Trusted House Sitters

Web site easy to access & navigate. Daily new sit/sitters oppurtunities. Technical help very responsive.

The challenge for TrustedHouseSitters users is that it is very difficult for sitters to ascertain whether the description of the duties is accurate and/or deflated. Our experience has been that all of the pet owners have loved their animals so much that they have not been able to see them realistically. An eighty-pound dog snapping at other dogs, and pulling, does not "walk well on a leash." Cats that use rugs for litter boxes are not well trained. Pets in the kitchen during cooking time endanger themselves and others.

On our last sit, the owner told us specifically that we were not to allow her dog to eat anything but his regulated food. We did that, and she appeared angry when she got home and he had actually lost a few of his ten overweight pounds. She had what appeared to be a great little housesitting instruction book; but, she did not mean what she said.

Owners also have problems estimating the time involved in the household chores that they expect. Some expect you to handle toxic pool chemicals. Some leave a dirty house for you to clean. We encountered one hoarding situation. It is hit and miss. The system is slanted away from housesitters toward house-owners. I can imagine the tables can turn the other way, too. Sitters can overinflate their experience or abilities because they are not really vetted, either.

When parties enter into this sort of arrangement, they both need to carefully consider the consequences of their agreement. We developed a list of questions that we thought would help to mitigate the problems we have encountered but, to date, we haven't been too successful. Perhaps THS could come up with a better system for evaluating both sitters and owners.

There are definite pros and cons to this site. I've been using it for 2 years and it does come down to the people that you choose, mostly.
Pros: You don't have to pay for the sitters and the yearly fee is reasonable. You can find some amazing, dedicated, responsible people so you don't have to bother family or neighbors. If you have trouble finding a sitter, customer support is very attentive and willing to help to make sure you get someone. I've always had applicants. This is a lot cheaper and affordable than other sites.

Cons: Some sitters fishing for money from you even though they aren't supposed to.
I plan my trips well in advance and I have had quite a few sitters cancel after committing. Customer support is not helpful in these situations. There are no consequences for sitters quiting after a commitment and no review or rating or score on a sitters profile showing if they have canceled on people previously. I want to see that option! When I mention this to customer support, they blow me off. That score would go into my decision because the stress created is horrible when the sitters cancel last minute and you've had everything planned already for 5 months. Of you can't commit to a date 5 months in the future, don't apply for the sit.
They used to have the option to select sitters that have had background checks but they removed that option. Now they only verify documents and emails. I want the option for the background checks.
Otherwise it is up to you to diligently review the applicants, talk to them, look at their references and reviews. I had a couple bad sitters (one endangered my dog and had to go to the vet, the sitter offered to pay for the visit as well as things she broke in the home but she never did) but mostly good sitters. Enough to make it worth it to continue with the membership.

We joined Trusted Housesitters (TH) on recommendation from a friend who landed some amazing international housesitting gigs.

We joined this fall and were as booked as we wanted to be and feel like we made friends with the homeowners while getting in some great pet-love as our nomadic lifestyle doesn't lend itself well to pet ownership.

I like that TH homeowners and the housesitters have an equal amount of skin in the game for membership. Membership fees seem to be at high enough but not hideously high price point that encourages more qualified membership on both sides. I've found that most of the housesitting queries I make are answered with encouragement even when we don't end up housesitting because some else excellent got their query in before ours.

As a former pet owner, I appreciate that TH does a great job of creating a welcome packet outline that back in the day I had to create from scratch.

I would like to see major improvements made in the TH interface (it's pretty clumsy in a lot of ways), application uptime and faster followup on customer assistance. The application is so unreliable I offer my contact phone number and email and immediately copy and paste the welcome guide into a Word document because the TH system has gone down at inopportune times, sometimes for hours.

That aside, I have found the quality of resolution (ex. When there were challenges figuring out how to change the date of a house sit, or to give reviews on a housesit that ended prematurely because of coronavirus) was good. Issues took a couple of days to resolve and it's something that a better-designed system wouldn't require customer assistance to resolve.

While I don't expect a whole lot of action until coronavirus has rn its course, I heartily recommend TH despite its flaws to both homeowners and prospective housesitters.

I just hired a sitter from this site and it was a nightmare of epic proportions.

She left my 4 month old kittens (one who was sick and had been at the vet) home for hours and hours alone with no food or water in a heatwave in syndey on the first day, after promising she would not be out for more than an hour or two at a time.

By 11 pm that evening she still had not returned and I had no update and was beside myself with anxiety knowing the kittens were home alone.

A friend went over and let herself in to feed them and water them (with the keys that the sitter had left in the letterbox ALL day and night because she hadn't been back.

While my friend was in the apartment, this girl sent me a message saying she was home with them, they were well and hiding under the bed so she couldn't get a pic (she wasn't as my friend was there) and so I asked her to leave.

The sitter showed up at 1 am buzzing the intercom and trying to break in the back door despite being asked to come home at 11.30 pm to collect her belongings.

Completely out of control.

She deleted her message where she had lied being home with the cats out of WhatsApp obviously realising she had Been caught and yet even wirh screen shots of everything and very clear communication on our agreements this site terminated me.

The site not only immediately blocked my account preventing me from communicating with other sitters whilst I was interstate but following very clear evidence of neglectful behaviour they then refused to let me back on.

Please note that this was the FIRST day of the sit and my time using the site,

Their customer service is slow and unprofessional.

I do not recommend this site and would never trust them with your animals.

Although the owners pays for the pleasure of using it they clearly favour the sitters.

I had very clear evidence of this sitter lying about the state of the kittens hours before she was actually home and they honestly did not remotely care.

I would use anyone else