HomeExchange - House Swapping Reviews

I’ve done 2 exchanges and they were both easy and I had no problems with either. I like that we can either simultaneously exchange, exchange during different times or use/gain points. I really love this concept and am planning my next trip now. Some of the cleaning fees are a little extreme; $250 was requested on one. I understand when a home is used as a vacation rental and they shouldn’t have to pay money for me to stay there so I felt I needed to ask for a cleaning fee also but don’t want that to become the norm. I live in my home so it’s a little different but I hire for deep cleaning. It’s really nothing compared to staying in a hotel or Airbnb. Overall I highly recommend Home Exchange!!

All travellers rely on mobile apps to manage all their multiple crucial details. HomeExchange is abysmal compared to dozens of others I use for travel. Absolute bottom of the barrel.
(Guys, It's like you're designing for 1999. The demographic for home exchange are mostly old baby boomers... Intuitive UX will be the key to retaining members. Everyone is complaining. Please hire some real UX people with actual experience!! And synch up with the equally poorly designed but generally working website. HomeExchange navigation and Web are often different. Either way it makes for such a frustrating user experience.)
Navigation is terrible. Franglais is also a consistent problem throughout HomeExchange . Programming leads to app crashes 40% of the time.
EG. Today trying to message a few favorited places and make new connections (isn't that the whole point of home exchange?) and for hours on end HomeExchange crashes as soon as you hit the MESSAGE button. Useless!! So many hours wasted.

This web site was difficult for me to use in the beginning, however after watching the webinar I understood how to use it. 25 years ago, I watch a friend from work use a site like this and this site for home exchanges. She talk about how much fun her family had on all their travels year after year. I wanted to. So we we joined two home exchange, Home exchange was our best bet. We have traveled all over the world, have international families and have had wonderful experiences that will always be with us. It is so great to live in a neighborhood and get the feeling of the city. If you don’t mind sharing your house you won’t regret it. Happy wonderful travels. Pat Bledsoe

Homes available on HomeExchange are perfect, even if too large or too many bedrooms for a single traveler, forces me to invite friends :). Nice to be at a home instead of a hotel where you can’t walk or bicycle to a local market for fresh fish or meat or produce, then take you wonderful selections home to cook up a nice meal all the while relaxing in a spacious country home with owners connecting you to their favorite spots or neighbors nearby to visit. So very comfortable and casual with everything so easy!

I have been a very loyal member of H.E. Since approx. 06’ and have done many exchanges utilizing the traditional original HE system. In fact had a number of credits (balloons) that since the integration were converted to “points”.
Since the conversion, I have spent many hours reviewing and providing input to the developers toward improvement (something that obviously should have been thoroughly beta tested by their paid staff before release/conversion. I deeply believe in the concept and have hung in there. Week by week I’m seeing improvements however the developers still have a ways to go. It is incumbent on the new owners/developers to bring this site up to potential for the benefit of the many loyal members around the globe who have lots at stake.
Rod

We love home exchange, having been members for less than a year but we’ve already completed several exchanges and have several more arranged. The change to guest points was a surprise, which is what a lot of folks are complaining about but now that we are used to them, I prefer it as it’s much easier to arrange exchanges. I have also found HE open to feedback and continuing to work to improve the website and app. For the nominal yearly fee, I find their service a great value.

I like HomeExchange , mostly, but one thing I think would be helpful would be to have a filter to locate members who are willing to accept Guest Points. I have accepted points, but now I can’t find a home where I can use these points. All of my points inquiries have been declined, even on ‘secondary homes.’ Also, can’t figure out how lo change the city under the main heading. Hope all of these comments make sense.

It’s as if the company wrote the new app without any usability testing (note to app developers: this means bringing in real users and having them actually use all the features of HomeExchange and talking with them to see what works, what doesn’t, and how it can be made as intuitive as possible).
Then once HomeExchange was written, it seems the developers didn’t do any system testing on their own to discover the MAJOR problems that exist with every major feature of the site.
My guess is they simply hired out to remote developers with a minimum of written specs and just accepted whatever was delivered, and posted it live expecting everything to work, just to meet a deadline.
“Just get something out there and we’ll fix bugs as they’re reported...”

HomeExchange works fairly well with this serious shortcoming:

Another this app member I have been in touch with through the HomeEchange app tells me she didn’t know she had a message waiting from me longer than a week, because she wasn’t notified by email or any other way. I always receive notifications as soon as another member leaves me a message on HomeExchange ; in fact, the entire message is sent to me by email.

