Warning this is not your typical “balanced” review of Trusted House Sitters you see on most travel blogs. You know, the ones focused on getting the reader to click on craftily placed affiliate links promoting Trusted House Sitters.
In fact, this “review” is completely, biased, lopsided, opinionated and extremely snarky. The language used will very likely offend some readers. If you do not like strong language you may want to stop here. You have been forewarned.
Here we go…
Trusted House Sitters in my opinion:
Sucks more than anything has Sucked before!
There I have said it and I feel much better for getting that off my chest.
But why do I think Trusted House Sitters is a big flaming bag of dog dejection? Allow me to explain.
But first, for those who are not familiar, Trusted House sitters (THS) is the largest house-sitting match making platform on the internet.
Once Upon a Time
Back in 2010 the founders of Trusted House Sitters were proud to announce that they were house sitters – just like us. A housesitting platform for sitters by sitters, sounds awesome! Bordering on altruism even.
My wife Yvonne and I have been housesitting globally fulltime since 2012 – a whole decade now! We have completed 86 assignments in 20 countries on 4 continents. That is where we are coming from – we housesit for a living. This is the perspective this review / rant is based on.
Our early experience with THS was great, through it we landed assignments in Belize, St Lucia, Grenada, St Kitts, Ecuador, Peru and multiple sits in British Columbia, Canada. We have met some awesome people and pets along the way.
Note: These days most of our assignments are found outside of the housesitting platforms. We use the platforms to fill the occasional gap.
In the beginning THS treated all house sitters equally and everyone paid the same fee. As a sitter you set up a profile and applied for house sitting assignments that appealed. At one point everyone got instant alerts for upcoming house sits.
The platform seemed to work OK. That is as long as you were a suitable candidate, did your homework, had good reviews and had something of value to offer to a homeowner. Just like every other house-sitting platform out there.
Growing Pains
As the platform grew, THS experienced some growing pains. The instant alerts were scrapped because they were being flagged as spam and ending up in members email spam bins – ooops!
Daily alerts were then implemented but resulted in a rather smelly data dump in our inbox each and every day.
The founders obviously worked very hard to promote, build, and make the THS platform work for its members. Eventually they bowed out. Good on you guys! I am sure you are living quite comfortably these days!
Enter the Vampires
Starting around 2019 the MBA’s and the venture capitalists took over the THS business. Now it would appear it is entirely about the money-making potential of the platform.
Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough.
— Janwillem van de Wetering
From its humble beginnings as a house-sitting platform connecting sitters and home owners – THS has morphed into a Lernaean Hydra. Among other things it has become an insurance agency masquerading as a housesitting platform.
You only have to look at the pricing structure that was introduced in May 2021 to get the picture.
Notice a theme here with the up-sale memberships?
- Home & Contents Protection (insurance product)
- Sit cancellation insurance (insurance product)
- Accident & third-party liability protection (insurance product)
- Money Back Guarantee (a type of insurance)
A subtheme is also evident
- Global airport lounge passes
- Free video calls with vets, anytime you need
Maybe you can guess where the recent $10 Million financing round is taking this platform? Selling more services possibly?
By the way, THS is by far the most expensive housesitting platform out there!
Fine, some folks want the perks, others just want to house sit, and are perfectly capable of sourcing their own insurance products independently when given a choice.
Big and Bloated
Along with the quest for world domination comes the overhead.
THS has an army of engineers, data analysts, product designers, developers, content managers, membership services personal, Member Experience Executives, coders, brand designers, People and Culture Gurus, as well as the vendor managers. (not to mention the CTO, CFO, CPO, CMO, the CEO and the board of directors). Hazard a guess to whom is paying for all these fancy titles?
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
― Edward Abbey
Yes, THS has become the big boy among the housesitting platforms, big, bloated, and ambitious.
It is very apparent THS is leveraging their market position to expand into multiple income streams. They are raising capital to bleed as much money out of the platform as possible – and that is what business and capitalism (specifically venture capitalism) is all about –I get it.
In the process they appear to have lost touch with their company roots, their body, which is the members of the house-sitting community. Some would even argue they have lost their soul as well.
