We agreed to do an exchange with a couple whose home was located in a beautiful part of coastal California. The same week we got an offer from Californians whose home is in a northern California town famous for its hot springs. The house was one of the most gorgeous I had ever been offered and the exchangers seemed really interesting. Of course we turned it down, explaining that we had committed to another exchange.
On the plus side, I figured, the first folks would be amazing swap partners because they reported doing more exchanges than anyone I had ever met -- almost twice as many as we have. They must have learned how to be wonderful exchangers, I reasoned. We would probably pick up a bunch of great tips from them.
I am so optimistic.
After they completed their half of the swap, we were less sanguine. In fact, we were prepared for the coastal California house to be...not that nice. Part of this was that there were relatively few photos with their listing. Another red flag was the many hints we got from the swappers that they were very, very concerned with their finances. But the main thing that dampened my enthusiasm was the fact that having them in our home was a lot more work than any other swap we had ever done.
It's always good to hear that swap partners made it into one's home without a problem and are enjoying themselves. I also appreciate it when exchangers let us know they need help with something complicated. Problems occur in homes and I am glad to help my guests address them. But I didn't need multiple calls about how to use each item in our home. We had to walk these swappers through each step of connecting to the internet and turning on each television, and it took twenty to 30 minutes each time.
We were out of the country for a few days during the swap, and the exchangers left us repeated, increasingly panicked, even angry messages about being on hold with the cable company for hours because they couldn't make the television work. When we reached them, the problem turned out to be that they had turned off the cable box.
We leave instructions for using complicated items but what was I supposed to do about the fact that they didn't think our ice maker produced enough ice? I would have expected to get lots of calls from people from another country where appliances are different, or from a couple who had never done a home exchange before.
None of the problems that worried the swappers were major issues. Spending a few hours teaching them to switch inputs so they could play a DVD on our television was not much different than being at home and having to do this sort of thing for my own parents. I'm making it sound awful but we just laughed about it and thought, "not worth it to swap with these folks again".
Another surprise was that the exchangers seemed financially troubled. Let's face it, home exchange is the best way ever conceived to stretch a travel dollar. But good exchangers are hospitable, and one face of hospitality is generosity. Coming across to one's swap partners as, well, cheap, doesn't do long-term benefit to one's reputation in the home exchange community. There were many indicators that money was a big concern for this couple. That was a big reason we expected their home to be very basic.
As it turned out, we did learn from these exchangers, mostly about things we should not do. When it came time to use their home, things got really weird...
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