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As a sitter, you're not protected from unfounded libel.
Despite all the lofty words and legal lingo, in practice, anyone can smear you if they feel like it.
So if your looney radar misses a mentally unstable house owner during the intro call, you're left with unbelievable rants on your profile as happened in my case.
To be clear, I've got all verifications (even the overpriced highest tier) and I choose my sits carefully and treat properties and pets like my own. This always made for a satisfying experience on both ends and for multiple owners to repeatedly invite me back.
During this particular sit, everything was peachy. They even thanked me for sitting there. A few weeks later, I was accused of just about everything wrong in the house before I got there.
Right now, Trustedhousesitters keeps that extreme and damaging review published despite overwhelming evidence from my part to the contrary: videos, pictures, chat logs and independent eye-witnesses who I had lots of contact with and came over multiple times.
It's a lot of work getting through to 'Trusted' Housesitters support in the first place.
They list incorrect numbers in their help and mobile app and the numbers that seem to work state they're always busy.
No matter if you call 16:00 hours or 23:00 hours CET. Emails are ignored and even live chat seems to to be disabled at times. (And no, this is not due a technical thing, wrong browser or ad-blocker)
Seeing that other reviewers have similar experiences, it would seem they have fired all but one support person.
After finally getting through after a few days of trying different methods, the most absurd slander was removed but the review kept online. Yes you can reply, and you're forced to. But that means getting in an online debate with an online troll/bully. We've already got Twitter for that - you know, that sheer opposite of a trusted community.
All this is a huge red flag for me. This is supposed to be a safe community of decent people, but instead, you expose yourself to instant online reputation damage even if you've outdone yourself.
The only way to counter this as a sitter is to record everything 24/7 with cameras and all in probability break local privacy laws.
I'm leaving the platform as my trust is gone.
Update:
Hello Doug,
I've emailed the 24th and no reply was given at all, auto-reply from Zen Desk doesn't count.
I then sent 3 more emails on the 24th and 25th. No response at all. Then I tried the support number for my country multiple times and it didn't work. The GB number is impossible to get through.
Only after trying live chat as a last resort on the afternoon of the 25th I managed to get through to a human.
Your agent didn't even download the evidence I had uploaded via WeTransfer as you get a signal someone has downloaded your files.
It was after a week of nagging an attempt was made but by then the download had expired. I then uploaded everything via Google Drive which can't expire. But the agent didn't even bother with this either.
The agent asked me to repeatedly enter the same story which outlines everything. The whole experience was dragged out until I gave up on 6 December. I count 21 emails in the thread.
This review was extremely vile, so I had to reply while the agent said it wasn't so bad.
Meanwhile, a future owner who I had arranged a sit with prior contacted me as they were worried seeing the review.
This almost cost me the sit and would have left me stranded in a foreign country with no roof above my head.
So again, I had to reply.
This stranding has happened to me before with another housesitter platform where unworldly owners decided to cancel a 3-month sit just 1,5 weeks prior to the start.
I had driven there by car for about 2.000 km and was already in the region. This made for an extremely expensive and stressful situation and no refund was given for making the trip down there or getting replacement accommodation which is crazy expensive if you have to arrange it last-minute.
Adding this experience to the one with TH support has made me lose trust in the platform and in housesitting in general as it looked like history repeating itself.
I had an almost perfect record but just one crazy outburst of a mentally unstable person had almost put me in the same position again with a seemingly lack of interest to resolve it from TH side.
Knowing this I'm out.
