TrustedHousesitters reviews
What users love and hate · 500 reviews analyzed · ★ 4.2
A platform where pet owners and travelling sitters trade pet care for free lodging; its defining tension is a beloved community concept versus the feeling that, after a private-equity buyout, the company is squeezing money out of everyone.
What users love
The core concept is adored: free travel in exchange for pet care
Despite the rage over the app and fees, people genuinely love the concept: sitters have travelled the world, staying in beautiful homes for free, meeting wonderful people and pets; for some it's been "life-changing" and made travel possible. Many have done 10-30+ sits and recommend it warmly.
Love trusted house sitters! We've been full time travelers for awhile now and pet/house sitting has been key to keeping a healthy balance while long term traveling. Over 30+ sits under our belt with no end in sight!
Joining this app is one of the best decisions I have ever made. It has opened up a world of travel experiences I never would have enjoyed otherwise.
TrustedHousesitters is really an incredible means for getting to stay in beautiful places around the globe at no cost while helping out and making friends with fellow animal lovers!
For owners — peace of mind: pet stays home, great sitters, saves on boarding
Owners value that the pet stays in its familiar home rather than a cattery, and that one annual fee buys unlimited sits — far cheaper than boarding, especially with multiple animals. Applications arrive within a day or two, sitters are reliable, the home comes back clean, and they can travel without worry.
you just pay an annual fee, which is very reasonable compared to cattery fees, especially for multiple cats. We have had no problems
trusted came thru again, had 4 replies in 1st day, then another 2 the following day. was easy to pick our preferred Sitter
Ever since I found this service. I've been able to travel without any worries that my home and my little angels will be well taken care of.
What users hate
A per-sit booking fee on top of an already pricey annual membership
A suddenly introduced, unannounced ~$12 ($9-$24) fee for every confirmed sit — charged to both owner and sitter — enraged even loyal subscribers: sitters already work for free, pay a hefty membership and travel costs, and now must pay for the privilege of caring for someone's pets. Many call it post-buyout greed and are cancelling their renewals.
They have added a $12 fee for both sitters and people in need of sits, for every single booking, unless you pay higher monthly fee for things you don't really need anyways.
You pay £120 a yr and now we are forced to pay £9 for every confirmed sit. Both host and sitter!
You can’t charge a subscription fee and a per-booking fee — pick one. Doing both is just greedy. No thanks!
The app is slow, glitchy and crashes, especially after updates
It freezes, loads slowly and crashes on flagship phones; recent updates break filters and break sit listings mid-trip in another country. The same bugs go unfixed for years, so many people just retreat to the desktop site, which is noticeably easier to use.
This app is terrible. It is very slow, glitchy and has really bad UX.
after about 20 minutes of using the app it no longer wants to load a page and you have to exit out of the app completely shutting it down and reopen
what in the AI slop is going on here, did you all even QA test this before pushing to prod?
Messaging is nearly unusable: the keyboard hides the text box
The core chat pain on Android: when you reply, the pop-up keyboard covers the text box and you can't see what you're typing. People resort to drafting in another app and pasting it in. On top of that, messages sometimes arrive and sometimes don't, show up white-on-white, and the send button is hard to find.
When typing a message, the keyboard covers the message box, so I can't see what I'm writing.
It is nearly impossible to type messages because the pop up keyboard covers the text box.
Messages don't even show up on the phone app.
The "money-back promise" is hedged with hidden conditions
The promise to refund you if you don't find a sit is in practice loaded with caveats: only within 14 days, you must apply to at least 5 sits, and any excuse — like a single irrelevant response — voids the refund. People lose €170-300 and call it a scam.
Their "money back promise" is a scam - it doesn't make it clear you have to claim *within* 14 days of joining
i subscribed and payed 300 Euros, they said if you don't find a sitter we will refund your money back, BUT there was one sitter who was NOT in Albania
they put a lot of conditions, like need to apply for at least 5 sits, then wait 14 days and lot of other sense less things
No human support — just an AI bot that loops in circles
The "chat with us" link goes nowhere, the support phone is dead, and "24-hour support" turns out to be a chatbot that keeps you in a queue and never connects you to a human. In urgent moments — mid-sit in a foreign country — this hurts most.
Impossible to talk to a human to resolve a problem. The chat with us button is a broken link.
I tried getting through to customer services nearly 50 times and got a bot only to have to pester for an associate, then it tells you you're being passed through... only for another bot
The "24 hour support" is a useless ai bot.
Constantly logs you out — 2FA login every single time you open it
The app logs you out by default, so every launch means logging in again, often with two-factor authentication, even from the same familiar device. It makes the app impractical and irritating to use.
keeps logging out on me by default. i need to log in every single time! so annoying and frustrating to use.
literally every time I have open the app I have to log in again with dual authentication. I always use the same device to log in but that doesn't seem to matter.
App is very glitchy and often signs you out.
Notifications and saved searches are broken; filters and the map fall short
Saved searches push alerts about "new" sits that aren't new and about dates you're already booked, and you can't disable or edit them in the app — only delete and recreate. On the map you can't tap the pin you want — it picks a random one — and filters are missing (length of stay, number of animals, exclude a country).
My saved search parameters are constantly ignored and I receive notifications for new sits that are not, indeed, new.
clicking on a location in the map often selects random locations and not the one I clicked on
Allow us to filter while searching petsits! We need to filter by length of stay, cats/dogs, specific city etc.
Sitters aren't protected: no insurance, zero screening, retaliatory reviews
The platform sells itself as "trusted," but there's no real screening of people, and sitters get no insurance or legal protection. A host can cancel a sit at your door, leave a false defamatory review, or monitor you with hidden cameras, and admins refuse to step in. The risk is dumped on the people already working for free.
There is no legal protection whatsoever for the pet sitters!
The host monitored me with hidden recording devices.
a house owner canceled the sit when i was already at his door, FOR NO REASON
Expensive, annual-only upfront, with no guarantee of even one sit
Membership of $120-399 is charged upfront for a full year, there's no monthly option, and a sit isn't guaranteed: you can apply to 25 locations and get nothing. Newcomers have it worst — with no reviews they get passed over, and with no sits no reviews appear, a closed loop in which the money is just wasted.
Applied to over 25 different locations with zero results so far this summer.
since you are new, you have no reviews, since you have no reviews, you get passed over. It's just a cycle that causes new people to waste their money.
there are no options to pay monthly. You have to fork over a minimum of $120 just to get the app a real try.
Sitters and hosts cancel last-minute with no consequences
People confirm a sit and then drop out a couple of days before the trip, or even once the sitter is at the door, and the platform does nothing. Sitters can't block off unavailable dates, so they keep declining requests, while hosts are left without cover at the last minute — roughly a 50% success rate.
I had one person cancel a week before my trip because they found another sit they liked better. Another canceled 2 days before a trip.
the sitters can be unreliable in confirming bookings in app after accepting it, so leave you not knowing what is happening
people apply to sit and then are no longer available when it's time to confirm. another confirmed applicant cancelled a week before travel. 50% success (50% fail) so far.