The Nasty Side of Home Exchanging
No one writes about this. It is all peaches and cream. When someone who claims to be an experienced exchanger makes a statement that he has never had a problem, I do not believe him. Many people writing on home exchange are doing so to promote particular home exchange services; heck, AlteCocker promotes this website. They might be PAID to say what they do; there is a lot of over the top puffery from the websites. AlteCocker is taking no one's dime here and is free, therefore, to shoot off her big trap. AlteCocker knows, from 55 home exchanges that it isn't all smooth sailing. There is a nasty downside and it mostly involves messy homes and cars that are not well maintained. Both have happened to her--and more than once. In fact, such events have happened to everyone--even those promoting home exchange sites. In their over the top hype, they omit to mention the times when things were not so great because they want to attract members to their websites and/or to websites paying them.
If you looked at AlteCocker's listings on Homelink and Intervac, you used to see only one photo Why? Well, AlteCocker does not believe in photos. She has never, in fact, seen a bad photo of someone's home on a home exchange site. They can tell you whether a house has a pool or not (few do, by the way, despite the over the top hype about "luxury" homes on some home exchange sites--some even going so far as to put the word "luxury" in the name of the site), but the photos cannot tell you whether the house is clean. Cleanliness is much more important to AlteCocker than a pool. If the people are not so clean, the pool may be be dirty too!
If you want a luxury home with a spotless pool, you could rent, but that might be disappointing too. AlteCocker has an unprepossessing townhouse in a nice Washington, DC, suburb (albeit with a newly redone kitchen--home exchangers with kitchen fetishes please take notice!), but she does not, alas, have a pool or jacuzzi. No one who demands pools and jacuzzis is, therefore, going to exchange with her. Well, she has had a pool once or twice, but it certainly is not a priority. Home exchange sites love to litter their cover pages with photos of pools and homes that look like French chateaus. It's misleading. Most of the time you will get, well, an unprepossessing home like AlteCocker's. Do you care? You are exchanging for location. You are not buying the house or hosting a wedding there--and your house is probably "ordinary" as well.
Home exchange is not easy as some would have you think--and it is not for everyone. There is no guarantee that your home away from home will be clean. The lovely photos do not show dust, dead flies in the jacuzzi or general filth. Recently AlteCocker home exchanged with French people in Toulouse. House looked OK in photos, but it was a wreck. Moreover the people were miserly. AlteCocker had to descend to the basement periodically to reset the hot water heater because it was set so low that it went off all the time, when she descended the "thoughtful" exchangers had removed a light bulb from the socket (presumably to save money) so there she was going downstairs on stone steps in the dark, when she opened the fridge, the handle fell off and it goes on and on. The house was dirty with grease in the drawers in the kitchen and--get this--the only corkscrew AlteCocker could find in this FRENCH house was broken. She had to buy one. The French people's parting "gift" to AlteCocker, by the way, was to run the battery down in her Prius by forgetting to turn the car off and leaving a car with a dead battery for her Salamanca, Spain, exchanger coming afterward. That was a pain to sort out--and not much fun for the lady from Salamanca either. Inconsiderate people are part of the mix of those doing home exchanges. By the way, AlteCocker did finally figure out how to reset the damn hot water heater, but not until the end of the home exchange. No accounting for people who fly off on expensive Transatlantic vacations and pull crap like that to save a few euros out of the backside of home exchangers.
And AlteCocker must add into the mix the home she had in Costa Rica. The home was enormous with a live in caretaker but it was filthy. The shower curtains in the bathroom were covered with mildew (and the bathmats had so much of it that they were good only for the trash). Anyone there hear of Tilex? They had had a lot of people in AlteCocker's home for Thanksgiving. That's OK, but you are supposed to leave the house as you found it. Not only was my new oven in need of major cleaning (they had made a half hearted attempt) but they rearranged everything in the cabinets. AlteCocker always makes an attempt to put things back where they were. A small amount of missing stuff is acceptable, but the Costa Ricans thoughtfully just shoved things in cabinets every which place to make the kitchen look as if it had been tidied. It hadn't. AlteCocker cannot imagine what caused her new kettle, to well, be totally discolored when she returned.
