HE has been going great for us… until it didn’t. Our host had to cancel an international reciprocal exchange. I’m trying to figure out how to finalize GP stays for this vacation. Firstly, I don’t have enough GP to cover all of the dates. Secondly, I will probably have to split the stay between 2 homes as I haven’t had luck finding a home that is available the entire stay.
The problem is… I can’t get any clarity from HE about this. I’ve sent emails only to get vague replies from what seems to be a bot.
Will HE make up the difference in GP? Any advice or solutions welcomed!
I’m sorry to hear that your host has had to cancel your exchange. I understand this must be such a disappointment and very stressful for you. You should most definitely get in touch with member support who will certainly be able to help you to find alternative accommodation. Have you completed this form?https://help.homeexchange.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Also if this is an emergency and you are travelling in the next few days then you can also contact the emergency team on sos@homeexchange.com.
These are all of the ways in which HE support can be contacted contact us - HomeExchange
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You are walking a tight rope because you want to keep your home open for reciprocal but if this is close I would promote your home for GP during this trip and as soon as you finalize you will have more GP.
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I am so sorry to hear that you have had a cancellation. It just happened to us and is so stressful as you need to know where you will stay! The 72 hour response time for Home Exchange support is just not quick enough as you need to know if they will cover the difference in GPs. HE should automatically boost the GPs for people who have had a cancellation to help you move on, reduce stress and start to organise somewhere new to stay.
We also did not have enough guest points to replace what we had organised. Our cancellation was due to our host having lost a passport so they came up with the solution to turn our reciprocal into a GP exchange and took a reduced number of GPs from us so that they had enough GPs to find somewhere within their own country. HE did return the GPs we used to our account once they replied so that was fair since we had never planned to have a GP exchange. But this wouldn’t have helped if our host hadn’t come up with the solution and accepted a reduced number of GPs.
If your hosts’ cancellation is something that means they can go somewhere else it might be worth reaching out to them to see if they will take the GPs that you do have or doing a non synchronous reciprocal. Otherwise you will need to boost your GPs as soon as possible or find another offset reciprocal exchange. I would advise opening your calendar for any type of exchange and look for people who want to come to your city by doing a reverse search and then actively reaching out to them for a GP exchange.
I actually reached out to 3 people for a reciprocal exchange but there wasn’t enough time for them to come for our dates. 2 replied very quickly and one was very kind and was trying to find somewhere for us. There are some very kind people on this site. For example it might be possible to have someone come and stay in your house for GPs and at a later date do an offset reciprocal or someone might just help you out.
In the end it has worked out for us and HE will probably meet the difference for you but you have to get the points into your account first. If you can get something agreed in principle HE support might be able to boost your account to help you finalise the exchange? Good luck!
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The site always gives the missing gp in case of a cancellation and if a New exchange has been found, wether it’s by the member himself or by the staff. If it’s an emergency they reply under a few hours , otherwise it’s in a few days indeed.
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That is really helpful to clarify that HE will credit the person who has been had their holiday cancelled with any missing GPs if they themselves find a new exchange - if this what you are saying - as I could not find it written anywhere. Please add a link to this policy!
If I have understood correctly what you are saying why can HE not automatically credit the person who has been cancelled with GPs equivalent to their home X the number of days they had booked - then they have a chance to find somewhere equivalent. There are not always GPs involved in an exchange which is why it needs to be automatic or HE needs a very clear policy on how to proceed to fix up a new GP exchange even if you don’t have enough points!
This is important because people like us out of friendship turn the exchange into a zero point exchange when there is a difference in GPs for a reciprocal. So our guests who cancelled would have had to transfer around 550 GPs to match the difference in our houses, but we said let’s do that as a zero transfer. Then they cancelled and we had 10 days to find somewhere else without receiving any GPs and not having enough GPs since we are new to the site.
The problem with HE response times is that an emergency is defined as 4 days before the start of the holiday. You need nerves of steel to wait not knowing where you will stay until 4 days before your holiday! This is such a stressful time and members need much more support and rapid clarification of what we can and cannot do without forfeiting the right to compensation.
So we had 10 days notice and were on the slow response track. You would have to be very lucky to coordinate a synchronous reciprocal within 10 days. If I had known that HE would honour a GP exchange even though I didn’t have enough that would have been really helped. Even if the bot had told me that it would have helped. But I needed to know how many GPs I could use for a 9 night exchange. Hence my suggestion that this is automatically added to your account ( your home value times the number of days you booked).
The other problem with responding to cancellations is that HE policy says it will only honour basic criteria of the booking and within a 50km radius. 50km outside of a city could mean a 2 hour commute into the centre! This is really unsupportive and leaves you feeling left on your own not knowing what to do or whether to bail and book an Airbnb or hotel and be massively out of pocket. If I had booked an Airbnb or hotel would HE give me the daily compensation or would I have had to wait to have this agreed? But then no one gets back to you for a few days until it is an “emergency”. I hope HE sorts out this glitch in what is a great community.
It’s written in this page, the points are given for any amount if it’s on top of what was given for the cancelled exchange : https://help.homeexchange.com/hc/en-us/articles/10792929305117-What-are-the-criteria-taken-into-account-for-a-relocation
And yes things can be better, but cancellations are a really small part of exchanges, and the staff does the best to help.
Members know that it’s not an hôtel and that there’ll always be more risks than in a professional accommodation, so having a plan B in mind is always a good Idea ( or to have the money to face the problem), you learn it with experience.
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