Cleaning Fees are not appropriate

I disagree. I exchange my two places frequently and I need to have every guest have a wonderful experience in a clean house. If I allow the guests to clean before they leave, they have different standards of cleanliness, and some donā€™t have time to clean due to catching a flight, etc. since these are second homes I am not there personally to clean so I must hire a cleaning crew to clean and make sure that it is to the same cleaning standard that I mandate. I also donā€™t mind paying cleaning fees during my stays, as I respect the homeowners decision to do so and deliver a similar clean experience for all of their guests. The only time I would waive a cleaning fee is if it is reciprocal.

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Because with are on the ocean front with near constant wind bring dust and salt, our secondary home takes several hours to clean properly, including the pool, hot tub, windows, terraces, etc, as well as changing the bed linens and usual domestic cleaning. Because we are not there, it costs us a few hundred euro every time. We charge HE points guests about half the cost to us and we never charge reciprocal guests.

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Hello Home Exchange community. I become a member since jan 2023. And been very active ( 127 exchange since then ) Been gaining lots of respect both way as guest and as a host.
I list my primary home and my secondary home on home exchange.

Direct answer : i wouldnt mind paying for cleaning fees that apply by my home ownerā€¦

Cleaning fees should be mentioned in "additional information page ". Host have the responsibility to mentioned again before the both partij finalize the exchange. And as a guest " do read all the information / description of the property it self.

I never really bother so much to pay for it as long its been informed. and its not my place to judge how much it should cost. I wouldnt have the time to check minimum wage in every places that i want to visit.

I had a trip to istanbul. It was 5 bedrooms property. And i travel on my own. Only using 1 bedrooms and cleaning fees was 250 euro per exchange. It was mentioned by the owner before we finalize and its also listed in their home exchange page and if i aggreed. Why it should be a problem?

If u donā€™t aggree regarding the number simply donā€™t take it.

Im a very very clean person in general as i had OCD my self. and checking in in place that not clean by my standard never been an issues eitherā€¦ i never made any single complaints to my home owner and i rather do it my self as i enjoy doing it.
I always able to leave the house in perfect condition.
I more than grateful that the home owner already able to share their house for me to use so i can have my holiday

Im sure each of you must experiance how difficult to secure your stay ( sending multiple messages to inquire the place )ā€¦ so if anyone been welcoming to open their door for meā€¦ that means im lucky enough to receive this opportunity. And i need to ensure their lucky enough to have me as their guest!!

If they have some regulation/ rules by the home owner and its in their house description / mentioned by the owner. Once you finalized that means its final. At the end its their house its their rules.

If you disagree about something simply find another one that suit you best.

Regards
Antonius

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totally agree with that. i mentioned that before on homexchange Facebook page and most people didnā€™t like that. Some people asks for a lot of money and its like its a paid stay. Its a no from me

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So in agreement with you!

Hi interested to know how you handled this. I had an exchange where it was left (in my opinion) dirty. I was covering the cleaning fee, but I felt the condition it was left in was not acceptable. Even if someone is going to clean after you I expect basic cleaning to happen during your stay. I gave them a poor cleanliness rating and now they are waging war against me. What do you think the best approach should have been?

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We would not use HE if we could not charge a cleaning fee. We donā€™t have the time to clean ourselves and we have to ensure the place is fully clean for the next guest. I had ā€œexperiencedā€ home exchangers who attempted to clean but left things dirty. I myself am relieved to pay a cleaning fee. Fees go directly to the cleaner. I once had an exchange for a 2bed apartment where their policy was to charge the same cleaning fee for their place as we charged for our 5bed house. It was a GP exchange. Exchanges are not necessarily ā€œevenā€. Charge what you pay the cleaner. Or donā€™t charge. As long as itā€™s transparent Iā€™m fine with it.

We prefer to use our time for the holiday rather than cleaning. If the cleaning fee is reasonable surely it is a win-win. It also avoids any issues about how clean the house is left by the guest.