Again, the photos are staged. AlteCocker, much to her surprise, has discovered she is much cleaner than most home exchangers. She has learned to be comfortable with whatever she gets--and glad to avoid the high prices of hotels. That includes the aforementioned Toulouse misers and Costa Rican not so neatniks. If the home is not to her standard, well, she doesn't have to do much cleaning when she leaves because the messy ones will not notice the added mess. She has stayed in many crummy European hotels and survived and she will survive occasionally uncomfortable homes. The key for her is that she is not really living in the house. She is just there temporarily (at most for 3-4 weeks).
Home exchange can also involve doing maintenance on your home exchangers' home--or having to get an American car jump started from Salamanca, Spain. Even the best maintained homes can have unexpected problems. My Swedish home exchangers in August 2012 had a major leak at my place. They called the plumber and he supposedly fixed it. Yeah, right, it reappeared for the Sydney home exchangers (sort of their comeuppance for the dead flies in the jacuzzi). They did nothing about it besides turning off the water because it happened at the end of their stay. AlteCocker came home from Australia after 17 1/2 hours on airplanes and the water was off! The ceiling had to come down again to refix the problem and AlteCocker had to wait 24 hours to take a shower. AlteCocker thought she had resolved the problem the first time, but obviously she now has a new plumber.
Another item that can cause problems is the car. Not everyone maintains a car as it should be. Before every home exchange or series of home exchanges, AlteCocker has her car looked at and the oil changed. She once had a car in England that shimmied and was in bad need of an alignment. When she raised the issue with the exchangers, the exchangers told me that their "solution" was to just drive the car faster and then the shimmy went away. Yeah, right. Can things go wrong? Of course they can--even in a well maintained car or house. They can go wrong when you are at home. There can be minor accidents at both ends. People are driving unfamiliar cars on unfamiliar roads and occasionally have fender benders. Fortunately, there have been no serious accidents in any of AlteCocker's exchanges, but there have been "dings" at both ends (but certainly not every time). However, some home exchangers are totally careless with the car--as witness the Toulouse idiots It does happen. Anyone getting into this needs to know that it does and not simply be lied to about home exchange being a piece of cake because it isn't sometimes. AlteCocker's rate of bad homes is about 15-20%, and, from talking to others involved in home exchange, that is about typical.
AlteCocker does not want you to get so excited about the negatives that you decide not to home exchange. She is still doing it, right? Home exchange has enabled AlteCocker to travel to many places she would have never visited but for the free accommodation--from Nova Scotia in Canada to Melbourne, Australia; from Vancouver Island, British Columbia to Helsinki, Finland. When she has not stayed in home exchange properties, not all the hotels have been wonderful either--especially the unairconditioned European variety during the heat of summer overlooking a main street with lots of noise. To be successful at home exchanging you need to be realistic about your goals and roll with the punches when you get a less than perfect place. Your home probably is not perfect either. AlteCocker's mother always seemed to find dust in the nooks and crannies of mine when she visited because she was a crazy clean nut. She was always given a dust rag and told to make herself at home when she pulled this.
The point of this piece is not to be "spooked" from home exchanging when bad things happen, but to realize that ALL home exchangers have had these problems--including those puffing various exchange sites online who claim never to have had any problems. They are simply liars. You will still, after all, be in a new place with plenty to explore. AlteCocker has loved all of her travels. An occasional bad house or car will not throw her off home exchanging. Whatever happens, AlteCocker plans on having at least one annual trip of a lifetime every year until she kicks the bucket.
You can do it too! AlteCocker broke down and put up photos on Homelink & Intervac so no one bothers her about them again because someone in Belgium wanted photos. We are talking 2015. Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? In any event, the photos are now there for those who value them. They don't show whether or not AlteCocker is clean and considerate, but when something bad happens, AlteCocker does the best she can to fix the problem.
For the dead car, the usual cure is to call AAA, right? Well, your AAA card is personal. You have to have to be the person whose name is on the card, so that was out (and AlteCocker has the card with her in case of problems in Europe because the AAA equivalent services in Europe will honor it). AlteCocker emailed her insurer and opened up a claim informing the insurer that the Salamanca woman was driving the car with her permission and giving the insurer her name. Then a neighbor called the insurer to get them out and the dead battery was jump started. Fortunately this all cost nothing. Insofar as the French and Costa Ricans are concerned, AlteCocker will not recommend their house if she is asked, but you have to be careful when you do that. If you trash someone, there is nothing to prevent them trashing you back in retaliation even if the story is cooked up on their end. So, insofar as they are concerned, since there was ultimately no financial loss, there is no point in contacting them. Insofar as the very nice Salamanca exchanger was concerned: What a pain in the ass for her.
