Hi there,
In this post I will tell you why we decided to stop using Home Exchange as a priority when traveling.
Here are the posts of the experiences we had exchanging houses:
After having a bad first experience and the second one being psychological torture from the very first moment, we were considering not doing home exchanges again.
We had realized that people were most likely to be dirty and careless, and even stalkers as was the case with Mar and Val.
It is that, during the second exchange, Mar and Val, who were not satisfied with writing every day to complain about stupid things and contradict themselves, also dedicated to stalk all my social networks. They even went so far as to contact Heidi to tell her to read the post on my blog about our exchange. Just to give you an idea of what kind of psychopaths they were.
On the other hand, when we needed help from Home Exchange customer support, the service was mediocre.
We were attended by a man named Warren who showed up every 3 or 4 days after you sent him the message. So, we already knew we were completely on our own even though we had paid for an annual membership.
To top it off, we asked him what guarantees we had if the exchange was cancelled, and he told us that they were not responsible for anything. This is a lie, in theory Home Exchange does cover certain expenses if your exchange is cancelled.
That is what is written in the Home Exchange policies. The reality is that they don’t answer your messages and you must solve the problem yourself.
Seeing how Home Exchange worked, we decided not to pay for membership anymore.
Another thing that was psychologically exhausting for us is that during the two exchanges, we practically had to babysit the people who were in our house.
With Heidi because from the second day the firemen had to come to open the door of the house and from then on, she broke and damaged everything possible.
With Mar and Val, who behaved worse than two spoiled children and besides not answering the messages, we had to repeat ad nauseam the things they should have already known for more than 6 months.
So, to have to be on a trip in constant anxiety and return to my house to clean up other people’s dirt and spend a month repairing the damage caused, it was more worthwhile to pay for a hotel.
We didn’t close the account in case we were contacted by someone worthwhile, but we stopped making it a priority when traveling.
What is the way to do well with Home Exchange?
- You don’t care about your home, and you don’t care if they leave it dirty or damage things.
- You have a second property (usually tourist accommodation) and you use that property to do the exchanges.
During the traumatic experience with Mar and Val, we remembered that all the people to whom we mentioned that we were exchanging houses, told us that they would be very afraid to put strangers in their houses because who knows what they would do.
And they are totally right.
Things to keep in mind if you want to do a home exchange:
- If you are going to exchange your primary residence, make sure you have a room that you can leave locked with your personal things.
- After our experiences, it’s best not to share your towels with the exchange people. We bought towels, sheets, and pillows for the exchanges.
- Make a guide in which you put detailed instructions for the use and care of your home. Also, keep in mind that people will forget, so it is best to prepare templates to send out during the exchange as a reminder.
- Keep in mind that, although everyone tells you that they will take care of your home as if it were their own, in reality it won’t be like that.
- A word of advice: keep your expectations extremely low to avoid disappointment. You will never find your home as you left it.