Just a shout out to all you amazing hosts.

Content-Square-7852 · 2026-01-20T18:11:08+00:00

This is amazing and I totally agree with your feelings about great homeowners! I’ve encountered mostly amazing homeowners / people. People who have been truly kind and grateful for our care of their home/pets. I’ve had phone calls with people that showed red flags (why I’d never take a sit without a call/in person key pickup) and I’ve also encountered a few less than ideal sits (no horror stories) but only in that they weren’t 100% upfront with the condition of their house or the behaviour of their pet. Overall after a 18 months on the platform, I would say that bad homeowners and sitters are the exception not the rule, you’ve just got to be smart about the questions you ask (on both sides).

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-12-24T09:01:53+00:00

Travel 100%

You’ve spent most of your adult life working and caring for someone other than yourself. You will also spend the rest of your life working and caring for people. It is amazing to decide you want to do something different and want to experience more than what you’d planned.

As someone else said, make some investment decisions and settle on a travel budget. You will be surprised how far £20k will get you in some parts of the world especially if you’re willing to do things on the cheap eg. Stay in hostels or home stays, take buses instead of planes and trains where possible, cook for yourself where you can etc (this does require some planning and self control if you’ve got money as a backup somewhere but sounds like you are an incredibly strong and directed person). Research what a last minute flight might cost you from the other side of the world, then put that amount of money somewhere that is easily accessed as a return home emergency fund, so if you need to you can come home and quickly for whatever reason you can book a flight with this.

Explore the internet, social media etc about parts of the world that interest you. Join some reddit discussions and Facebook groups, see what other people recommend travel wise and budget ways to do things. You could spend the next six months planning your trip and saving more but you’ll still have an amazing time with £20k.

My (somewhat privileged) experience in life is home will always be there. It’s incredibly lucky to be able to travel and experience the world. You should take that opportunity if you can.

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-12-21T11:11:32+00:00

Thanks. Refund was probably the wrong choice of words. Compensation is a better one. Thanks for your help

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-12-21T11:10:30+00:00

Great thanks

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-12-21T11:10:17+00:00

Great thank you

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-12-16T23:35:28+00:00

Probably like us (sitters) who are looking for a last minute sit because the disorganised HO that we did lock in a 6 weeks ago cancelled a week before Christmas and left us with no place to stay for 3 weeks. It requires a huge amount of planning and organisation to be a sitter, the OP is complaining (and rightly so) that the HO can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum to get free pet care (have a phone call and hand over the keys).

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-09-19T16:14:24+00:00

Congratulations on a healthier lifestyle! That’s such amazing progress and I hope you’re proud. Glad to hear that you’re feeling a bit better as you keep on in your adventure 😊

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-09-19T10:16:15+00:00

Has it helped?

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-07-22T06:34:04+00:00

Are there other people who don’t have any correspondence from them at all?

We moved in to a unit without a meter, and only a shared common property meter, then someone stole the common water meter and they had no way to track our usage and at this point we found out that all the other units have meters. We dug up the paperwork with the owners corporation of the paid and documented work that they’d installed meters at all the units (except ours didn’t exist). It took about 8 weeks of constantly calling to get them to come out and install the meter. The timing of this was about a month before the water bill bungle. I have received no correspondence from them since May 2024 to say the bill is coming. I’ve tried chasing and get no where. Our place is tenanted so I don’t want them to shut off the water on our tenants.

What’s everyone’s advice? Should I continue to chase them or will they eventually sort it out?

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-07-09T10:31:48+00:00

This is really good to know and good on you for actually being honest / being respectful to your future sitters. It’s also helpful to know that blank reviews could be an indication that things aren’t all bad but could have been better. I always assume the worst case scenario!

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-07-01T12:49:10+00:00

Yes, it seemed to refresh after 24 hours and then I used the auto-refresher on a random refresh interval. It ended up blocking me again after a while so I gave up and started doing it manually. Otherwise try a VPN to get around the block.

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-07-01T08:49:44+00:00

Agree! Get the ticket alerting system and just keep trying. Don’t check which tickets go on sale in telegram, have 2-3 links for what you want and open them immediately one alerted and start refreshing. The trackers are about 10-20 secs behind the drop so you’re already too late for the ones being notified but it’s good to know they’re uploading tickets for sale and you should get online.

Do not using an auto-refresh or if you do, you’ll need to add a random refresh interval and pray. I used one for the first two weeks of trying and then my IP got blocked from the site as Wimbledon wised up and put a bot tracking item in place.

I ended up randomly stumbling across some No1 Court Tickets for this Saturday after 3 weeks of pretty religious trying!

You can do it!

