[NEW] Automatic refusal after 4 days without response

Yes I completely understand your frustration at this. There is already a 4 day limit on finalizations but I see this is another issue too. I’ll pass on this idea to the team!

I completely understand your concern David, and thank you for taking the time to respond to this post, we really appreciate feedback from our members. I’m not sure if this helps at all but you do not have to decide whether to accept the request within the 4 day timescale, you just need to send a quick ā€˜let me have a think about it’ type message.

Let me have a think about it just creates ā€œchatter onlineā€ā€¦and the Red

is an agressive colour - as a teacher was trained to correct in pencil and not RED!

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Thank you!

24 hours is really asking too much from members - we pay Homeexchange for the service - who is doing most of the ā€œworkā€

Yes this is true and it is something that we do encourage, but also something that is rather hard to enforce :pensive_face:

Welcome to the Forum and thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts with the community. I understand that it is hard with busy lives and agree that a well thought out response is commendable. Perhaps the best option when you are short of time is to send a quick ā€˜holding’ reply such as ā€˜Thanks so much, i’ll have a think and come back to you asap! :)’

Thank you for your feedback, and interesting to hear that already you are receiving a lot of the auto declines. This is of course an ever evolving platform and changes are made often so I will feed this back to the team.

Thank you for taking the time to let us know your thoughts and it’s great to hear you are happy with this change :slight_smile:

Yes I agree that 4 days is not long enough to arrange all travel plans. However if it is an exchange you have no interest in then a friendly ā€˜no thanks’ within the 4 days enables the member to continue their search. If it’s a maybe then a quick reply along the lines of ā€˜Let me have a think about whether this could work and i’ll let you know asap :)’ would also be ok.

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Yes this is certainly a feature that is in the pipeline :slight_smile: The organising of messages is high on the priority list.

Thank you so much for your feedback which I will of course pass on. There was a survey carried out amoungst some members and majority (85%) requested 4 days. However everything is a learning curve and we will have to wait and see how this works in practice.

If you click on ā€˜My account’ and ā€˜Home’ you can see your calendar. On this version of your calendar you can see a little picture of who you are hosting and the details of your exchanges.

Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response to this latest updates and also welcome to the Forum!

I’m sorry to hear that you feel this change is not beneficial to you. I understand that it may not suit your personal needs, but I honestly don’t believe that HE is considering the way that you use the platform as ā€˜punishable’.

Infact what you describe that you do - open your calendar for periods when you want to travel and decide where to go based on the offers you receive - is a very common way of using Home Exchange. It is also what I do, and I am (sadly) not a digital nomad, but fixed to travelling on in certain weeks due to strict school holidays.

I think the key thing to focus on it that this change should speed up the exchanging process for everyone. However it is SO important to state that a decision does not have to be made in 4 days. A simple ā€˜thanks so much, your request is really interesting but i’m away right now and just need a bit longer to consider it’ would avoid the auto reject but still maintain communication with the member :slight_smile:

I see your point here. This is a feature that was strongly recommended by members to try and solve the issue of not getting a response for weeks, months or sometimes even years after they have sent a request. We will have to see how this works and of course nothing is forever and the product team will of course keep a close eye on how this works in practice.

I’m sorry to hear you’re not happy with the changes to the platform. I completely understand that 4 days is not enough time to fully arrange an exchange, especially if you have a busy schedule. A quick ā€˜thanks so much this is interesting but I need a bit longer to think about it :)’ is totally fine though.

I’m very sorry that you feel this way about the recent changes. I can assure you however that this was announced prior to the roll out on quite a few occasions and on many platforms: this Forum, Facebook groups and of course direct emails to members too. It concerns me that perhaps you are not receiving email contact from Home Exchange. Perhaps it might be an idea to check your settings on your account with regards to this.

Yes I do agree and it can be so frustrating to spend time writing detailed and thoughtful requests to then not even receive a reply. This update is intended to reduce the chances of this happening and to incentivise members to respond to requests in a timely manner. There will be an update soon on how this will affect response rates but it will have an impact.

I do understand your point however the red does make it clear for people to see. Also one could say that the ā€˜chatter’ creates more communication which is the key to a good exchange.

Thanks so much for this suggestion, I will of course suggest this to the team.