Weight Watchers is one example of this. In 1963, a Queens, New York housewife named Jean Nidetch invited some of her friends over to discuss the best ways to lose weight. Now, according to WeightWatchers.com,
"each week more than one million members attend approximately 39,000 Weight Watchers meetings in 30 countries around the world"
Back when I was a kid a Weight Watchers group met in the basement of the YMCA gym up the block. The meeting was facilitated by a nun as a community service. Not today. Weight Watchers was purchased in 1978 by the company that makes Heinz ketchup. The same folks that push frozen french fries, doughy frozen bagels and sugary baked beans make millions selling diet foods and products to the Weight Watchers members who got fat eating their regular products.
As home exchangers, we need to identify and stamp out Heinz-like companies that want to get rich on the backs of our community. I am not referring to home exchange clubs. They offer a needed service to home exchangers, a searchable data-base of swap listings, including one's own.
Swappers do not strictly need home exchange clubs to arrange a swap. We can use a free listing service like Craig's List, or swap with a friend or relative. We can contact affinity groups in other areas to see if a home exchange interests our counterparts in other areas. We can even create our own personal web page describing our home and advertise it ourselves.
Most people who want the convenience of a posted swap listing on a club's website are willing to pay for it. Those who are not sure if home exchange is for them can take advantage of trial memberships or free swap club sites.
I have no quarrel with legitimate home exchange clubs that offer a fairly-priced, functional way to advertise one's own swap offer and respond to those of other club members.
As home exchange becomes more popular, however, I have seen a disturbing trend. Entrepreneurs looking to make a quick profit have put a great deal of thought into offering "added value" (in their opinion) and charging ridiculous sums to facilitate swaps between their members. These are not long-time home exchangers who really want to improve our community. They see a wonderful, free way for people to travel and figure someone must be able to make some money from it -- why not them?
Why? Because the only people that helps is the entrepreneur. I have yet to hear of one of these sites that offers real value to its members. Mostly they duplicate services available elsewhere for free.
Who are the people trying to turn our community into their own cash cow? We can look at that in depth another time. In the mean time, keep these general points in mind when selecting a swap club:
1) do all paid members have full access to all listings?
2) does the site owner earn a commission or fee when you arrange your own swap?
3) are there membership tiers that create second-class members (other than free versus paid members)?
4) does the site have some sort of complicated points system?
5) is it easy-to-use or so over-designed that you need a tutorial just to start using the site?
You may be new to home exchange, but you weren't born yesterday. Steer clear of rip-off home exchange sites just as you would avoid individual swap families that are interested in swapping only for their own benefit.
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