You would have heard about people getting ghosted by others on HEā¦AND, there is another area of HE that involves ghostsā¦
When HOMES are no longer available (as in being sold, or the members donāt pay for membership anymore) these are just plain ghosts, sitting on HE.
The problem I see with this is not only that the number of homes on HE is this way inflated, but it also leads to misunderstanding and the extra efforts on both sides.
Eg. I have located a few homes on HE that I liked, and would like to do an exchange with.
I contacted the ownersā¦Only to get their kind reply that they 1) no longer are members on HE (active paying members) and/or 2) their home was sold, and they moved to xyā¦plus they have told HE previously about it, nonetheless their home is still sitting on HEā¦
Is there a way to remove these houses off the platform? In order to make the platform cleaner/ more accurate?
Or is that done on purpose to inflate the numbers to appeal to new members?
Yes I agree this can be frustrating when searching for exchanges. However I assure you these are in the minority on the platform.
There are indeed some homes listed that are not active members. These homes are deleted after being inactive for a specific time. They are kept on the platform for a while as some members change their mind and may wish to join again as paid members.
Homes that have been sold should certainly not be on there - and this does need to be reported to member support if you see any like this.
Do you mean the calendar is opened so we can contact them?
I can see many listings with a closed calendar.
But i canāt contact them.
It is a bit boring as you are obliged to read the listing to see that there is no date available.
Hi @Nathalie1, thanks for commenting. From my experience there are homes which you can contact while the calendar is not saying much (no visible availability), and then there are homes where the owners selected that they donāt want to be contacted apart from their available dates.
Some members/homes are not current with their calendar, as they may have forgotten to or are too busy to update it, to reflect their availability. Then there are those, who are new and donāt even know that the calendar availability makes a difference in their listing visibility.
I have been contacting quite a large number of homes now around the area I would like to visit, and everyone is great at responding. However, their calendar is not reflecting the true availability or lack thereof. So a bit of a time waste for us all involved.
It would be also great to have an immediately āspotableā way to see when a home is active and up-to-date, and those that are just ghosts of the past.
Can you please share how long it is that a home is kept on the HE site before it is removed for good? Does the owner get some form of notification/warning, or what is the process?
