Review Time
I have been with MindMyHouse since their inception in 2008 and have carried out a large number of house sits through their website and have no complaints.There are both good and bad home owners and house sitters, no website can weed them all out because people can put on a good face, but their reality can be pretty awful.MindMyHouse do their best, the rest is up to you.I would advise home owners to take date and time stamped pics of everything in the house on the day the house sitter arrives and immediately the home owner returns and compare them, this to avoid spurious claims of theft or home or pets abuse.House sitters must do the same, immediately upon arrival and at the last moment when leaving, again date and time stamped.I have never had to revert to my pics, however on several occasions I have been well aware the homeowner could be tricky, but nothing untoward ever happened.As a house sitter do your best in looking after absolutely everything and leave the home clean and tidy, this is worth a lot to a home owner returning after a long journey. Do this for every house sit, regardless of the home owner’s attitude.I do not pay utilities, although I’ve done garden work in exchange for them, some home owners have demanded payment for utilities upon return when that was not our agreement. All of them backed down.Many other home owners have been extremely nice and understanding, have given me an unexpected payment (tip), bought me in food and even sent me a Harrods hamper.MindMyHouse do a good job, the problems come with some homeowners and house sitters.
I'm so sorry to see the negative reviews here. Though some, I'm sure, are valid complaints, many seem to be a lack of understanding of the responsibilities of both owner and sitter. All the website can do is list the info given them; owners must ask questions, require references, etc. Likewise, sitters should get clear info on what is expected of them. Though I've not used the site as an owner, I believe they recommend getting a contract and insurance. We've been members since 2005, had sits in 11 countries, and found response from site owners to be prompt and helpful.
I'm appalled by them. I've used the site for years and got good testimonials and for years there was no real problem except when they started spamming me about 'Black Friday' which doesn't exist in the UK, where I come from, which I emailed them about and eventually the spamming stopped.I had no idea until recent problems with them led me to Trust Pilot reviews where they have quite a poor rating. In recent weeks a new kind of spam started arriving from MindMyHouse, which didn't stop despite a complaint from me in response to each email. I was getting rejection emails from house sits I never applied for. And at one point, repeat rejections from the same sit I never applied for, despite my complaints. The complaints weren't resolved and this continued. I recently took on a house sit where things were not going okay, and I contacted MindMyHouse for advice, and instead of offering solutions, they kicked me off the site. They had absolutely no concern for my wellbeing or situation at all. The callousness astounds me, they don't appear to understand responsibility or duty of care at all, especially not given the circumstances in which I spoke to them.I have house sat through the site for years, I have not done a thing wrong. Basically they are unregulated and have no conscience or duty of care. I am utterly appalled.They appear to defend their poor record by claiming to be 'cheap', sadly price isn't relevant to responsibility or human cost in this case. Price doesn't change bad management and a badly run site. I have been on this site for years, I have good testimonials, which have now been wiped out by this site deleting my account without warning. This site isn't safe for sitters really. In the past year it has got strange, I have had a lot of queries from people wanting me to sit for them, and some are basically exploiting, one family lived near me and got me to garden for them in the meantime and weren't very grateful, and kept on changing their holiday dates and weren't bothered about my time. The element of exploitation for sitters, and in my experience, is very real, I have had some enjoyable sits on the site, some of whom kindly remembered to give me a testimonial, but I have had sits or potential sits where my privacy has been invaded and I have ended up in uncomfortable situations and being exploited and abused, for example, supposedly sitting for a house while one of the family was actually at the house but he was not caring for the animals and was being obnoxious because he didn't want me there and it was his partner's insistence so the animals weren't neglected, things like that. So it's not just owners having horrible experiences of this site, it's sitters too, and there's no support for sitters and from what I'm reading, none for owners.Sitters should be very careful as although there are many disgruntled house owners writing reviews, and I am sympathetic to them as I have sat for people who have had bad sitters previously, sitters can also be easily exploited as there is no support, you can be disposed of with a silly message like 'try our competitors'. There's something wrong with a site that you pay fees to and do a good job for, who try to throw you away to their 'competitors'. They are telling the world they don't give a damn about anyone or their own business and would rather dispose of clients and sitters than responsibly address issues. If you are thinking of house sitting, don't do it through this site and if you are a home owner, MindMyHouse feel no responsibility towards sitters, so they won't towards home owners.I do wonder if this site has changed hands, as the good side of it that was, has gone. It's a very limited site as it is, with maybe a hundred to two hundred global house sitting assignments, and when recently they changed the site and made it less user friendly, they added statistics for who applies for assignments and each sit is getting many applicants. It didn't look like a healthy balance. I am guessing as well as people such as myself being spammed by rejections from sits I never applied for, house owners are being spammed with applications that aren't suitable.
