We were not delighted that the Florida home exchangers left us a mountain of dirty linens and did not bother to clean our home. In addition, we had clear evidence that they had far exceeded the number of guests we agreed to house. It wasn't just the fact that they had used every sheet and towel in the house. We found children's items despite the fact that we had approved only adult guests.
This made me even madder than coming home to a dirty apartment. If they had asked in advance we would have probably approved all their guests. The fact that they didn't even bother to ask and just packed a bunch of people into our home was a huge abuse of our trust. These were the second-worst exchangers we had ever dealt with. (See my series on the Parisian swapper for the very worst swapper -- he had worse judgment than my toddler).
We have completed almost 40 exchanges. If this was our worst experience, we had nothing to complain about. Yet. Since this was a non-simultaneous exchange, we could well find more to annoy us when we used our half of the swap.
To avoid surprises, I asked the exchangers for their exact address one more time. The female half of the couple, with whom I had been corresponding, didn't rush to answer my email once she had used our home. I wrote her two messages over the course of two weeks and she did not reply to either one. This did not instill confidence. Finally, after I left her a phone message asking if she had a new email address she wrote to me.
While she supplied her vacation home's address, she told me I would not be able to find it on mapping web sites or my global positioning system. "No mapping company has added it yet, it's too new." OK. Well, what about the closest major cross street or landmark? "It's too remote" was the reply. This was sounding very fishy. We had plane tickets to Florida and no idea of exactly where we were going. "I'll meet you and give you keys" was her response.
Every aspect of this swap made me very uncomfortable. The house looked nice on the listing, but the "unmapped" address, poor email communication and disrespect on the part of this swapper were bad signs. If we had not already bought five round-trip plane tickets I would have canceled our half of the swap entirely. As it was, a back-up hotel reservation was looking like a good idea.
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