MindMyHouse News

That’s right, we couldn’t keep our hand off the tiller. Alan’s been busy tinkering away on some more stuff. So for our latest edition of our irregular newsletter, introducing…Reply reliability & Speediness ratings, house sitters Completed assignments map, home owner Previous assignments count, house sitters’ Languages spoken details and last, but not least, the House sitter welcome pack (for home owners). Phew!

Member reply ratings

Over the years, some of our members have written to us suggesting that we implement a system that provides some feedback on how well a member replies to a message or correspondence. Sort of like a score, or rating. Some of our competitors have this, so we thought we should to, and viola, it’s built! For our next trick (pulls rabbit out of hat…).

We thought long and hard about how best to build this, and realised that there were many ways to implement such a system, but also we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. So in the end, we have implemented the following two rating methods:

Reply reliability ratings

This is a rating that MindMyHouse gives to each member, to see how reliably they reply to messages sent to them. Below is a preview of how this will look on listings.

MindMyHouse will calculate this simply as a percentage, from messages received versus messages sent. Please note that it’s only an approximate figure – we will convert the percentage into something like ‘always’, or ’often’,  ‘sometimes’ or ‘rarely’. Hopefully there won’t be any of that last one!

Reply speediness rating

This is a rating that MindMyHouse gives to each member, to see how speedily they reply to the first message sent to them. Below is a preview of how this will look on listings.

To start, everyone will begin with a rating of five points. If the member does not respond to a new message sent to them within five days, they will lose a point (crowd sighs). To get the point back, they just need to reply within five days for the next new message they receive (crowd goes wild!). It’s a similar system to those used on some of our competitors’ websites.

Hopefully this new rating system will make communication between members a faster and happier experience. Let us know what you think.

House sitters ‘completed assignments’ map

House sitters can now opt-in to show a new map on their sitter available listing that displays all of their previously completed assignments. Please note that we won’t display any details about the assignment – this map is just intended to show where the house sitter has sat before (if the house sitter wants to show it). Also, you can only zoom in so far. But we think that some of you will find this handy, if only to make your listing even more dazzling! If not, let us know. Remember folks, it’s optional.

To display the map, simply select ‘Edit my listing’ from your Dashboard, and under the ‘Miscellaneous’ tab, tick the box (see image below). The rest is automatic. It should match what you can see on ‘My assignments’ page, under the ‘Completed’ heading.

House sitter welcome pack (for home owners)

Attention home owners! Imagine it. There you are, on the day of your departure, hurriedly packing your bags, cleaning the house, getting ready for the house sitter. Thoughts are rushing through your head – “I need to tell (the sitter) about Ruffles’ (the dog) tendency to escape through the back fence! And what about Admiral Meowington (the cat)? She needs her treats laid out in alphabetical order, not by colour! Otherwise….” And so it goes. If only you wrote out some neatly printed instructions for the house sitter the day before!!! The best you can do now is scrawl out some hurried notes on the fridge door before dashing for the doorbell.

Introducing the new handy dandy “House sitter welcome pack” for the organised home owner. Think of it as like a welcome pack, ready to give to your house sitter when they arrive. Just log in to your MindMyHouse account, select the new “House sitter welcome pack” option from the menu. Include any details you think are relevant by filling out the sections you need, delete the stuff not relevant, and press print. Only you (the home owner) can see or access this information pack and whomever you give the printed copy to (ie. hopefully that’s your chosen house sitter/s) on handover day. We hope it comes in handy. If you don’t have access to a printer…ask the neighbour, or try the local library?

We’ve started you off with a basic template – a fairly exhaustive list to be honest, so just delete the bits that aren’t relevant to you. We’ve also made it easy to export to Word (if you prefer Word). You can copy and paste from Word to :)! And add pics of Admiral Meowington and Ruffles too.

Oh, by the way – creating your information pack via this new feature on MindMyHouse may in fact be faster (if you can type faster than you can run, er..write)! 

Also, please note that you also don’t have to use this new feature. But we do think it will be useful, especially as you may not have thought of all the items to include that we will prompt you to include: like, What’s the alarm code? or Where is the fire extinguisher? or What to do in the highly unlikely event Mr Muggles chases the delivery driver?

Home owner “Previous assignments” count

Available sitter wanted listings now show how many assignments the home owner has successfully posted and had a sitter successfully complete. Please note that this figure only includes assignments that the home owner previously posted on MindMyHouse and was able to successfully find a house sitter (also via MindMyHouse). The actual number may be higher if they arrange with a house sitter outside of MindMyHouse (it happens). 

Also, a quick shout out to house sitters – don’t put off replying to new home owner members whose completed assignment count will be zero. Make them feel welcome!

House sitters – do you speak another language? Ciao/Hola/Bonjour?

Können Sie Deutsch sprechen? Parlez-vous français? ¿Puedes hablar español? Pet whisperer? Awesome. Then you’ll be interested to know that house sitters can now add a list of the languages they can speak to their sitter available listing. Hopefully this will be useful for home owners, for whom English isn’t their first language, and wish to locate that house sitter who speaks their language. 

That’s it folks.

ps. note from author: the featured picture at the very top is a recent pic from the window seat while flying Air New Zealand from Auckland to Wellington, which shows the Land of the Long White Cloud : )