Help Centre

Please be assured that your messages are being sent to home owners.

Competition for the longer house sitting assignments is so keen that home owners can often feel deluged by responses. That is no excuse for them not showing you the courtesy of acknowledging your application or politely turning your offer down.

We have written two short articles on home owner etiquette in different editions of MindMyHouse News that you can see at the following URLs:

http://www.mindmyhouse.com/community/blog/news/mindmyhouse-news-09-feburary-2014/

http://www.mindmyhouse.com/community/blog/news/mindmyhouse-news-22-july-2006/

We realise how important it is for house sitter members to hear back from home owners regarding their applications. We currently have several mechanisms in place to encourage our home owner members to acknowledge every message they receive through our site, including email templates. We send out regular email reminders to all home owners asking them if they have found a sitter. We also automatically hide their listing at the beginning of their sitter assignment dates, or thirty days after the listing was approved, if it's a listing with variable dates.

To encourage home owners to reply to your messages to them it's a good idea to create your own sitter available listing complete with three nice photos of your choosing. Until you create your own listing, home owners can't add you to their favourite house sitter candidates. Having a listing on our site will show home owners that you are a real person who deserves a reply!

Also, we have a feature that allows you to see if the home owner have read your application. This was released in May 2017, so it doesn't apply to messages sent before then. You can do this by going to your Message Centre, sent folder and check the 'Read by owner' column in your email list:

https://www.mindmyhouse.com/sitters/messages/sent

Please be assured that your messages are being sent. Every time you contact a home owner or house sitter through our contact form system a copy of the message should be listed in your 'Sent' folder in your Message Centre.

Also, there is a feature that allows you to see if the person has read your message. You can do this by going to your Message Centre, Sent folder, then you will see the text 'Read by sitter/owner'.

The message centre is a place where copies of all emails you have sent or received from other MindMyHouse members through our contact form system are stored. Whenever you contact a home owner or house sitter via the MindMyHouse contact form system, a copy of the email will go into your message centre as well as to the personal email address you use with your MindMyHouse account.

Please note that if a home owner or house sitter knows your email address it is most likely that they will have contacted you directly (via your external Google/Hotmail/Yahoo email account) and thus there will be no record of this message in your message centre!

Your message centre is a good place to find those old emails you sent or received through our system but can't find in your own email account. However please note that we can only store these messages for about three years. Any mail older than that will need to be deleted due to server space (we can't store them all!).

Please note that's it's a very good idea to make use of your favourites - when you reply to a home owner or sitter listing, adding them to your favourites will make them automatically appear in your message centre as well. It makes it much easier to send them subsequent messages and to identify messages coming from them as well.

Also, we have a feature that allows you to see if the member have read your application. You can do this by going to your Message Centre, sent folder and check the 'Read by owner' column in your email list. Please note that this feature was only released in May 2017, so it doesn't apply to any messages sent before then.

Viewing your mail
To view all emails that you have sent or received through our contact form system, simply click on the Sitter or Owner tab from the main menu (you need to be logged in of course) and you will see your most recent messages from your inbox. You can then click on the 'Message centre' title (or on a message) to access your messages. Once in your Message centre, click on the 'Sent messages' folder to view your mail to other MindMyHouse members. Click on the 'Inbox' folder to view all incoming mail from fellow members who contacted you through our system. To read the full version of an email, simply click on the message subject line and the email will be visible.

Replying to your mail
Replying to an email in your inbox is simply a matter of selecting a message and then clicking on the 'Reply' button in the button bar. A new email form will appear, where you can type in your new message. You can either send it straight away by clicking on 'Send' or save it to your drafts folder by clicking on the 'Save to drafts' button. Once you have sent your message, you will see a copy of the email in the 'Sent messages' folder, as well as another copy in your own personal email address.

To send a new message
Clicking on the 'New message' button in the button bar will load a new message form where you can type in a new message. Messages can be sent straight away or saved to your drafts folder (via the 'Save as draft' button). You can either type in the recipients email address directly (if you know it) or type in part of their name to display a popup list of matching members in your favourites. Note that you can only send messages to MindMyHouse members. 

About templates
If you have a message that you use over and over again, you can save it as a template so that you can use it again at a later date. To save a message as a template, create a new message, add your message and click the 'Save as template' button. This will save the message in the templates folder. You can also move an existing message that you've already sent from your sent folder to the template folder - just select the message and click the 'Move' button in the button bar and choose 'Templates' from the drop down menu. Home owners: we have also added a basic template for you as well to help you reply to house sitters who apply for your assignments! To use one of your templates, just click the 'Edit message' button after selecting the template message.

Moving messages to another folder
To move one or several messages to another folder, place a tick inside the checkbox (in the left message column) of each message you want to move. Then click on the 'Move' button in the button bar and select the folder you want to move the message to from the drop down menu.

Deleting messages
To delete a message, simply put a tick inside the checkbox (in the left message column) of each message you want to delete and choose the 'Delete' button in the button bar. To empty the trash, click on the trash folder on the left and then click the 'Empty trash' button in the button bar. 

Searching for lost mail
If you can't find an email in your message centre that you know you sent or received through our contact form system please report the problem to us and we'll see if we can find it. Note that if the message is over three years old it will have been deleted.

Receiving a suspicious message
As ever, if you receive a message that is suspicious in any way please contact us and we will investigate it. There is also a spam button in the button bar - just select the message to view it and click 'Spam'.

Tracking your sent mail
If you haven't had a prompt reply from those people you wrote to through our internal contact form system please be assured that the messages will have been sent! You can also check the 'Read by owner' column in your email list (in your sent folder). Please note that this feature was only released in May 2017, so it doesn't apply to any messages sent before then.

Only registered house sitter members can contact home owners in response to their sitter wanted listings on our site. Once you've logged into your house sitter account area, search for and click on the full view of the sitter wanted listing you would like to respond to. Choose the 'contact owner now' button to be taken to the blank contact form. Type or copy and paste your application letter into this form. This could be your one chance to convince a home owner that you're the right house sitter for the job so give it your best shot! (Avoid the common pitfalls of telling the home owner too much - or too little - about yourself.) It's a good idea to write your application letter in a word processing program before pasting it into the contact form. If you type directly into the contact form you run the risk of your session timing out after 20 minutes and you may lose all your hard work! Once you have pressed the 'send' button, the home owner will automatically receive an email at their private email address with your message. If you have your own sitter available listing on MindMyHouse (highly recommended), it will automatically be included in the message along with your contact details, so you don't need to add any extra information to your application letter. Feel free to include a URL link to your online photograph or personal homepage in your application. The onus is on the home owner to make contact with you by any of the ways that you've specified. Good luck!

You can update your image avatar, which is used in all of your email correspondance and testimonials, by clicking on your avatar image at the top right of the screen on any page. Then you can upload a new image. Note that if you are both a house sitter and a home owner member of MindMyHouse.com that any amendments to your contact details in one account area will be copied through to the other account area.

If you've had a very positive response to your sitter wanted listing there will be a number of house sitters who are hoping to hear back from you. They may be waiting on your response before organizing their future accommodation or travel plans so if you feel confident enough to say 'thanks but no thanks' to a number of your respondents at the email stage then it's a good idea to do it as soon as possible.

It's easy to write a simple polite response and send it out to your list of unsuccessful applicants with a single click as a bulk post. You can use our Message Centre to save drafts and to send messages to a number of members.

Don't be too hasty to officially reject your applicants! We recommend saving a favourites list of at least 10 candidates in your account area for your future reference. It's always good to have a backup! These people could receive a 'you may hear from us again' message.