The Soul of Housesitting
Many house sitters, like ourselves, entered the game as a way of engaging in the sharing economy. House sitters provide a valuable service in return for the opportunity to see different parts the world. No money changes hands – a true win win for the sitters, the owners and the pets.
Now we have a major player who is using their position to maximize corporate profits. They also appear to be using the platform to create excess demand.
Don’t get me wrong. The practice of business solving problems for people and getting paid in the process works brilliantly. I do not expect THS to offer their services for nothing.
My problem is when a business employs practices that can be considered sly, deceptive, distrustful, or manipulative.
This is in my opinion where THS has crossed the line.
Pigs get Fat, Hogs get Slaughtered
The first signs of avarice setting in was the introduction of a 3-tier membership structure.
One of the Machiavellian aspects of this “house sitting” platform is how they are coercing people who may just want to housesit, to opt into their more expensive tiers of membership.
Remember those instant alerts that everyone used to get? Now only the ones paying top dollar get those. These folks can now get ‘Instant Alerts for Unlimited Saved Searches. The small print reveals that this is if they are using THS app, otherwise they receive a daily email. But it’s unlimited as opposed to the paltry 3 searches allowed on the basic plan.
Providing Piss Poor Council
The reality is international housesitting can be a bit dodgy with regards to immigration law.
Many countries interpret housesitting as work. Free lodging in exchange for services may be considered a form of remuneration by some immigration departments and their border agents.
Trusted Housesitters offers misleading advice regarding visa requirements, by decreeing that unpaid housesitting doesn’t constitute work, suggesting that members can enter countries like the UK, US, Australia, and Canada as tourists Scot free.
This is plain bad advice.
THS also thinks it’s a grand idea for their army of younger house sitters to educate border agents on immigration law, by providing a “Letter of Introduction” (provided by THS) which is full of holes and inconsistencies.
Trusted Housesitters explanatory letters for schooling border control agents
“On rare occasions housesitting can be categorised as work by border control and there have been a very small handful of cases where sitters have found entry challenging – in even rarer cases, there have been sitters who have been refused entry to a country as a result.
We’ve produced the letters below for our most popular housesitting destinations which you can show if needed to help border control officials understand that we don’t regard housesitting as work”.
Talk about arrogance – who gives a shit what THS regards?
Certainly not the border agent who is attempted to be schooled.
The letter does a poor job of schooling by stating its members are not providing a service, before defining the very specific ways in which they are providing the service they are not providing.
Legal mambo dogface to the banana patch.
These letters are more a statement of confession than anything else.
THS has decided to pretend everything is cool and provide contradictory, misleading advice to its members rather than being honest.
How you do anything, is how you do everything.
Breach of Contract?
The latest stroke of genius from the THS brain trust is to cap the number of applications for house sitting assignments to five (5). Guess who sees these assignments first?
In my snarky, non corporate opinion, this devious action has changed the nature of the platform from being merit based (i.e. matching the best sitter with a given homeowner) to something between giving everybody a participation ribbon–so their feelings don’t get hurt (and stop being a paying member)–and a Machiavellian “Pay to Play” system maximizing profits and economic reach. Perhaps the former is an excuse to justify the later.
Maybe it was never intended to be merit based? – I might just be projecting my values.
It is very apparent that the paying members are just pawns and commodities in this game of mining money from the platform. Especially the homeowners.
The bottom line is that every member has paid good money to access ALL of the opportunity’s presented on the THS platform, not just the ones THS decide you can see.
I am not a legal expert; however, it would appear that the new changes are not giving members what they thought they were paying for. It is very possible this could be considered to be a breach of an implicit contract? I leave that one to the legal beagles.
I can tell you this – I never got notification from THS that the terms and conditions have changed.
Gaming the System?
HANLON’S RAZOR:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
In my opinion THS is attempting to game the system to compensate for a potentially flawed business model.
The potential flaw in their model is charging homeowners to advertise on their platform.
I am not aware of any other Housesitting platform that has the Cojones to do this. Then again, no other platform has their reach and resources either.
It is really easy to market and sell the concept of house sitting to potential house sitters. There is a veritable cornucopia of budget travelers, weekend warriors and those lusting after free vacations.