If you looked at AlteCocker's listings on Homelink and Intervac, you used to see only one photo Why? Well, AlteCocker does not believe in photos. She has never, in fact, seen a bad photo of someone's home on a home exchange site. They can tell you whether a house has a pool or not (few do, by the way, despite the over the top hype about "luxury" homes on some home exchange sites--some even going so far as to put the word "luxury" in the name of the site), but the photos cannot tell you whether the house is clean. Cleanliness is much more important to AlteCocker than a pool. If the people are not so clean, the pool may be be dirty too!
If you want a luxury home with a spotless pool, you could rent, but that might be disappointing too. AlteCocker has an unprepossessing townhouse in a nice Washington, DC, suburb (albeit with a newly redone kitchen--home exchangers with kitchen fetishes please take notice!), but she does not, alas, have a pool or jacuzzi. No one who demands pools and jacuzzis is, therefore, going to exchange with her. Well, she has had a pool once or twice, but it certainly is not a priority. Home exchange sites love to litter their cover pages with photos of pools and homes that look like French chateaus. It's misleading. Most of the time you will get, well, an unprepossessing home like AlteCocker's. Do you care? You are exchanging for location. You are not buying the house or hosting a wedding there--and your house is probably "ordinary" as well.
Home exchange is not easy as some would have you think--and it is not for everyone. There is no guarantee that your home away from home will be clean. The lovely photos do not show dust, dead flies in the jacuzzi or general filth. Recently AlteCocker home exchanged with French people in Toulouse. House looked OK in photos, but it was a wreck. Moreover the people were miserly. AlteCocker had to descend to the basement periodically to reset the hot water heater because it was set so low that it went off all the time, when she descended the "thoughtful" exchangers had removed a light bulb from the socket (presumably to save money) so there she was going downstairs on stone steps in the dark, when she opened the fridge, the handle fell off and it goes on and on. The house was dirty with grease in the drawers in the kitchen and--get this--the only corkscrew AlteCocker could find in this FRENCH house was broken. She had to buy one. The French people's parting "gift" to AlteCocker, by the way, was to run the battery down in her Prius by forgetting to turn the car off and leaving a car with a dead battery for her Salamanca, Spain, exchanger coming afterward. That was a pain to sort out--and not much fun for the lady from Salamanca either. Inconsiderate people are part of the mix of those doing home exchanges. By the way, AlteCocker did finally figure out how to reset the damn hot water heater, but not until the end of the home exchange. No accounting for people who fly off on expensive Transatlantic vacations and pull crap like that to save a few euros out of the backside of home exchangers.
And AlteCocker must add into the mix the home she had in Costa Rica. The home was enormous with a live in caretaker but it was filthy. The shower curtains in the bathroom were covered with mildew (and the bathmats had so much of it that they were good only for the trash). Anyone there hear of Tilex? They had had a lot of people in AlteCocker's home for Thanksgiving. That's OK, but you are supposed to leave the house as you found it. Not only was my new oven in need of major cleaning (they had made a half hearted attempt) but they rearranged everything in the cabinets. AlteCocker always makes an attempt to put things back where they were. A small amount of missing stuff is acceptable, but the Costa Ricans thoughtfully just shoved things in cabinets every which place to make the kitchen look as if it had been tidied. It hadn't. AlteCocker cannot imagine what caused her new kettle, to well, be totally discolored when she returned.
Again, the photos are staged. AlteCocker, much to her surprise, has discovered she is much cleaner than most home exchangers. She has learned to be comfortable with whatever she gets--and glad to avoid the high prices of hotels. That includes the aforementioned Toulouse misers and Costa Rican not so neatniks. If the home is not to her standard, well, she doesn't have to do much cleaning when she leaves because the messy ones will not notice the added mess. She has stayed in many crummy European hotels and survived and she will survive occasionally uncomfortable homes. The key for her is that she is not really living in the house. She is just there temporarily (at most for 3-4 weeks).
