Multiple Meet & Greets but we are penalized?

The only thing I don't like about dog owners shopping around is the way Rover takes us "off the market" when there's no earnest intent to book the stay. Shopping around is good. The problem is with Rover.

Awhile ago I suggested to Rover that they have an "I'm ready to book this" indicator for both the owner and sitter. It would be something like a progress indicator. The initial request starts the activity between owner and sitter. But, it's all verbal nuances after that. The owner may think I have requirements I'm mulling over. I may think the owner is ready to commit (when they really have two other sitters to visit).

I think an indicator ("I'm ready to book this") would make it clearer who is waiting on whom. Rover could leave us in search results as long as the owner hasn't advanced their request to that level of commitment. If the owner "is ready" before I click that indicator, then I will be motivated to advance to booking the request -- or declining -- because I'm off the market as long as I don't.

I see the booking process as a workflow. Right now it's too undefined, nebulous, subject to communication errors (assumptions). For example, I'm afraid to press "book it now" because I think it is pushy, and the owner might not like the clock started on them. Owners may think I'm wavering, and they'll be reluctant to initiate the final commitment. I think an "I'm ready" indicator would be a good middle ground. It would improve communication.

That's what I suggested it for. Sometimes it seems awkward (who's waiting on whom). It may be awkward for the owner to say they're shopping around (provocative?).

But, it would help with the way Rover takes us off the market when there's no earnest commitment to book with us.

I agree with you. I can see both sides -- clients should "shop around" to get the full Rover experience, which is fine, but I think Rover definitely made an oversight in penalizing us for not making that booking -- especially with their recently piloted grading system that seems to be no more for now. These two things cannot exist at the same time.

I agree - it seems they are being a bit hypocritical and contradictory in their expectations and operations. On the one hand, they encourage owners to 'shop around' and interview several sitters to find the best fit. I have no problem with that, I comparison shop almost everything before I buy. On the other hand, we as sitters are penalized if we don't book every request that we get and our ranking in the searches goes down.

Hi Jill, I'm a Rover employee and just asked some of my colleagues your question to get some clarification. Rover doesn't list anywhere on the site that they tell owners to do 3 meet and greets, they simply suggest owners contact a few sitters in the event the original sitter they are contacting is unavailable. I'm a sitter myself and get requests where I know the owner has reached out to multiple people, but a good chunk of the time the dog wouldn't be a good fit for my household, so it works to their advantage to reach out to a few.

If you have any specific feedback on this, you can always send it to Support@Rover.com!

Rover definitely penalizes the sitters by doing this. I recently was sent a warning email from Rover saying that my dog sitting in dog's home service was turned off, had to email them to get it turned back on and they threatened that if I was not booking this service regularly it would be turned off permanently. This despite that fact that in the past few months I have only turned down this service because it was quite far outside of the area I am willing to travel to. If they encourage owners to send messages to multiple sitters even though only one will be booked, the sitters that don't get booked are penalized though they have done nothing wrong.

I have felt this way all along. I almost always click Owner changed plans on the ARCHIVE message. I do believe this reduces the penalty. Also I have had a couple people cancel the meet n greet saying they made other arrangements, and I believe that is after they met sitter #1. maybe I couldn't meet right away. Which is even more disappointing.

And some people don't want to tell you they are looking elsewhere and then you don't know to archive the message and it blocks your calendar

I will say i do not like when the owner has multiple M@G. We dont get paid and its our time too. When the owner chooses someone else I kinda ask myself what did I do wrong? Sometimes you get the booking and sometimes you dont.

I'm really glad I found this old thread. Yesterday I lost a $650 job because I couldn't immediately do a meet and greet because I was with another dog client. The owner had contacted multiple sitters from the start and the one that could immediately go over there got the job. I thought about messaging Rover about them encouraging contacting multiple sitters but assumed they wouldn't care because they're getting their cut either way. Lost a $650 job because I was doing a $25 job... damn.