Found out client lives too far away?

I have been receiving clients that are outside of my 10 mile radius, however, I am not aware of this at first because ROVER is showing the client as being closer than they actually are. An example. Rover recently said a client was 5.6 miles away but the client was actually 15.9 miles away!!! Why? Because according to Rover they calculate distance from point to point. I had already accepted the job and did not want to rock the boat so I took a loss. I am still arguing with Rover that they should give me back the 20%. I am now having to vet every potential job before accepting by asking the client for their nearest cross streets which is causing me to lose work. By the way, Rover suggestion to me was to reduce my distance! Rover is to blame for a good part of this because of how they are calculating distance. Rover also populates walkers onto the owner's pages using the coordinates how they are so it is not always the fault of the client (owner) for selecting the walker. Rover needs to stop going point to point because the last time I checked my car wasn't capable of driving over mountain ranges!

This has happened to me, too, where a person clearly out of my service area contacted me. It doesn't seem to me that entering into your profile a maximum travel distance works as well as it should.

Luckily for me, the owner mentioned the town where he/she lived, in the first contact text. Later I noticed something helpful: On a client's service request page, in the black box on the upper left side, is a section that says how many miles away the client is from you. (Providing the client has entered their address into their own Rover profile.)

I have found that not all potential clients read my full profile. They can get your listing several different ways and not all of them display your full information. Yes, this has happened to me even though it's clear in my profile that I only do dropin visits and walks in my local zip code area. I just send them Rover's standard Not Available message, edit it to say that they are not in my service area, archive it, and move on.

Hi, Jodi,

I don't go to clients' houses, but have had many requests for boarding when my calendar clearly states I am not available.

If a person searches without putting in all necessary criteria, inaccurate information will come up. For example, if I search by zip code without putting in dates I frequently come up with sitters who are in my area but not necessarily available when I need them.

Based on this experience, I wonder if the person searched for you by date or zip code but did not read your fine print.

Bottom line, if your profile clearly states your acceptable radius, it's his problem and not yours. We can give people information but we can't make them read it (said a veteran junior high teacher.....).

I actually had a request from someone for 10 days of house sitting. When they gave their address for the meet and greet, they were 60 MILES away. 60!!! I understand that they can get my information through a variety of ways, however I feel like there should be some message to the owner stating that distances like 60 miles are a little extreme.

If someone gets abusive toward you in response, I'd report them to Rover. There's a link to report the conversations in the conversation. I think some people just don't pay attention, honestly. I usually ask where they are first, too, but sometimes I forget. Since I mainly do dog walking and pet visits (my house sitting is set to repeat clients only), I need to know. I've significantly reduced my service area because of it but I still get the occasional request from someone outside of it.