New to needing a house sitter, I tried this site. Found a sitter that matched my requirements and tried to email my chosen person. Could not email my pick and emailed customer support and they said wait 24 hours. I did and still did not work. Emailed customer service again and there response was; I did not pass their security check and said try 3 of our competitors
Amended from original 1-star review once the issue was finally explained by the company nearly a month later and after I had already found a house sitter through other means. I understand this is a large site and may not be able to provide one on one customer service, but then it needs to have a system whereby it alerts you that it has disapproved your listing and for what reason rather than forcing you to fight every step of the way and take so long that the listing becomes useless. **Original review: MindMyHouse would never approve my listing looking for a housesitter. First they said it was because I was not looking for a straight across trade (not true). Then they said it was because I was looking for a housing swap (not true). Both times I contacted them to try to have the listing approved they gave no details of what they were seeing in my listing that they didn't like. I actually found a housesitter through emailing people directly on the site (although afterwards she had to back out due to Covid), but it was very frustrating when any time someone messaged me they had to ask details because I was unable to post the photos and information about the sit. I couldn't tell what game they were playing - they stated it was not because they were trying to get me to pay, but I wondered if I paid to be a house-sitter as well if they would suddenly have approved my homeowner posting!
I am a housesitter, and a damned good one. I'm sorry to hear all these bad reviews from homeowners, but from the "other side" I have just had someone accuse me of a $25k theft while housesitting for them!! I am too shocked to understand it all. I have not sat for anyone on MindMyHouse since last September, and all of a sudden, I can't log into the site, with a message that my email address is wrong. I try help @mindmyhouse.com and get nothing but a few ticket numbers. A week goes by and I insist on them fixing my account, wondering why it's inaccessible. Then I get "there's been a complaint against you". What, by whom? From the people I sat for almost a year ago? I had no problems with them last year and we spoke after my sit (though she said she'd wished I had more "farm" experience since I packaged her vegetables incorrectly, though this had not been previously discussed and as they were running out the door they handed me a box of ziplocs, and said just put them in here. I worked my butt off Googling how to do it properly and slaving in the garden). I thought, this could be the only complaint, but why now and why bring it up again when we seemed to resolve it between us 9 months ago? Then I insist again, please can we resolve this issue so I can get back onto the site? Then they hit me with there has been a $25,000 theft and the police have been notified! WHAT?!?!?! I am bewildered and asked them for details AND for the police agency that's involved so I can contact them to resolve it. There is NO phone number for MindMyHouse, no way at all to contact anyone except through help. How is there not some sort of procedure if this happens (as it clearly does, based on the reviews here). There MUST be some sort of protocol to follow when something like this happens so BOTH parties are protected. Obviously, it's not just the homeowners that need protecting. I have no idea what I'm going to do...this is just ludicrous.
I started to use this website as it seemed convenient and helpful. I love the idea behind it. However, there is very little in place to protect you should something go wrong. On my third use of the website something did go wrong. The people who stayed with me were fine with my pets but treated my house with total and utter lack of respect. They caused over £500 gbp of damage, stole many items of my clothing including some of my underwear!!! And refused to acknowledge anything after they left. As well as that their children have found me on Instagram. As a teacher I do not need this attention online from children, it is very dodgy and I have blocked them. When I reported all of this to the website, they refused to do anything about it until I threatened to go public. Then they SENT THEM AN EMAIL... as if that is enough!!! There is nothing in place for your protection as a homeowner opening your doors to strangers. I am sorely disappointed at the sheer lack of care from the website with all this damage to my property and I urge everyone out there to avoid using this at all costs! I never expected this level of damage and intrusion into my life and I regret ever having though the website would do ANYTHING to protect me. WARNING: DO NOT USE!!!!!
So far my experience with Mindmyhouse sitters has been very disappointing. We have had two separate sitters and each has been unsatisfactory in different ways. The first was kind to the dogs but despite our no -smoking policy filled the cottage with cigarette smoke, left it filthy, did no gardening whatsoever and had no money to support herself so we had to pay for food and the electricity use. The next one was arrogant beyond belief. She clearly could not cope with the sit, despite describing herself as 'coping, caring and competent' , left breakages and dirty carpets and yep, did no gardening either. She left the house before our return which caused us considerable anxiety and of course paid nothing towards utilities.We have learned a hard lesson from all of this. It is important to know that the sitter has the means to support themselves during a long sit and has a home to go to at the end of it. We had difficulty is getting the first sitter to leave. Some sitters clearly see sitting as an opportunity for a free holiday. The second sitter was rude enough to research kenneling costs for our three dogs and challenged us with this information when we raised the issue of electricity payment prior to the sit. We should have called her bluff and asked her how much the free use of a beautiful house, fully equipped kitchen, use of pianos etc etc would cost her for a month. We were too nice. So, set the boundaries before the sitter arrives and make sure they can provide references. We had none from either.
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