Who has faced difficult situations due to last moment cancellation by a host for a one week or more longer exchange?
What sort of method could have been helped to ease up the situation ?
Should the Hosts penalized in terms of guess points or so to reduce the cancellations?
Hello,
We all know that cancellations can happen for many reasons beyond the host’s control. HE offers assistance to guests that have an exchange cancelled by trying to find them alternative accommodation or eventually giving help towards a hotel.
The hosts are required to explain why they have cancelled and HE tracks that there is no repetitive cancellations by a host.
Points are intended only to be used as an alternative form of exchange so cant be used to ‘punish’ a host.
Let’s remember that we never know when we may become ourselves the ‘host that has to cancel’.
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What would have made our (ongoing) cancellation so much better, is all clearer and more timely information and responses from Home Exchange.
We contacted SOS when we were cancelled for a 15 night stay in another country the day before leaving and Home Exchange quickly came back to say how they would help. This was reassuring but it left us with loads of questions about how that help is delivered. How do home exchange contact other homes? What is the deadline for them to respond? What we should do next? A detailed document explaining all of this would have helped. Even better - a number to call. As it was, we had to just wait on those questions via email and this quickly led to stress. Travelling with children in a foreign country with no home to go to is stressful.
The support did not answer our questions. They instead just told us to respond directly to host emails, but that was hard to do whilst travelling with kids. It was all via our phones. We couldn’t easily find information to help us online and I have only just found out his forum. We had no idea how long to wait for responses before we could enact the guarantee. All this time we were driving overseas with our kids and had nowhere to stay.
We also recognised that while the $120pn offered was appreciated, for 5 people enroute to a holiday in a 5 bed home with a pool in Southern France, it could not cover our costs. It felt unfair that it is one figure regardless of location and guests. We felt the onus was on us to find a home exchange to rescue our holiday as it was too late for us to cancel our trip.
We did find one available for part the time, and it has been amazing, but we had to Airbnb the rest and cancel my mother’s trip as the dates did not work. It was expensive.
Now, massively out of pocket and with a big credit card bill to pay, I am awaiting payment from home exchange as per the guarantee. I submitted email feedback and invoices to home exchange 7 days ago and have, again, had no response. I’ve emailed SOS, replied on the query page, tweeted - nothing elicits a response.
I don’t feel supported. Instead I feel stressed and upset. This is something home exchange could remedy when things go wrong.
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So sorry to hear this Ruth. I rarely hear the downside of the website and its always been a worry! Hope you get better looked after by HE xx
I’m facing one now. I had my exchange cancelled in late July. Home Exchange was working with me initially but has not found a replacement and now that we are one day away from the start of our trip (4 adults and 1 child, a trip that included plane flights) they have gone MIA and haven’t contacted me back in a week. We have a backup rental (expensive!) whose cancellation period ended during their period of silence. I’m afraid they’re going to find some excuse not to compensate us properly even though they haven’t been communicating. I’m really frustrated. To top it off, we are currently hosting another family at our own home during this time - being good hosts ourselves while being completely ignored by HE 
Though, I think that while HE should ensure there aren’t repeat offenders, hosts shouldn’t be penalized because life events have forced them to cancel. HE should, however, make sure they are doing their part to communicate timely with affected guests and cover guarantees. That’s not happening in my case.
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Curious how this got resolved! Did HE finally pay you what they owed?
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So sorry to hear this Maggie. I think the platform works so well because of the generous people on it. I would like to see HE give back to those generous people. I do hope you get well treated. Please keep us informed xx
Yes. It took a good couple of weeks and I resorted to chasing specific people via LinkedIn. I eventually had a reply on there, full of apologies. They told me to forward feedback to them as they take it all seriously, and that someone would be in touch that day.
Somebody was. Apparently the person I had been dealing with had gone away and that’s why nobody had answered my email. I am not sure that I believe this - it was the generic SOS email address.
No-one responded to my feedback, either on here or Linked in or the original message I sent to SOS. They just advised payment would be made and then a few days later it came through of $120 per night minus an exchange rate and the exchange fee.
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I am sorry to hear that. What was a reason for cancelation? And why were you sending requests on Linkedln?
Sorry to hear that. What was the reason for canceling and I hope HE paid you 120$ per day.
Hosts said they had a roof leak and would need repair work done around the time of our visit…
Home Exchange has not paid us and I have not been able to reach them in going on two weeks. They have been dead silent.
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