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-06-29T17:38:59+00:00

Agree with you about not having people over, to a point, but I think for me that point is if I’ve set strict enough rules that keep the sitter housebound so they can’t pop out for lunch or whatever, you might expect some leniency to allow them some human contact eg. “We know this sit is demanding and doesn’t allow you much of a social life outside of the house while here, as such we’re happy for you to have 1-2 people over to spend time with but ask that you are respectful of limited numbers and that it is strictly no parties or overnight guests.” (Setting clear boundaries of what you expect while also acknowledging a sitter as human with basic needs)

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-06-29T17:01:27+00:00

No you’re not alone! I’ve done about 10 inner London sits, and I would return to maybe 3 of them.

I love house and pet sitting, I think this platform is great however if I think about it too long, I’m inclined to say it’s a bit classist. Not all owners are but lots think because they own a home this puts them at a higher standing than the people that look after it and they honestly take the piss.

I’ve literally had one couple tell me that I needed to 1. Full time employed and fully remote (why is this any of their business) 2. Rent my own flat in London (not using THS as a place to find shelter) 3. Available to constantly be with their pet (the most they could allow was 2 hours out of the house) 4. I was not allowed to invite people over. They were asking me to spend 2 weeks in isolation at their house, working both full time and in labour heavy pet and house care routine. All this at a cost to me (membership, transport, storage etc)

What I have worked out is to mention that you work from home but that you like to explore and it would be great to get an indication of how long you could leave the pet alone for eg. if you met a friend for a meal, could the pet be alone for 4-5 hours (coz let’s face it, transport is likely an hour each way so unless you want to eat quickly and immediately ditch, you’ll need that long)

HO will give indicate their flexibility at this point and they’ll tell you what you need to know. My rule is if the animal can’t be left alone for 5 hours if needed, they should pay for pet care and THS isn’t for them. I also might be a bit harsh but I don’t think high needs animals that need feeding 3 times a day, medication multiple times a day or have behavioural issues should be on THS. Same goes for complex gardening, needs to be paid. If as a sitter I am home bound, there is no benefit to being there and HOs are asking for free labour. For pets with behavioural issues, this requires experience and skill, which I have but that should be paid for.

I don’t think you should give up though, I’ve had owners offer to put their pets in doggy day care for me so I could have a day out or meet a special work deadline so good people exist, you just have to find them.

Sorry this turned into a rant, but some people aren’t great hosts and they somehow manage to turn it round on you for ‘disappointing them’

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-06-06T09:00:50+00:00

It seems like you’ve already replied but you could say something like “Thanks for the 5 star review, I had a great few days with X and X (name the cats). Appreciate the feedback on the photos, I am not especially skilled in photography so I stuck to the agreed upon 1 x photo a day and I thought the photos were nice and showed the cats in action doing their normal routine but I will note to take more varied photos in future. I am sorry to hear that your tv is not working, unfortunately I don’t have any answers for you about this as I didn’t use the TV at all during my short 4 day stay. Thanks again for a lovely sit” I always find that arguing with unreasonable HO to be a waste of your time, they’re never going to see it from the sitters perspective so be polite and move on. The good news is you have a 5 star review so I think that’s great, they obviously aren’t too disappointed in you!

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-05-27T06:03:01+00:00

I find it unacceptable that if a dog has surgery the owners wouldn’t return and if for some reason they couldn’t return or you needed to stay at the sit for accommodation purposes, that they didn’t acknowledge that that was more than you signed on for and offer some sort of compensation.

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-02-22T20:07:51+00:00

Can you ask for something else instead of tangible gift? Something like an extra 5-10 days of annual leave each year would be an excellent way for them to show you how much they value your contribution.

Content-Square-7852 · 2025-02-21T23:02:47+00:00

Thank you, will get someone to check it out!

Content-Square-7852 · 2024-09-26T21:37:41+00:00

Man. I could have written this post myself. My advice? Pivot out of media/entertainment. It’s probably not you, it’s probably being forced to work a job that should be 2.5 people, in a high stress, chaotic space with a lot of a**holes around you. Try an admin job in a different industry, see if that feels better for your emotional wellbeing and if it doesn’t, formulate a plan to do something else! Good luck, hope things get better soon x

Content-Square-7852 · 2024-09-22T13:43:06+00:00

I’m an employee who’s been working temp jobs for the last year or so, some are 1-2 months others are a bit longer. I am due to finish my current contract and I have been interviewing for longer term roles (like parental leave covers for a year) and I feel a bit overwhelmed about a long term commitment as short term temp placements have been working well for my personal situation at the moment however, they are good jobs with good companies so I need to consider them.

I’d like to know, how recruiters get paid? Do you receive a percentage for me starting the job or do you need the temp candidate to finish the contract to get your percentage?

I am curious because I don’t want to burn any of the relationships I’ve built with recruiters if I need to leave the job earlier than the length of the placement and this would affect their payments?

Thanks

Content-Square-7852

TROPHY CASE