Home exchange can also involve doing maintenance on your home exchangers' home--or having to get an American car jump started from Salamanca, Spain. Even the best maintained homes can have unexpected problems. My Swedish home exchangers in August 2012 had a major leak at my place. They called the plumber and he supposedly fixed it. Yeah, right, it reappeared for the Sydney home exchangers (sort of their comeuppance for the dead flies in the jacuzzi). They did nothing about it besides turning off the water because it happened at the end of their stay. AlteCocker came home from Australia after 17 1/2 hours on airplanes and the water was off! The ceiling had to come down again to refix the problem and AlteCocker had to wait 24 hours to take a shower. AlteCocker thought she had resolved the problem the first time, but obviously she now has a new plumber.
Another item that can cause problems is the car. Not everyone maintains a car as it should be. Before every home exchange or series of home exchanges, AlteCocker has her car looked at and the oil changed. She once had a car in England that shimmied and was in bad need of an alignment. When she raised the issue with the exchangers, the exchangers told me that their "solution" was to just drive the car faster and then the shimmy went away. Yeah, right. Can things go wrong? Of course they can--even in a well maintained car or house. They can go wrong when you are at home. There can be minor accidents at both ends. People are driving unfamiliar cars on unfamiliar roads and occasionally have fender benders. Fortunately, there have been no serious accidents in any of AlteCocker's exchanges, but there have been "dings" at both ends (but certainly not every time). However, some home exchangers are totally careless with the car--as witness the Toulouse idiots It does happen. Anyone getting into this needs to know that it does and not simply be lied to about home exchange being a piece of cake because it isn't sometimes. AlteCocker's rate of bad homes is about 15-20%, and, from talking to others involved in home exchange, that is about typical.
AlteCocker does not want you to get so excited about the negatives that you decide not to home exchange. She is still doing it, right? Home exchange has enabled AlteCocker to travel to many places she would have never visited but for the free accommodation--from Nova Scotia in Canada to Melbourne, Australia; from Vancouver Island, British Columbia to Helsinki, Finland. When she has not stayed in home exchange properties, not all the hotels have been wonderful either--especially the unairconditioned European variety during the heat of summer overlooking a main street with lots of noise. To be successful at home exchanging you need to be realistic about your goals and roll with the punches when you get a less than perfect place. Your home probably is not perfect either. AlteCocker's mother always seemed to find dust in the nooks and crannies of mine when she visited because she was a crazy clean nut. She was always given a dust rag and told to make herself at home when she pulled this.
The point of this piece is not to be "spooked" from home exchanging when bad things happen, but to realize that ALL home exchangers have had these problems--including those puffing various exchange sites online who claim never to have had any problems. They are simply liars. You will still, after all, be in a new place with plenty to explore. AlteCocker has loved all of her travels. An occasional bad house or car will not throw her off home exchanging. Whatever happens, AlteCocker plans on having at least one annual trip of a lifetime every year until she kicks the bucket.
You can do it too! AlteCocker broke down and put up photos on Homelink & Intervac so no one bothers her about them again because someone in Belgium wanted photos. We are talking 2015. Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? In any event, the photos are now there for those who value them. They don't show whether or not AlteCocker is clean and considerate, but when something bad happens, AlteCocker does the best she can to fix the problem.
For the dead car, the usual cure is to call AAA, right? Well, your AAA card is personal. You have to have to be the person whose name is on the card, so that was out (and AlteCocker has the card with her in case of problems in Europe because the AAA equivalent services in Europe will honor it). AlteCocker emailed her insurer and opened up a claim informing the insurer that the Salamanca woman was driving the car with her permission and giving the insurer her name. Then a neighbor called the insurer to get them out and the dead battery was jump started. Fortunately this all cost nothing. Insofar as the French and Costa Ricans are concerned, AlteCocker will not recommend their house if she is asked, but you have to be careful when you do that. If you trash someone, there is nothing to prevent them trashing you back in retaliation even if the story is cooked up on their end. So, insofar as they are concerned, since there was ultimately no financial loss, there is no point in contacting them. Insofar as the very nice Salamanca exchanger was concerned: What a pain in the ass for her.