House sitting is the secret to travelling on a budget. You pay an equivalent of one to four nights for a year of accommodation (no matter if you travel solo, as a couple or a whole family). Some platforms even allow you to travel fee-less. We travel in Europe and usually spend our non-traveling budget (food, city transport), the only extra expense is the 40-ish euro per person per country change.
TrustedHouseSitters provide three membership tears in three categories: basic, standard and premium in categories sitter, owner and combined. After a few sits, we decided to continue with premium sitter membership. In this article, we focus on sitter membership. We describe the differences and provide our experiences and opinions.
Basic Sitter
Basic pretty much just allows you to use the platform. We did not try this tier. That being said, compared to Airbnb, this definitely gives you more value per money. (But comparing Airbnb and house sitting is not really fair.)
Standard Sitter
Standard adds some additional features, support and liability insurance. This is the tear we started out with, we wanted the insurance. We were also intrigued by instant alerts about new listings, but let’s talk about the benefits in more detail.
Dedicated member support so far, we have never been in contact with any support but I would also say that we did not feel like we needed it. I am not sure if we should have initiated contact and asked for help. No one contacted us during our first sit. (Some automatic messages might have popped up in the app.)
Instant alerts in-app and daily emails about new listings. Might be a user error but the app usually isn’t great even with notifications for messages. We have never received a notification for a saved search. That being said, on the forum, someone has the same issue and we might hope for a fix. (We were able to code a chrome extension that supplies the same functionality but it sure would be a game-changer if it worked out of the box.)
Fortunately, we did not need to contact online vets during our sits. It does seem like a helpful option in case anything goes wrong though.
So far we did not use the last benefit: Accident & third party liability protection. This benefit was probably the most important for us. Taking care of someone’s home is a huge responsibility and we wanted to protect both us and them in case anything happens. This insurance covers only damage and injuries caused by the pets you are responsible for. Be sure to read the detailed conditions to know what is covered and if the coverage is high enough or if you need to add something to your travel insurance.
Premium Sitter
Premium provides all the benefits of a standard tier and adds sit cancellation insurance and 2 airport lounge passes. Your profile also gets a badge. We have upgraded to this tier after our second sit.
We have planned a three-sit sequence - south of the Netherlands followed by two sits in Amsterdam for the same owner with a four-day break in between. Unfortunately, the first vacation of the Amsterdam owner was cancelled. We learned that while we were already in the Netherlands & we also already made quite specific plans for the four-day break (with arrival and departure times matching the Amsterdam pets’ needs but rather inconvenient otherwise). The owner was very sweet and helpful and helped us out with the accommodation but we felt a bit awkward since our position would be a lot more comfortable if we had the insurance. And he upgraded as well (home-owners get insurance in case a sitter cancels unexpectedly).
So overall, once you are able to book a sit and you enjoy the experience of living in someone else’s house with their pets and if you plan a trip where you cannot easily (cheaply and not annoyingly) get home, you should, in my opinion, consider the upgrade.
The insurance will compensate you for accommodation costs. There are some limits: $150 per night (if you travel as a couple it is still $150, not $300) and either max of 30 days a year or three sits a year. Be sure to check the terms and conditions to learn about the details (cancellation due to quarantine is not compensated for example). In other words compensation for one night already pays for the upgrade.