Give credit to THS they have attracted these folks in droves! Victims of their own success in this regard it can be argued.
The problem is THS has too many potential house sitters chasing too few opportunities.
Instead of creating more opportunities, THS has decided to manipulate the system to share its pool of sits among its blossoming contingent of sitters.
There are few problems with this gaming the system approach
- Firstly it takes the choice away from the homeowner
- Secondly it potentially mismatches the skill set of the sitters and the requirements of the homeowner.
Both these problems may lead to homeowners leaving the platform.
THS also appears to have the attitude that if you buy a membership you are entitled to a sit.
This is exactly what I mean about handing out participation ribbons. Instead of giving out first, second and third place ribbons for those with ability and who have trained. THS manipulates the platform so they can hand out sixth, seventh and eighth place ribbons – they appear to be manufacturing demand in order to maintain higher levels of paid membership.
Like handing out free money it leads to malinvestment of capital and leads to distortion.
Their business model combined with less than exemplary execution may result in a classic negative feedback loop where disgruntled homeowners leave the platform – exacerbating the problem they were trying to solve in the first place.
Avoiding the Death Spiral
Homeowners and their pets are the Oxygen. They are ones who make this whole thing work.
Period.
Therefore, treat them with the upmost respect.
In my opinion THS needs to focus on solving the homeowner’s problem of who will care for their home and pets while they are away. Not just giving it lip service or treating Owners as a commodity.
The solution would ideally involve offering them the best candidates possible, ultimately providing the pet and homeowner with piece of mind.
If THS wants more Homeowners advertising on their platform they need to put the homeowner first and foremost and secondly, they may need to remove financial disincentives.
The fees THS is charging the owners appears to be like “the old South Indian Monkey Trap” Robert Pirsig describes in his classic “The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”.
THS may just need to let go of the rice or settle for less.
“The difficulty, lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.”
John Maynard Keynes
Home Owners Shut Out
We and our fellow fulltime sitters have recently spoken to many homeowners who use the THS platform. These homeowners were completely unaware that the number of applicants they have recently received had been capped at 5.
One home owner has even mentioned that she has recently given an assignment to a less than ideal sitter because she thought there was limited interest in her proposed house-sitting opportunity. Not that the sitters were incompetent – just not ideal candidates for the challenges of the property.
Is THS treating homeowners as a commodity?
Maybe THS just forgot to mention this change to homeowners?
Maybe both?
“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome!”
Is one of Charlie Munger’s more famous quips.
(Charlie is the bespectacled gentleman who hangs out with Berkshire Hathaway’s’ Warren Buffet)
The recent THS changes of capping applications and limiting those who receive instant alerts provides incentives which may lead to the following outcomes:
- The first is to get people to pay for the top tier memberships, this way they can get to the front of the line (and simultaneously maximise profits for THS)
- The second outcome (and a possibly an unintended consequence) is to have potential house sitters blast off applications to home owners without any due diligence or thought – just to get in the queue (of 5) as fast as robotically possible. In other words Ready – Fire – Aim
- The third outcome is to give house sitters who may not be the best fit for any given assignment a shot, thus incentivising them to remain paying members
- Experienced sitters may decide to leave the platform in droves
- Homeowners may decide to go elsewhere
Flipping us the Bird
If you don’t happen to be in the right time zone – the message is clear – piss off!
If you don’t want to be on the platform 24/7 – the message is clear – piss off!
If you want to compete for a sit based on your merit – the message is clear – piss off!
If you are the homeowner – the message is clear – THS knows what is best for you- so piss off!
If you piss off your clients
those clients may just piss off somewhere else.
Getting Our Voice heard!
When the Snarky traveller first heard about these recent changes, my first response was Bullsnort! People are just spreading nonsensical rumours on Facebook.
How could a company be that flipping stupid? (or that cunning and deceitful?) Remember Hanlon’s Razor?
Well as it turns out they were not rumours, and as for not being stupid…. Well time will tell.
After expressing our concerns about these changes by responding to 2 separate emails surveys that THS sent us (which were promptly greeted by auto responders) – We posted the following comments on the THS website help portal.
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Invasion of the Internet Bots?
Sorry Katrina but you are soooooo full of crap.
