“They market this service as a way to travel the world --- but you can't tell the truth about what you're doing. You have to say you're visiting friends or a tourist. When you are going across borders house sitting is illegal.
You can read about this on Reddit. There is nothing about this on the Trusted House Sitters website because they delete everything negative. People get turned away at the border. Then there is nobody to look after your pets. The sitter has to fly home immediately at their own expense.”
“So the real issue with THS is their customer service reviews are so bad and they do not seem to care. They have been promoting their service as a freebie for all which is totally wrong - this pays a huge disservice to pet owners, pet sitters and the pets themselves. Pet Sitting is absolutely not a freeload. That's while happily collecting subscription fees with no guarantees from them. If there every was a company who deserved a kick up the *ss it is this lot. I just signed up with trustmypetsitter.com as an alternative and they are already blowing THS out of the water. No membership fees and they run with the same model as Air Bnb - its free to list and you only pay if you are successful.”
“Somebody published a review in our profile with business sensitive information about my partner. Specially, the location of my partner with times and dates during the last 4-5 weeks which could compromise her business. We asked to TustedHousesitters to remove at least that paragraph, but they declined. They quickly MISS-judged us of just willing to remove a negative comment instead of thinking how this private information made public on their website could affect my partner's business. Their attention was very un-respectful and we felt treated like children with a total condescendency.
Awful service, these people that pretrends being aware of your privacy but they actually do not care at the end of the day. I wish there would be another similar app that could run some competition to TrustedHousesitters, if there would be, then they would respect users more properly.
By the way, we pay them yearly a suscription of £200. We are now happy to stop this as they do not respect our privacy.”
“I do not recommend this website!
I've been with the website for a year and had 3 different people stay in my house to mind my cat. I had no issue with the first 2 sitters but the last one stole 600 euros worth of goods. We did not notice this straight away and left her a good review since the house and cat seemed ok at first.
We noticed the theft 3 weeks after the sit and THS won't let us update the review to warn other people that this person should not be trusted in anybody's house. This means she is probably still sitting for other people and continuing to steal while THS is well aware of the issue (proofs have been sent to them).
They do not always carry a proper background check. They only do this for US-based sitters.
Also, the insurance is a scam. They:
- Will ask you to go through your insurance first
- Won't reimburse anything below $1000
- Will ask you to pay $250 excess in the event you claim for something over $1000
- Do not cover identity theft
If you're considering using this website, I highly recommend you read the fine prints and "trusted house sitters horror stories" you can find on the web before you make your decision.”
“Literally the only thing that Trusted house sitters were good at was taking my joining fee and then one year later after I had cancelled my sub. helping themselves to another unauthorised $100 from my account. Boo. I have had success in finding house sitters quite regularly on another website but with these guys, I have never even had one enquiry. Total rip off. Avoid.”
“I paid , the system accept money but I have been unable to enter my listing . Client service : a fake useless basic robot . No reply email address . ..I am afraid to understand, too late , what this organisation it is actually made for 😊😊negative rating should be available .”
“My house sitter did significant damage…
My house sitter did significant damage to my car and left the country as I arrived back so was gone by time I realised. One of my pets died in her care and she did not even notice, was not aware, was surprised when I advised her of this tragic event.She all but trashed my home. They did refund me my membership but have refused any form of compensation did the damage to my car. They take no responsibility for damage incurred by the house sitter, no responsibility can’t be bothered, overall gutting experience. Would NEVER use them again”
“Had good experiences for first few years then the last two have lied and stolen from me. Last pair said they’d cut my lawn but I could tell lawn looked like it hadn’t been cut, no fresh grass cuttings anywhere and they would not have known where the necessary extension was AND my chunky bottle/cork screw was gone. Second pair seemed genuine also - saw my bookmark about scripture and sent me Bible quotes along with photos. of my cat to get home to find a tiny rocking horse from trunk at bottom of bed is gone. I’m done with so-called Trusted House Sitter.”
“Beware sitters can cancel last minute but you can’t leave a negative review as they have done the sit? Absolutely rubbish! Won’t be using again. Beware of a Helen from South Africa.”
“I cancelled my subscription/ membership at the beginning of the year because I couldn’t get any sitters. I had trouble cancelling because their system kept freezing. I emailed them to check if I’d managed to do it and they eventually got back to me to say it was successful. They have just taken a full years membership from my credit card and now I can’t contact them because my email is unsubscribed! Don’t touch this company.”