MISUSE OF CLEANING FEES & RENTAL MARKETING IN HOME EXCHANGE! SHAME ON YOU! WE NEED HOME EXCHANGEā€™s HELP IN REGULATING THIS!!!

I understand that cleaning fees may be necessary if you are doing a ā€œguest pt exchangeā€ however these have become a form of airbnb ā€œIncome Producing Feesā€. I have encountered this several times. The following two offenses are the most recent.

A noteā€¦
We have houses in the Hamptons where cleaning fees are very high as just about service & living expense. I was appalled when a home owner with a secondary residence in a small very humble town in Massachusetts with a very nice lake house with great yard views but faces frontal on a highway location requested a $800.00 cleaning fee for a 3 bedroom 2.5 bath home around 2490 sq ft. I negotiated it to $400.00. This is not a cleaning fee but perhaps 1/2 of what they could generate in income from renting on airbnb!

*Upon our arrival the owner and after accepting our fees they sent me a list of cleaning instructions for our departure! Shame on you!!! Home Exchange needs to regulate this!

  1. A recent request for a VT ski house requested $500.00 for the week & said their home had availability for the requested time period. I said Iā€™d pay it however I want clear instructions as to what our check out responsibility was in terms of cleaning. Their response was vague & mentioned of course we wouldnā€™t want you to do more than you have to. Then switched their availability-we are not doing this exchange.

I have lived my Home Exchange experiences and because there is no money exchanged it in the past has attracted like minded hospitable people. Now it is reflecting a new breed of AIRBNB VRBO home owners looking to monetize vacancies, actually soliciting RENTAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR THEIR HOME EXCHANGE LISTINGS.

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I agree and this is why I offer a cleaning service that is optional. I ask them to choose and let me know by a decision date and if they opt to launder towels and sheets and clean returning the place to ā€œas they found itā€ that is fine but it needs to be ready enough for the next guest not to feel the house wasnā€™t prepared for them. If their travel schedule doesnā€™t allow time, I ask them to opt for the cleaning service and pay the cleaning fee. It is never a requirement. If you book at 6am flight and canā€™t clean, that was your choice and youā€™ll need to pay. I find if people care about not having the expense, theyā€™ll plan accordingly but it needs communicated in advance. This is in my listing.

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I think this is ridiculous too and this is why when my guest opts for a cleaning service now, I let them pay the service directly. I do not collect the money. I think itā€™s more comfortable for them. They then know Iā€™m not profiting off their stay. We already receive guest points which have value. And again, itā€™s an option people are choosing, it is not a requirement of mine.

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Great idea!

Iā€™ve been on HE for many years and have done many exchanges and LOVE the platform.
At first I really didnā€™t like the fact people could charge for cleaning, and I certainly hope people donā€™t start charging for other things ( like power, water etc). That would ruin the platform.
We have two houses on HE and we charge cleaning for one of them. This is because we donā€™t live close to that one and we also have it on AirBnB and it must be left spotless for this reason. We didnā€™t get the cleaner in to start with and just relied on HE guests cleaning it, but after a few exchanges we quickly realised everyoneā€™s level of ā€œcleanā€ is very different, so we needed to engage a cleaner.
Most HE guests donā€™t want to spend two hours washing linen, making up beds, washing floors etc.
If we couldnā€™t have charged for cleaning we would have had to take that house off the HE platform and Iā€™m sure many other people would be in the same boat.

Iā€™d like Home Exchange to limit the cleaning fees to reasonable amount (say $100, at least in high-cost countries). Other than preventing exorbitant fees, here is why I charge cleaning fee:
ā€¢ I have only one residence and I donā€™t clean my house. My cleaning lady does that.
ā€¢ Before I go on a trip I have her come in so the place is clean and presentable for any guests. Believe me, they wouldnā€™t have liked it if I had to do the cleaning myself.
ā€¢ After each guest she comes in to clean, including washing bed linen and towels. This way not only guests, but when I come home the place is clean for me.
ā€¢ I have the extra expense of at least one cleaning fee for each guest, which is nice to have them cover. The same logic works in reverse and I am happy to pay (reasonable) fee when a guest.
Iā€™ve been a HE member for 7 years and I love it.

