Had great conversation with the owner and she said she was ready to book the stay, yet she never confirmed, no showed, and let the request expire. Now my booking rate is effected. Why?
Is there anything I can do to get this booking request removed so it stops affecting my booking rate? I am a new sitter and this really hurt my booking rate. 100% down to 67%.
Everything as per our conversation was a go and she was ready to drop off her dog, yet after gentle reminders and repeated attempts to finalize the booking, (we were 99%) of the way there, she never confirmed it. I also didn't appear available during that time in the search results as essentially she was taking up a slot for entire 72+ hours.
Is this just part of the hustle? I'm okay with having my score lowered if there was something I had done wrong to cause the owner to decide not to book with me, but it was just such an odd experience. My other clients have gone down really well and no one has hesitated with booking with me.
Many sitters will archive requests that owners won't confirm. You can always move it back into upcoming if owner decides to finalize, plus puts you back in sitter search for those days. It may even help to tell clients that your calendar will show as available until they book a requested stay.
Thanks for the tip on getting back in the search results. I am still new to the nuances of the algorithm.
I'm a bit of a newbie myself here, too :) What's really helped speed up the learning curve is pouring over the posts in this section. That's how I found out about archiving, for example ;)