“This is a terrible flat form. First, you need to join and pay a membership in order to advertise your sit. If you by any change communicated with another member (even though you end up not using the service), you could not get your refund within the 14 days period. The refund policy made it a way to trap a membership fees of a year at least!”
“I took a premium membership after more than 6 months using the platform because we were doing our first international petsit. I received an email from THS 1 week before our trip saying : "be sure to have a return ticket" and all these kind of information. Don't you find it's too late ? Our trip and petsit has been booked since 2months+
Also, we had a pet parent cancelling while we were all in the house, and we did not have our money back for the alternative accommodation we had to find last minute... And this sit was cut in 2 part, and the second part will not be reimbursed either because their T&C is that to have your money back for accommodation, the housesit must have been cancelled between 14 and 1 day before the actual date...
So one day to the other you could get kicked out out of the blue with no roof over your head. So in 2 months, because of this kind of experience we spend 2000€+. So please home owners stop thinking that housesit is free of charge, because it's also money, expensive energy, and loads of organization and insecurity!
I don't even take in consideration all the time we had to throw away bad food from the fridge, and re-buy the items in order for the owners that they don't think we ate it, but because it has gone bad! So you do the groceries twice, for you, and for the home owner when they come back, because if you finish a can of mayonnaise in which there's is only one teaspoon left, then you buy it all new, and you leave it in the fridge...
Be lucky if you have everything in good shape to do the cleaning, and that regular products, toilet paper, spices etc are not empty when you arrive, and that the house is clean, otherwise you would be considered dirty because the homeowner does not remember how the house was, and you can't remember after a 3weeks trip or even less...
So again, lots of organisation, cleaning and attention to the pets and house, it's not a holiday AT ALL. I can't understand people who thinks housesitting and petsitting is a holiday, it's not. Like someone said below, it's not free, you're paying with your energy, stress, unsaid stuff, and your time... It's at least a half-time job.
Forgot to mention that the stuff is charming but yeah, they don't resolve anything...
Also forgot to mention that they don't even verify a listing offering a housesit in a private island... Which I talked about in my first sentence above... we ended up not being authorized by the new manager of the island because of liability and hurricane. And although the home owner was a delight, we had to stay in the mainland, just in front of a construction site, so constant noise all day (do I have to tell you that in an island, we don't have double glazing, and no windows at all but louvres with mosquito nets...? So the noise is just like being part of the staff of the construction site, despite the luxurious location...)
So again, no insurance, no holiday because we cannot take care of the dog and do long walks as we wanted and were told, so us + the pet are sad. Do I have to tell you how much it all costed?...”
“Some house owners live in deluded sense that sitters are a mother theresa doing volunteering work, and all that responsibilities and cleaning etc just because they cant be with pets. LOL you need to wake up to reality-sitters DO expect an airbnb style or at least nicely clean in good working order house as that is all they are asking in return of hard work...if you are so entitled and expect slave like in 1850's, then you need to find a paid service. But you wont, you are too cheap for that.”
“Dear pet & homeowner, If you love your home, care about your pets and a good relationship with your neibours, delete this app and run from their service as far as you can. I have had a membership for a year and had all kind of bad and worst experiences. The only one that worked was the first sitter and thats why i decided to give it a chance.
The second one broke a window glass that i paid out of my pockets, and the 3rd ond 4rd canceled 2 weeks and 2 days before I was leaving. Both for the same petsitting. Dont let you get fool, the million $ insurance they offer is not what you think and more difficult to claim for it than you may be imagine, and the sitters can cancel on you as late as in the same day you may have your plane tikets to leave the country, with NO PENALTY OR SOEVER FOR THE PETSITTER no matter of it is legitimate or not since even braking the code of conducts of this website doesnt mean a penalty for the pet sitter and in the case they come with a rare legible excuse, it wont be ask for a prove of anything.