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Iā€™m running into this site being full of VRBO and Airbnb people. They wonā€™t do Home Exchange because they are renting out their places and charging cleaning fees. Being a HE for 4 years, 19+ exchanges, Iā€™m trying to plan a trip to a warmer climate from Colorado @ Christmas, and canā€™t find anyone interested because itā€™s not about accepting GP or Reciprocal, itā€™s about them making money. If you want to rent it out fine, but why are you on this site?? I wish I could filter out these listings. Iā€™ve had several people say to me that they are having trouble using GP. It might collapse this site. I did have one guest reach out to me and ask if I had a cleaner so they could hire them. That was nice, but I like to clean and appreciate being able to not be charged. @HomeExchange do you have any ways to filter out hosts that are not accepting guest points??

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Hello, I have to admit there were red flags on the guestsā€™ listing. They wrote they received a bad cleanliness rating, but the host would not communicate and explain why things went south. They further explained that they were frequent Airbnb and HomeExchangers and this seems very out of character and wanted people to give them a chance at home share because everybody was now turning them down. I believe in second chances, so I agreed to host them. After they left, I understood where the frustration came from the prior host. I felt like I owed them and the system the courtesy to help them understand what would be problematic. I communicated with them extensively prior to posting my review. It did become somewhat heated in our private emails. For example they told me my house had too much furniture, they had to move it around in order to be able to do yoga in the living room space, and when I asked them how things were going on day one they said there was no toaster so I told them my husband could get a toaster from our second home where he was at the moment. We provided a toaster and a Keurig, because they couldnā€™t figure out how to use our coffee maker two days later. After my initial conversation with my disappointment in their cleanliness level, they accused us of giving them dirty appliances a week into their two week visit. Granted when my husband returned from our secondary home with the appliances, I did not check them. The toaster had crumbs in the bottom, and the Keurig did have some brown staining from coffee, but this was also never mentioned or brought to our attention immediately. We also felt both were absolutely usable, though they could have been cleaned a bit more though my comment to them was we werenā€™t required to get them a toaster or a Keurig , that many people live without such things, but we wanted to be accommodating and had access to them. It was also an oversight on our part that we just handed them over and did not think to clean them the way the request occurred. Bottom line was I did not want to be the one that limited their ability to get another Exchange, I also did not want them to leave comments regarding our hosting that I felt would not be reflective of their stay, since they appeared to be somewhat retaliatory rather than apologetic. I decided to change my posting to add a cleaning fee option, and also stated, very, explicitly what my expectations were. Frankly, I was getting a request every day, and do not need the points, but do it to create a sense of community and for the possibility of an international exchange. For me, I made it a learning experience, changed my posting requirements, and to date have not had the same issue. I am wondering why you would ā€˜take onā€™ the cleaning fee - and perhaps you could avoid another situation by stating that if your place is not left as it was found, the guest agrees inadvance to covering a cleaning fee. I have had a couple that did agree to cleaning and paying the cleaning fee, but in the end did not in addition to having their grandkids spend the night at our cabin. I did not pursue the fee since things were left relatively clean, but the extra bedding/towels and the breakage of a large lake inflateable informed me, this is not a guest I would want back. Their loss for taking advantage of good will.

Wow that sounds stressful. I think the learning for me is that digital nomads are a red flag.,you want guests out and about not hanging at the property all day. Thsnks fir the reply

My recent HE home owner wanted $450 USD when we left. :confounded::tired_face:

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That is not allowed, only if you had agreed upon it beforehand Ɣnd if it was for cleaning (or maybe including tourist taxes). I hope you did not do it and reported the account.

It was for cleaning and I only left the initially discussed $300, not the new elevated price of $450 USD.