curious if we are owners have a rating system as well on the back end? Do sitters get to rate the dogs stays as well?
I feel there should be an review of owners by sitters
Not owners specifically, but the stay overall SHOULD be visible to future sitters, as owners are likely to be overly optimistic about dog behavior. For instance on a recent stay I would have insisted it be at the owner's house if I had known the behaviors.
That's a good point. I had a problem client I no longer pet sit for with whom this was a problem. Her profile lists her animals as house trained even though they have serious destructive tendencies and the cats relieve themselves throughout the apartment because they share one litter box.
Fully agree there should be an option to publicly rate pets/owners, similar to AirBnB.
Absolutely there should be a way to review owners. Am currently waiting on an owner who was 40 minutes late to Meet and Greet/30 minutes late to drop off-which he didn’t even bring dog food and just asked me to go buy it, left his dogs and extra night and now is saying “I’ll pick them up after lunch
I believe there should be a feedback/rating system for OWNERS also. I was supposed to have a meet and greet today at 6 and they were a no-show so I message them to see if anything was wrong or if they weren't able to find the place since they hadn't messaged me yet and they said that they thought the time was at 7 not 6 but I triple checked all the messages between us and let her know that I'm not sure where her miscommunication was from but it definitely wasn't the messages. And then she said I was sorry I'm on the way and at this point it's been 2 hours now without any response from her. I feel like this is something that we should be able to put in the owners bio of some sort so that other sitters can know that they might not be reliable or such.
For dogs (not owners) - yes, after the stay, Rover will send a link, which sitters can access from inbox to rate the dog and provide notes for Rover's use only. I believe Rover Support mainly uses this as part of their trust & safety team (meaning known issues of concern- aggression, injury, any other problematic behaviors) Sitters can also record notes on the dog for their review only. Other sitters will not have access to any of that info. through Rover.
Sitters are encouraged to review the dog. We're given 1-5 stars to choose, and to write anything we think is useful to know about the dog. Rover says the information is never shared with anyone. They present it as making a note to ourselves for future stays.
But, in one place they say we can write anything we feel Rover should know about. I assume they would review any sitter "reviews" (of a dog) if that dog came to their attention for whatever reason. For example, if we can't keep a dog, we're supposed to call Rover to help find another sitter. I assume Rover staff would review that dog's feedback (from other sitters) to find the right sitter, or to "sell" the proposal to an apprehensive sitter.
Some sitters want the ability to publicly evaluate dogs (and maybe the owners too). They might say it should be limited to sitter-eyes only. But, there's no way to enforce that. So, for all practical purposes it would be public. It kind of makes sense. Don't Uber drivers rate their customers?
But, I think it would generate a lot of hard feelings and put Rover in the middle to arbitrate complaints, be perceived as "taking sides." For example, I'm never too trusting of dogs I don't know. If any damage occurred I would blame myself for trusting the dog more than I should have. (I don't know how rare my view is, but I always thought it was widely held at some time in the past.). So, if there were widely differing views like that, the dog (or owner) could become the target of criticism that some (me at least) would say isn't deserved. (Then you'd have hard feelings and Rover's judgement put on public display -- instead of conducted privately when needed, when a dog comes to their attention.).
It's too bad. It would make a lot of sense to share perceptions. But, I just see a lot of trouble arising from it.
If there's really a need for something like this, what I see happening is someone creating a "rate-your-rov.er" website where sitters could voluntarily rate a dog, or check to see if that dog has become the target of controversy. It could all be anonymous (which would diminish the reliability of the info even more than what I described above). But, that could be better than nothing for those who feel it would be valuable. It wouldn't be hard to create a site like that. The functionality would be very limited. It could be a blog where you could search for blog titles containing a Rover user's name and/or dog name. Search for tags of nearby cities. (It wouldn't have to be a custom database insert/search web "face". It could be a commonly-available blog template.).
It just seems there should be a way to indicate that a dog description is or is not accurate. On a recent stay it because very clear why the owner has used a new sitter every time, and that's not good for the owner, the sitter, or the dog. Dogs are unpredictable but owners should be upfront.
