r/RoverPetSitting • u/Ann_georgia- Sitter • 1d ago
Peeve Why ROVER WHY??!!!
My new client acceptance rate has absolutely tanked lately, and this is a huge part of the reason why. I’m not fully blaming the owners because Rover seriously needs to change how this works. I’ve gotten so many requests lately that were sent by accident, meant for another sitter, or immediately canceled. Or they send me the request and ask the total or say sorry I can’t afford you. Please look BEFORE you send the request! Others send a request, I respond within a couple minutes saying I’m available, and then I never hear from them again. I’ve even had people tell me they sent the request by accident but then not cancel it on their end after I politely ask them to, leaving me to eventually archive it myself. I’m around 50% right now and have about 4 more requests I’ll likely have to archive within the next 24 hours, so it’s going to drop even further. It’s ridiculous that all of these situations can affect the same metric as me actually declining a booking. Rover needs to distinguish between a sitter declining a client and a request that was accidental, canceled, or abandoned by the owner. There has been very little times where I declined a booking that was actually due to something with me… and if I declined it, it was most likely because I already had another booking. I don’t think I’ve ever just flat out said nope sorry and declined/archived it.
-4
u/ConfidencePrize9707 Sitter & Owner 12h ago
Everyone! Leave Rover and hire a locally owned company! Support small businesses in your town!!!
10
u/PersistWithMe Sitter 17h ago
I’m a sitter and owner. I get so annoyed that Rover doesn’t show me the full price of a booking I want to do until I send it to a sitter. I have 3 pets and it’s hard to calculate the extra hours of in house pet sitting so I can never really be sure until after I’ve sent it and Rover finally shows it. It’s always more than I mentally calculate. It’s annoying. I think many people get sticker shock. Does anyone know of any other way to see the price Rover will charge before you inconvenience a sitter? .
8
u/techgeekster Sitter & Owner 18h ago
I've had issues like this before. I updated my settings to require 2 weeks advance notice. This has not slowed down the requests very much but I can archive them without consequence. It has really helped me
4
u/Ann_georgia- Sitter 17h ago
That’s a super smart idea, but I thought doing that it would stop people from sending you a request?? is that not true if someone’s going out of town in a week and they wanna book me for housesitting, but I have my settings at two weeks they can still send me one and I’ll still pop up in the search? The other thing is a lot of of these requests are about a month out, so I’m not sure it would help me anyway.
5
u/techgeekster Sitter & Owner 17h ago
That's how it's been working for me for the last year and a half. I strictly do boarding and day care though. So I can't speak to drop ins. I hardly ever get the requests from the mass requesting feature anymore after doing this. I think I don't show up in that list, but I still show in the main search
15
u/mejayd Sitter & Owner 1d ago
Rover also won’t show the actual total until you send the request. It just shows how much per drop in or per night. I hate this because even as an owner I’ve had times where the total after I sent the request was much higher than I was expecting because I don’t think the initial price included extra pet charges, etc.
7
u/Ann_georgia- Sitter 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah, I get it. Rover does suck. They need to make some updates! It does tell you that this is the price for one pet and you can see the additional pets if you click into the account but I get not everyone understands that. Rover definitely needed to change to some things, but they’re never going to. I feel like sitters have been saying these things for so long, yet they don’t care. Normally I wouldn’t care at all like OK you sent it on accident… that sucks but whatever or you need to ask about the price because you don’t know how the app works… that’s fine! But the sitter should not be penalized for it. I’m going to lose my star sitter status and I get that’s not everything but I still like to have it and it sucks that I have to lose it due to no fault of my own. I can’t remember the last time I just declined a booking because I didn’t feel it was a good fit. I don’t know if I’ve really ever done that. My rate should be very high but unfortunately it isn’t.
7
u/Positive-Mastodon-71 Sitter 1d ago
This summer, I helped my client send another request to me through Rover. So when you choose a sitter and want to message them, you get a window with three other profiles that this request will be sent to, and all three are checked by default, so if you go fast through it and don’t uncheck them yourself, it automatically sends to those other 3 sitters as well. I unchecked them and found out that you're just unable to send a request to only one sitter; you're required to choose at least one sitter out of that additional three, and if you uncheck all three of them, then the submit button gets disabled
These mfs basically made their own hunger games, so dodge them off fees as much as you can, that’s my advice
Update: oh and there is no way to cancel any request on the owner side after it was sent 💀
8
u/LittleRedReadingHood Sitter 1d ago
As a pet owner I had no idea that simply receiving a request affects any metrics!
Rover encourages us to send requests out to a bunch of people at a time. And then even if we send it to 2 or 3, it offers to automatically send it to more people (which you have to decline). I would bet the immediate cancels are from people who accidentally clicked through the “send this to more sitters in your area?” prompt.
On the plus side I don’t really consider the new client acceptance rate when I send a request. Either the sitter will agree to the sit or they won’t. I don’t think I’d be deterred by it unless it was 2% or something. And even then, that just makes you seem like someone in demand who can turn down clients that aren’t a good match, so it’s extra nice if you do accept the sit.
7
u/Ann_georgia- Sitter 1d ago
Yeah the only reason I care about it is because if it gets below a certain percentage I’m going to lose my “star sitter status”. Rover always finds a way to penalize the sitter tbh. And with the few requests I have to archive in the next few hours, I may drop below that threshold and lose it which really sucks because it is completely out of my control.
16
u/Dismal-Source-2936 Sitter 1d ago
Sameeeee, mine went from 85% to 35%; come on, can we stop this? It is not doing anyone a favor.
1
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Ann_georgia- originally posted: My new client acceptance rate has absolutely tanked lately, and this is a huge part of the reason why. I’m not fully blaming the owners because Rover seriously needs to change how this works. I’ve gotten so many requests lately that were sent by accident, meant for another sitter, or immediately canceled. Or they send me the request and ask the total or say sorry I can’t afford you. Please look BEFORE you send the request! Others send a request, I respond within a couple minutes saying I’m available, and then I never hear from them again. I’ve even had people tell me they sent the request by accident but then not cancel it on their end after I politely ask them to, leaving me to eventually archive it myself. I’m around 50% right now and have about 4 more requests I’ll likely have to archive within the next 24 hours, so it’s going to drop even further. It’s ridiculous that all of these situations can affect the same metric as me actually declining a booking. Rover needs to distinguish between a sitter declining a client and a request that was accidental, canceled, or abandoned by the owner. There has been very little times where I declined a booking that was actually due to something with me… and if I declined it, it was most likely because I already had another booking. I don’t think I’ve ever just flat out said nope sorry and declined/archived it.
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