New swappers tend to be worried they will show up at the promised exchange home to find an empty lot. That doesn't happen. But we all know that when there is money to be made, scams follow.
Entrepreneurs launching new home exchange businesses often contact me. Most of the time it is clear that these folks just want to make a quick profit from naive, nervous new home exchangers.
It has occurred to more than one of these businesspeople that traditional home exchange clubs only get paid once a year -- when their members renew membership for the coming year. So a dead give-away that these websites are not operating in your best interests is a business model that charges you for every swap you make with a fellow sucker -- I mean family -- who lists a home on one of these sites.
The greediest version of this that I have ever seen is a new site created by a former hospitality industry worker. I won't tell you the website's name because I have no interest in publicizing what I view as a scam. This man has the temerity to ask $129 for each exchange that a swapper arranges through his site. Contrast that to the dues for a typical swap club, which range from zero to about $100. Those yearly dues get you as many swaps as you care to arrange, and most clubs will give you a free membership extension if you don't get any exchanges through their club.
I set up as many as 10 exchanges per year. So I would owe this person $1,290 for that privilege. Even if you only found one swap through his site your cost would be higher than what any other club charges for unlimited exchanges.
What makes this new site so wonderful that the owner feels he can ask charge so much money? I asked him, and he mentioned the following:
1) You can write a blog on the new site. Just as you can on any number of free sites. Big whoop.
2) You can list your home for exchange or for vacation rental on the site. Nothing new here.
3) A process to create a home listing in "less than a minute". A new, bad idea. Instead of writing personal notes, the only way this approach could work is if all I do is check items on a list of home amenities. Reading what someone says about her home is far more instructive.
4) If you think your home is nicer than that of the person offering you an exchange you can actually charge them money to swap with you. What an insult. I speak as someone whose apartment is worth about ten times more money than most of the swap homes I have used. Despite the fact that apartments like mine rent for an average of $8,000 per month I would never dream of asking an exchange partner to pay me on top of swapping homes with me. This is absolutely antithetical to the democratic ideal on which home exchange is based: if we both want to vacation in the other person's home then our homes are equal. This alone is reason to avoid this site like the plague.
5) The final "brainstorm" this guy came up with is that the site allows multi-party exchanges. In other words, I could use your home in California in exchange for a third party using my home in New York. This is actually the worst feature anyone could have created. Instead of allowing someone with whom I have formed a rapport to use my home while I am using their home, some other random family who has nothing at stake will use my home.
Does it sound like the person who created this useless-to-harmful business plan is an actual home exchanger? No, and in fact, he isn't. Do these "features" strengthen our home exchange community in any way? All they do is say "my home is better than yours, and taking care of your home is of so little consequence to me that I will send someone I don't even know to stay there."
No one who set up "features" like those mentioned could possibly care about our community, except as a cash cow. And when I found out the background of this site's creator, his deceptive, greedy approach made perfect sense. More on that next time. In the mean time, support your favorite traditional swap club. The ones run by people passionate about home exchange who want to strengthen our community, not simply rip it off. We need "brilliant" new ideas like those mentioned above the way a fish needs a bicycle.
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