is still active. I am sure there are means to check the decline in activity and I am honestly convinced that there has been a clear decline in old members’ activity. Is it being compensated by new membership?
I also write, edit, and work with technical forms and even AI professionally and found it very frustrating and difficult to toggle back and forth between the screens in order to write something coherent.
I’ve written before that changes the default on guests to a yes, is in my opinion a disaster. A simple prompt for both hosts and sitters that guest policy is the host’s choice and should be clarified prior to confirmation, would be enough to avoid issues imo. What I was trying to change was the placement of my added text to explain the policy.
Other workarounds I’ve done for consistency include pointing out that THS updates the number of pets in past reviews to the present number of pets. This could lead sitters to think that homeowners are hiding a pet, so I’ve had to put that in.
It’s just very difficult to work with a form divided into sections where you can’t see where the sections go and they may into sections on the actual document that have a different name.
Not only that but even with the updates they haven’t fixed the ghost content in the app so the app listings may include long dead pets which homeowners have deleted from the web version.
So my advice to sitters is don’t assume homeowners are being “inconsistent.” The blame may in fact be the system.
I dont get it why do the reviews even have the icon of the pets, as yes, it updates with the profile so it does not add any info. I guess just another minor issue that piles with other minor issues, and wont get fixed: would be relatively easy just to remove it, doesn’t even need to be changed to accurate one.
Agree. And this was my take after our senior cat died and I realized that the reviews referring to 3 cats suddenly looked misaligned. The simplest fix would be to get rid of the icons.
