Booked 3 stays with one of your subscribers . Always use them ,and am very happy with their care!!! My dog loves them!!! Not happy that I was charged for a stay already for, a stay about 2 months out!!!
Once a booking is accepted by both the owner and the sitter the payment is processed regardless of how far away the actual booking dates are. Sitters are not paid for the booking until 2 days after the booking is completed.
The policy of charging at the time the booking is confirmed is a Rover policy not your sitter's. In fact, Walt is correct, your sitter does not get paid until after the stay is complete. If you have a question or issue with how and when your credit card is charged I recommend contacting Rover directly. As an FYI - Rover staff does not answer messages on the Q&A forum so you would need to submit a request by contacting Rover Support.
For future requests, if you aren't comfortable with getting charged that far in advance the only option is to not book until you're ready to pay. For my repeat clients that want to book in advance but don't want to pay yet they've spoken with me about options. I suggest that they initiate the request so that there's a placeholder but that we don't confirm until a week or two prior. Submitting the request but not confirming will leave it in the sitter's request listings as unbooked. You definitely need to talk to your sitter though, because some have a "first book first served" policy and won't reserve without a booking.
Good luck!
Have to agree that this is awful behavior on Rover’s part. They’re already getting a fee above the sitters fee. Don’t need to be grabbing interest on unprovided services