Hi. Thank you for your efforts to hasten responses to requests for exchanges (I assume that is your objective). My thoughts are that it may be counter-productive for the following reasons: 1) It is a fairly short time period. Many members are traveling or working or have other issues. Those members may want to accept the request but are unable to respond timely. 2) For those inclined to accept the request, they may see that the automatic decline was activated and don’t take any action thinking the requester has moved on. Suggestion for correction: lengthen the time for the automatic decline to 7 or 10 days. The requesters are aware that the automatic declination is a possibility but can then decide to wait or move on to another request because they have not received an answer in a shorter period of time, like 3-4 days. It leaves the power to control the request in the hands of the requestor. They will also have the benefit of knowing the historical activity of the homeowner who may be a slow answerer, anyway.
I like 7 days especially for more distant trips. There are issues of time zones ect. Someone makes a request across the world you can already lose a day or two with time zone then discussion, then deciding you can’t get an answer so you have to give them a hold on we’re thinking about it and then a no. But I am not someone who lives home exchange. I am more casual.
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts with the community on the latest auto decline update. I completely appreciate what you say and it can be tricky when life is super busy. I will of course feedback your thoughts to the team. I have also changed the title of your post slightly - I hope this is ok? I wanted to make it clear what your proposal was so that members can vote for your idea.
I was about to do a post about this, but this is exactly what I would also propose. 7 days would allow for a full week cycle to go through, including the weekend, which is the only time some of us can take to focus on requests. As a host, it’s anxiety inducing to always run after the clock to assess a request, even if it’s months away. It’s especially bad in popular areas with several daily requests. As someone looking for stays, I don’t find that a 4-day limit in in my interest either, because an automatically declined request doesn’t change anything from it just being ignored, except that it greatly lowers the chance to have a request checked. I support the proposal to be able to customize your limit date.
As a final note, I have to say that this decision has changed my relation to the platform in a bad way, because it has added stress to a generally nice user experience.
I agree a longer time frame or none at all is better. Last time we put out a request to around 50 people and only after about 3 weeks, we got a party accepting our offer. Whenever we receive a request, we need to check with work, check the schedules of our family members, discuss whether it’s doable and often this can take weeks. I always reply right away saying we’ll look into the possibility of doing an exchange but suggest the party keep looking just incase, because we don’t have an immediate answer. Not everyone uses this method and might need weeks to figure it out. I feel we ought to have the choice to turn off the automatic cut off. However, thanks for always trying to improve the system.
I’m sorry to hear that, and the last thing anyone wants is more stress 
Please don’t forget that you do not need to decide within the 4 days whether to accept an exchange request or not. You just need to make sure you reply - so a super quick “i’m a bit busy right now but i’ll have a think over the weekend and get back to you asap” is absolutely fine. Also the product team has just made an important change which you can read more about here: 🆕 Automatically Declined Requests Now Easier to Identify in Your Inbox Automatically declined requests will still remain in your unread messages inbox so members are less likely to miss these requests
Thank you for your message and welcome to the Forum! What you mention here:
I always reply right away saying we’ll look into the possibility of doing an exchange but suggest the party keep looking just incase, because we don’t have an immediate answer. Not everyone uses this method and might need weeks to figure it out.
…is exactly what we hope these changes will encourage other members to do too. It’s super frustrating to not get a reply at all when requesting an exchange. However I appreciate it can take weeks to finalise an exchange too (booking flights, time off work, chatting to family etc). So this update should encourage members to reply in a more timely fashion. They don’t need to finalise in 4 days, just send a message similar to what you already do 