Our last wanted-to-be -petsitter raised so many red flags when I told her that my friend would pop up once in a while to pick up the mail and check if she needed something and how my pets were doing that her reaction and behavior made me to get the police involved
to get my home key back from her after she canceled on the sitting 2 days before i was traveling away for 2 months. She was stupid enough to write in the "trusted"housesitter chat that my friend coming by was the reason why she was canceling but not even because of that will makes the company to penalize the sitter. In the other hand, to see how she freaked out for my friend coming to check on her and the mail made me wonder was she was hidding so bad and I relized that this set up is perfect for criminal activities that could be hidden easily in the privacy of petsowner home with their consent, such prostitution, human smuggling or trafficking. It might sounds a bit exagerated but as a foreign (and I am not originally from USA) you are not asked for police clarence from your home country in this site and my last 3 confirmed sitters happens to be Ukrainians leaving in USA, included the last unfit. YOU HAVE NO WARANTEES OF CRIMINAL CLEARANCE PROVIDED FROM THIS SITE.
Sure enough your pet babies will never be able to tell all what they saw.
The help service, emergency and unexistance telephone of contact (wich is a record masching telling you to go to the website and make a complain) WON'T HELP YOU AT ALL in situations like mine to mediate with the sitter when she refuses to talk to you to clear possible misunderstandings or return the key. They won't make sure either that the sitting would be cover by someone else more reliable.
They reched out to me, days after the date of my departure and only because my membership had expired and wanted me to renew it. They told me that for the monetary lost on this trip they strongly recommended me to upgrade my membership to be cover by cancelations.
I got so stressed that i got rushes all over my body and I never found a sitter for my babies for that dates.
I hope my dramatic experience will make aware more pet owners about the lack of protection in this site for the ones who have the most to loose.”
“I am an honest person. I have ethics. I signed up for this with some skepticism but wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt (negative reviews). But, this is the worst experience by far I've ever had. I've been in contact with them the past week only to find how they blame "their system" everytime for their own human mistakes. I don't even want to recite this whole experience but I'll tell you in a nutshell what happened quickly. 1) I signed up and got a basic membership to *have* a housesitter for my pets. This membership should last one full year from the time you buy it. A few months passed and I decided I also wanted to be a "sitter". I followed the prompts to "upgrade" as it told me that is what I needed to do to be able to be both a sitter and get a sitter. However, the plan page I upgraded to was for an upgrade to my own "parent-pet" page. This upgrade was accidentally purchased as an error on my part. I contacted them immediately and told them I pressed the wrong upgrade and they told me straight away"our system" doesn't provide refunds. I spent my entire Saturday first talking with a bot and then someone named John who just said, "sorry" we can't do that. Here is negative part: I found a place on the site that allows you to ask for a refund (this is good) however what they don't tell you is that if you get a refund for an upgrade that you made by mistake (and remember I was going for a combined upgrade but accidentally hit the wrong button) that they WIPE out your entire membership. For three days straight I went on explaining I still want to keep my membership *and* give them money to upgrade. So, instead of doing that, they just said, "sorry" our system "won't do that'. Sorry for the inconvenience. The 'inconvenience" - you mean sorry you didn't refund me the rest of my membership but instead kept money from me that I paid for in your bank account leaving me with absolutely NOTHING. They basically stole money from me in essence and won't take any responsibility for it. I'm enraged. My page got taken down. The real sh-ty part is that now I can't even use the plan I paid for. It's entirely fraudulent. I wouldn't trust them with anything.”
“I think this a terrible service. Terrible experience both the sitters and customer support with TrustedHousesitter. Sitters were allowed to make LIES about my home and how I take care of my animals. It's not only untrue but extremely hurtful. Who is allowed to make lies up about animal abuse and get away with it. Customer service is poor and people are allowed to post whatever they want so long as it's not racist, sexist, etc.”
“I got a free year to try the service but couldn’t see fully how it all worked unless I created an account, which I did, even though I did not try the service until 9 months later when I posted my first listing. I Confirmed a sitter, then they pulled out a week before the sit for reasons that were not supported by the code of conduct, leaving me stressed and scrambling to get another sitter. I managed to confirm another sit, but then shortly after, I lost use of the site as they started my free year from the time I created the account, not from the point I actually started using the service like they implied. They said I had to renew for another year if I wanted to contact the confirmed sitter to give them my address and arrange arrival time. I wasn’t in a financial position to do that at that time, but they were perfectly ok blackmailing me to try and spend money I didn’t have just to give an already confirmed sitter my address. Your most expensive cattery/kennel is a better option than this as at least you won’t be messed around, stressed, scammed and lose your holiday and money you spent booking that holiday.”
