I never got a response back?
I never got a response back from sitters?
2 Answers
Unfortunately, sometimes sitters do not keep their calendars up to date. However, other than lack of responsibility there may be some other reasons:
How long ago did you contact a sitter? Sometimes it takes 24 hours. Did you check their calendar before contacting them? Sometimes clients request me when I am gone because they didn't check my Rover calendar.
It is always a good idea to contact more than one sitter, especially if you are short on time, to increase the chances that you will find someone able to accommodate you.
Best of luck! There are many great sitters on Rover.com; I know you'll find one!
Some of the things to pay attention to when searching for a sitter (aside from their availability on the days you are requesting, as mentioned by Carmen), are a sitter's response rate and time. Some sitters do most of their communication and client finding outside of Rover, and only direct their existing clients to book through Rover, so they don't always respond to new requests that come from the site. Look for sitters with a 100% response rate and a reasonable average response time. The fastest sitters respond (on average) in under an hour, and Rover suggests to responding to all requests within 24 hours, so the sitters who are serious about generating new clients from the site will be more likely to adhere to those standards.
That said, there are always flukes where an otherwise responsible sitter will miss a message or otherwise drop the ball. Occasionally you'll reply to a message but forget to hit send, or have a message fail to go through. It hasn't happened to me in a long time, but there used to occasionally be messages that never pushed through to my cell phone/email, which is generally how I become aware of a new request. Since I try to maintain that "under an hour" response time, I'll send a quick reply text as soon as I see a new request even if I can't respond in full right away. But if that text and email never arrive, it could be a day or more before I see a new request. Though personally I would still reply with an apology for the error, many sitters may assume if it's been a couple days since the request arrived the client probably no longer needs their services and has moved on to another sitter.
I would definitely recommend sending out more messages to more sitters, and if you're still interested in the sitter you chose first and think the lack of communication may have been a fluke (and of course after checking their calendar to make sure they're available), feel free to send them another message as well letting them know you're still looking. You can also call Rover customer support and they can assist you with finding someone who will meet your needs.