"Know Your Trade�s August Treasure of the Month
July 31st, 2008
Know Your Trade�s August Treasure of the Month is not a home exchange agency. Yet it is just as important in the home exchange community. Home Exchange Travels, a blog written by Nicole Feist has been amusing, educating and enriching home exchangers for over two years. The Feists home exchange on the average of a half dozen times a year and are the veterans of over 40 swaps. This certainly qualifies them as experts in the field!
Nicole writes on such diverse topics as traveling with kids (she has two little ones), using GPS systems, communicating with exchangers who speak other languages, and tips on sprucing up your listing. In addition she provides her readers with insight into what happens on an actual exchange as she recounts tales of her travels. Nicole does not hesitate to share the occasionally not so glamorous side of home exchange, either.
Home Exchange Travels is a must read for anyone interested in home exchange. Kudos to Nicole for a priceless resource!"
Co-incidentally, today's column is, in fact, about the not-so-glamorous side of home exchange which KYT has noticed I do not ignore.
A few days before we left for California, our swappers sent an email asking how we were planning to get to their home. They offered some suggestions, but it made me wonder if their car was still available to us. Originally they had planned to be away during out stay, but circumstances had prevented this. Since they were in town, perhaps they needed both of their cars.
I initiated this discussion with them and they took me up on the idea of my renting a car during our stay. If we had not been open to this I am sure they would have made do and provided us with a vehicle.
The fact that the use of their car was specified in our home exchange contract was immaterial. To me, the use of a swap home is the paramount issue in a home exchange. As long as someone follows through on a commitment to provide a safe, clean home during an agreed-upon period, everything else is gravy.
In this case, the exchangers were lovely people we had already met so I didn't get a bad vibe about their follow-through from the change in plans. My only shock was the cost of renting a car at the San Francisco airport which was about $100 per day when I checked for a last-minute rental. Airport car rentals are often terribly over-priced due to fees charged to tourists by local governments or the airport itself. Air travelers are a captive audience for car rental companies if the airport is not well-served by public transit.
I found a way around this problem, however. I went to Google maps and did a route from the airport to the home exchange. I then searched for rental car companies along the route. Most mapping programs have a search box which allows you to find specific types of businesses. I discovered several options near the highway on the way to our exchange home. As an added bonus, renting a car across the Bay from the airport and using an airport shuttle to get there meant I would not have to negotiate rush-hour bridge traffic or pay the bridge toll. And we would have had to take a shuttle bus to the airport car rental office anyway, so we actually saved time this way.
I made a reservation for our family from the airport to the suburban rental car company on Super Shuttle. I then made a car rental reservation off-airport for less than half the cost of the car at the airport location. Total cost with the round-trip shuttle fare was under $400, versus the $700+ we would have paid to do an airport rental.
This was an expense I had not counted on when we signed our home exchange contract. But home exchangers must remember that car swaps are not necessarily as inexpensive as they might seem. Since I own a car, any car I rent is automatically covered by my existing car insurance. When I charge the rental to my American Express card, the insurance deductible is also covered if I damage the rental car.
By contrast, a home exchanger's car is their swap partner's responsibility. I would have been on the hook for a $1,000 deductible if anything happened to the exchangers' car. And I know that the rental car is relatively new and maintained according to a particular schedule. In the end, renting a car is more convenient for my swap partners and safer for everyone involved.
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