Wednesday, 23 January 2008

NO REFERENCE NEEDED

Sometimes when I feel a potential swap partner might be a bit off I ask for references. The response to this request can be more telling than the reference itself. Recently I was corresponding with a woman who offered very vague and curt answers to stock questions I ask folks with whom I am considering exchanging. For example I asked her how many exchanges she had done and she said

"I've done so many exchanges that I can't even count them all."


Wow, that must be a lot of exchanges. A ball park estimate would have been nice. At one point does one start forgetting them? Ten? Fifty? A thousand? These must have been great experiences if she kept doing home exchange until she had an uncountable number of swaps under her belt. So I asked if she could provide some references. This was her rather huffy response:

"In all the swaps I've done, I've never been asked for references; it's [sic] always worked on the basis of mutual trust. The last swap I did was with a woman who's [sic] rock star son was found dead in Vegas while she was here. Certainly, I don't want to bother her. And, frankly, I wouldn't care to be besieged with requests for references myself."


Well, if she has never been asked for a reference she is certainly not "besieged". And she says she has never had to ask anyone else for a reference, so her swap partners are apparently not besieged either. Surely in all of those uncountable swaps she has done there is at least one person whose son is not a rock star and/or deceased. Would it really be such a huge inconvenience for one of her many exchange partners with live children to send me a brief email?

No, it really wouldn't. I don't usually ask for home exchange references, but this time I was glad I had. Any reasonable exchanger who has completed "countless" swaps is happy to share kind words from past exchange partners. Remember, the last reference I was asked to write was from a swapper who offered to provide them before her swap partners even asked. That's someone who knows people have good things to say about her. Sometimes the reference you don't get speaks loudest of all.

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