Why Home Exchangers Can Drive You Nuts
OK, while AlteCocker was abroad in Chiang Mai, Thailand renting an apartment to explore SE Asia, she was attempting to set up a European exchange based trip for the summer of July-August 2015. Now AlteCocker has been at this awhile and knows the ropes but there are a lot of new folks in the game on the gazillion of home exchange sites that have cropped up since the days when Intervac and Homelink were the only games in town. What you get are mass mailing letter from people. Those are very annoying. You get an inquiry from a nice location, take the time to send a long email and end up with silence on the other end. It is, AlteCocker thinks, mostly new people "kicking tires" that do this. If you actually want to do an exchange, it is not a good strategy; it also smacks of dishonesty.
Recently, AlteCocker had two inquiries from homeforexchange.com. Standard for that site, it was inquiries that went nowhere. The first was from Munich. The second for a house In the Pyrennes. It was the same story each time. Inquiry, acceptance from AlteCocker and dead silence from the would be home exchanger. The correspondence quickly hit the etrash.
Then there were the people with a second home in Wales that interested AlteCocker. Problem: No car. That is a huge problem with second homes at the people often have only one car. A simple solution would be for them to offer to pay for your rental, but that never happens. No car/no home exchange is AlteCocker's firm rule--unless the place is in some major city with good transport. No deal there.
But recently AlteCocker had email from Brussels, Belgium, that really drove her up the wall. She gets an inquiry from a would be female home exchanger and checks the listing. It says "2 adults 0 kids". After the third or 4th email AlteCocker gets ask, "How many people can your house sleep. We have 8 kids?" Eight kids and the forgot to mention the kids in both their listing and in their correspondence? Now a lot of home exchangers will omit to mention pets (my least favorite gambit: Wait until your home exchanger buys airline tickets and then tell him about the dog/cat/whatever). But kids? AlteCocker pointed out that her house maximum is 5 people--her Toyota Prius has 5 seat belts. If it is more than that, it is a no go. So, the woman in Brussels asks when AlteCocker has to know. AlteCocker told her what she tells everyone else: The first one through the gate who is willing to commit and immediately buy tickets gets the gold ring. She put the Brussels email in the trash and had words with the woman about listing "2 adults 0 kids" because it was dishonest. The whole point was to lure someone in and then spring the kids on them. AlteCocker did not like that. AlteCocker could just imagine all the kids showing up with sleeping bags and the house being totally trashed afterward.
The 8 kids were followed a lady from Paris. She wants October--and, oh, she is "an old lady" and doesn't drive a car. AlteCocker explained she would need to drive the car to the Metro here; it's 10 minutes. Maybe she doesn't have a driver's license because she said she wanted a place where there was NO driving. Well, in the US, that is largely NYC. Everywhere else you are going to do some driving because US public transit is terrible. Good luck to her.
Well, what makes this all worthwhile is what happened next. Out of the blue, AlteCocker gets an email from Martinique. Martinique? How can one say "No" to that. They want 6 weeks beginning in May. They are already in the area because they put their 12 year old daughter in school here for a semester to help her learn English. So, we are working on having them come over to view the house. It's nice so AteCocker is not worried about that. Looks as if they will be staying here after their first home exchange is done in Maryland so their daughter can finish the school year. Not that the deal was without glitches. Their response to my acceptance went astray as they left out a letter in my email address, but all is well that ends well as Shakespeare said.
And it doesn't end there. On February 23, 2015, AlteCocker got an email from someone in Taipei, Taiwan--a place she had considered visiting as a side trip from Chiang Mai in 2015. She looked at the offer and, given the dates, sighed. It couldn't be fit in with everything else she was doing in 2015. There is no way she could do a simultaneous exchange. She had someone in Spain with airline tickets. How could she dump that exchange to exchange in Taiwan? She couldn't. So she wrote back, throwing out the possibility of offering them home hospitality in return for home hospitality for her before she goes to Thailand next November. Sometimes wonderful things happen in the world of home exchange. They agreed. Whoosh. AlteCocker is booked up for 2015--and then some.
Looks as if it will be just one deal in Spain for the European trip. AlteCocker is probably done with booking home exchanges for 2015, but you never know.
Recently, AlteCocker had two inquiries from homeforexchange.com. Standard for that site, it was inquiries that went nowhere. The first was from Munich. The second for a house In the Pyrennes. It was the same story each time. Inquiry, acceptance from AlteCocker and dead silence from the would be home exchanger. The correspondence quickly hit the etrash.
Then there were the people with a second home in Wales that interested AlteCocker. Problem: No car. That is a huge problem with second homes at the people often have only one car. A simple solution would be for them to offer to pay for your rental, but that never happens. No car/no home exchange is AlteCocker's firm rule--unless the place is in some major city with good transport. No deal there.
But recently AlteCocker had email from Brussels, Belgium, that really drove her up the wall. She gets an inquiry from a would be female home exchanger and checks the listing. It says "2 adults 0 kids". After the third or 4th email AlteCocker gets ask, "How many people can your house sleep. We have 8 kids?" Eight kids and the forgot to mention the kids in both their listing and in their correspondence? Now a lot of home exchangers will omit to mention pets (my least favorite gambit: Wait until your home exchanger buys airline tickets and then tell him about the dog/cat/whatever). But kids? AlteCocker pointed out that her house maximum is 5 people--her Toyota Prius has 5 seat belts. If it is more than that, it is a no go. So, the woman in Brussels asks when AlteCocker has to know. AlteCocker told her what she tells everyone else: The first one through the gate who is willing to commit and immediately buy tickets gets the gold ring. She put the Brussels email in the trash and had words with the woman about listing "2 adults 0 kids" because it was dishonest. The whole point was to lure someone in and then spring the kids on them. AlteCocker did not like that. AlteCocker could just imagine all the kids showing up with sleeping bags and the house being totally trashed afterward.
The 8 kids were followed a lady from Paris. She wants October--and, oh, she is "an old lady" and doesn't drive a car. AlteCocker explained she would need to drive the car to the Metro here; it's 10 minutes. Maybe she doesn't have a driver's license because she said she wanted a place where there was NO driving. Well, in the US, that is largely NYC. Everywhere else you are going to do some driving because US public transit is terrible. Good luck to her.
Well, what makes this all worthwhile is what happened next. Out of the blue, AlteCocker gets an email from Martinique. Martinique? How can one say "No" to that. They want 6 weeks beginning in May. They are already in the area because they put their 12 year old daughter in school here for a semester to help her learn English. So, we are working on having them come over to view the house. It's nice so AteCocker is not worried about that. Looks as if they will be staying here after their first home exchange is done in Maryland so their daughter can finish the school year. Not that the deal was without glitches. Their response to my acceptance went astray as they left out a letter in my email address, but all is well that ends well as Shakespeare said.
And it doesn't end there. On February 23, 2015, AlteCocker got an email from someone in Taipei, Taiwan--a place she had considered visiting as a side trip from Chiang Mai in 2015. She looked at the offer and, given the dates, sighed. It couldn't be fit in with everything else she was doing in 2015. There is no way she could do a simultaneous exchange. She had someone in Spain with airline tickets. How could she dump that exchange to exchange in Taiwan? She couldn't. So she wrote back, throwing out the possibility of offering them home hospitality in return for home hospitality for her before she goes to Thailand next November. Sometimes wonderful things happen in the world of home exchange. They agreed. Whoosh. AlteCocker is booked up for 2015--and then some.
Looks as if it will be just one deal in Spain for the European trip. AlteCocker is probably done with booking home exchanges for 2015, but you never know.