What does the other member have to do in order to configure receiving email notifications when they have a message waiting?

This has been a serious problem with other members as well, and has degraded the experience of setting up exchanges, possibly even causing some exchanges to fail because of the delay in learning that a message was waiting.

All my messages came in French, not sure why. I had to email customer service to get that fixed. Once fixed, all the messages disappeared!

I had other issues completing my profile and requested assistance. Customer service never even looked at my profile and referred me to a generic article. In all i had to contact them FOUR times, with poor results each time!

Im gonna stick with exchanging on Airbnb. Its easy and all you have to do is propose it to a property owner. MUCH larger selection, and certainly better customer service! Ive had several exchanges that way.

I have used this site for years but, since the merger, it is completely useless. The help site doesn’t help at all. Once you frame your request, the form answer with the standard “we’lll get back to you”, but they never do. This has happened to me twice now.
Also, the iPad app doesn’t work well at all. You cannot use the links from email. You have to manually go back into messages on the site and find the home that you want to look at from there. Also, you can’t edit your destinations from the iPad app. If I hadn’t already invested my money and my energy in designing my page for this year, I would quit.

The NEW this app website is riddled with problems. Difficult to find homes that were previously saved to my profile. Can’t edit visits, or update easily. Not sure about the guest points, who determines how much your home is worth?
Overall I am not satisfied with the NEW website. Why change something that seemed to be working just fine?

This revision of the previous site is terrible. The site crashes frequently. It is not clear where things are on the site. Worst, the version that I see is in a very narrow, phone-like format. Since I use my Ipad for this site, I don’t like this feature. Like lots of boomers, I prefer my Ipad to my phone because it is easier to see, this format compresses everything. You may say that I only have to do such and such to fix this, but that is not my job, it is yours!
Currently I cannot find reviews of my own or others houses.
Get to work!

HomeExchange was somewhat unimpressive upon launch but they've gradually enhanced it so that it's now very functional. I'm optimistic they'll make it even better as time goes along. It's super handy to be able to interact with our travel partners from our pocket.

I had guests over the holiday ! Did not get guestpoints!! Cannot review the review!! Cannot answer the review!! And the deadline is in 5 days! I have verified my address 3 x .. don’t get any points ... paid 150 $ foe membership ...for 6 people to stay at my house over the holiday ... got no points!! 1640 points is all I have had!! But I keep on getting email from people who wants to stay in my home !!
I am so frustrated with HomeExchange with the log in !! And I feel like there is no follow through ! I get an email .. I open it .. but no resolution!! Since it says .. this dialog has expired!!!!

I’m exasperated. The developers have blocked their users from being able to use HomeExchange until it’s upgraded to the new version, but the new version won’t download from HomeExchange Store. I have an important communication in to someone, and I can’t even see if it’s been read - and I know from past experience that the ‘new message’ notifications are often not delivered properly. I really want this to work, but the technology MUST be prioritized!!!

Difficult to search. Messages are out of order (my new messages are 10 - 15 down in the inbox....) half of HomeExchange is in another language (and no way to change the setting - I understand more if the entire thing was in A foreign language! But it currently appears half in English and half in French). Forced me to create a new listing even though my old listing still exists - along with all my reviews on my exchanges. So many things need to be fixed, it’s even clunkier than then former app!

The previous Home exchange app was wonderful. This merger has been a disappointment and frustration, as there was no communication in advance, and the new app is not user-friendly. The messaging is awkward (ie, there are no dates to indicate when the message was received, there is no single-button option to decline a request). I wish the current developers would simply use the previous H.E. App as a template—it used to work so well! Hopefully over time they will fix the bugs—but there are many to address.

Running super slow and locking up whether I use HomeExchange or Safari browser. All of my other apps are working fast. Supposedly updated for iPad but will only work upright vertical. You can’t turn the iPad horizontal. You probably need to get a more advanced app professionally design.

Also, in HomeExchange , you can’t see who you’ve already contacted. Also can’t continue the conversation like on the web browser format.

It’s pretty clear what language everybody is communicating in, because the language is identified by HomeExchange . On the website it’s easy enough to toggle a switch or push a translate button. I don’t understand why the iPhone app doesn’t have this feature. As a result, it’s impossible to understand many of the requests without logging into the service on a computer. Of course, you can always copy and paste communications in to google translate as a workaround.

HomeExchange was somewhat unimpressive upon launch but they've gradually enhanced it so that it's now very functional. I'm optimistic they'll make it even better as time goes along. It's super handy to be able to interact with our travel partners from our pocket.