If what you say is true then why is THS spending so much time and effort implementing these changes?
We have a hunch that some of the THS Member Experience Executives and “Katrina” in specific, are just Internet bots running automated scripts. If Katrina is indeed a human, then she is good at cutting and pasting and towing the company line.
I am thinking she is also very busy these days.
Forging Ahead
Subsequent to this conversation, THS has decided in their wisdom to fully implement the policy of capping of applications at 5, despite outcry from the community (their forum alone had over 950 comments with many sitters and owners firmly against this new change).
We did not feel like we were getting anywhere with THS, corresponding with autoresponders and Internet bots.
Upping the Ante
We decided to write to THS and cancel our membership and request a refund. This was not necessarily to cancel and get a refund – but to elicit a response from a real person.
The interesting thing is – we had already arranged a house sit with our friend Jane through the THS platform.
Well, when we mentioned we wanted to pull our business we got a response – and so did our homeowner friend.
From Victor
Victor (TrustedHousesitters.com)
23 Sept 2022, 00:21 BST
Hi Yvonne,
Thank you for getting in touch with us.
I am sorry to hear that you want to cancel your membership.
I am confident that you will be able to find success on our platform and I would love the opportunity to have a chat with you to see if there is anything I can do to help. If you would like to arrange a phone call then I will be happy to schedule this in so we can go through any queries you may have and help you get the most from your membership. {Wow, I can actually speak to a real person great, I’m in}
Additionally, we would love for you to continue being a part of the TrustedHousesitters community and I would be happy to offer you an additional 2 months on your membership term. This would give you 14 months for the price you paid for 12 and allow you extra time to enjoy the benefits of being a part of our pet-loving community. {Bribery}
Alternatively, if you still wish to go ahead with the full cancellation and pro-rata refund of your membership fee then please do let me know by return email and I will be happy to process this for you right away.
I can see as well that you have an upcoming house sit with owner Jane. For this reason, I will reach out separately to owner Jane to inform her accordingly and I will wait for her confirmation first. {Why do they need to inform her and wait for her confirmation of what?}
I look forward to hearing back from you.Kind Regards,
VictorMember Experience Executive
Visit our friendly community forum to share your love of house sitting, pets, travel and more.
Fair enough – we worked towards setting up a time to chat with Victor.
At the same time Jane received this correspondence from Victor
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Victor’s response to Yvonne offered a bribe and a veiled threat in the same email.
In Jane’s email Victor failed to mention that Yvonne’s membership is
in fact still current, slyly recommending that she find a new sitter.
Machiavellian: defines actions that are inherently sly, deceptive, distrustful, and manipulative. Actions that are driven by cynicism and callousness. The end game is to acquire money, power, influence, and status through the use of cunning and underhanded influence.
The bottom line is, nobody is holding a gun to anybody’s head to be a paying member of this housesitting platform.
However, at this point it may be argued that THS (knowingly or unknowingly) leverages their market position to instill FOMO (the fear of missing out) within the house-sitting community. That may soon change – we will see.
Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.
— Albert Einstein
Thanks for allowing me to channel my inner whinger and indulge in yet another rant!
Any thoughts? – Please share.
Disclosure: Note there are no affiliate links in the above text. If you are really feel like clicking an affiliate link here is one to House Carers.
Post Script:
We did get to talk to a Customer Services Representative at THS. A real live person called exactly when they said they would.
Sadly, it wasn’t Victor we spoke to as we had a few questions regarding his emails.
Yvonne spoke to a very pleasant softly spoken lady, who told us how sorry she was that we were unhappy about the new capping system.
She proceeded to tell us how successful the system has been in getting new members into housesits.
She admitted that most of the assignments in the past were getting assigned to experienced sitters. (I wonder why?)
We pointed out that as they were not telling owners that they had been capped during the trial period their trial data is skewed. She promised she would forward all this information to her ‘team’.
Yvonne also pointed out that Victor had lied to our upcoming homeowner and suggested she cancel us which is hardly ethical behavior is it? Again she would forward the information on.
Cheque is in the mail.
Anyways we got to say our peace.
PPS
THS is now floating the idea for potential house sitters to bypass the application cap of 5 – for a fee of course!
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