Leaving Bad Reviews for Home Exchanges

I’ve been thinking about how to leave a less-than-stellar review for a home exchange based on my experiences in Rome. I think there were some serious omissions to the ad for the flat, and I’m really surprised this host has only 5 star reviews. It wasn’t a bad exchange, but I want to warn other swappers about some things I wish I had known in advance.

While the overwhelming majority of house swaps are successful and happy ventures, every once in a while someone has a bad exchange. Maybe the place was super dirty, or the heat and water didn’t work, or you ended up sharing what you thought was a private flat with other people. When these things happen it’s important to leave a review explaining the problems so that future swappers will be warned. But on peer-to-peer platforms I always find leaving bad reviews to be somewhat awkward. After all, you know that they are reviewing you too, and each site has different practices around reviews. I prefer that we can’t see each other’s reviews until we have written one ourselves. That way there will be no bias towards retribution if someone feels they got an unfairly bad review. But I also think there needs to be a mechanism for appealing bad reviews in case a member isn’t being fair.

Recently Aidan left this comment on my review of HomeExchange.com which raises some good points about reviews.

I have just read the above review regarding HE and as a member I would like to raise the points regarding the accuracy of previous exchange information and of the reviews.

Exchanges tab:
The number of completed exchanges displayed on the member’s homepage does not match the number of completed exchanges listed under the “exchanges” tab. Also, I have found that many of the listed exchanges do not have a reciprocal exchange when cross referenced.

Reviews:
I would question how much the reviews can be trusted . Because, at the moment, a review is only listed if it is approved by both parties. This has the result in a lack of negative reviews being listed .

I am aware that HE “upgraded” their website last year (2015) and maybe the accuracy of the previous exchange list is compromised by this change. But the review policy will never give a complete picture of the integrity of the member and the listing.

I have completed a number of exchanges with HE . After an unsatisfactory exchange, due to the inaccuracy of the information provided, I would now advise any member to ask the prospective exchanger to explain the lack of reviews in relation to the number of exchanges listed on their page.

I am not aware if the “Safety & Trust” dept. of HE monitor the rejected reviews and take action if a consistent pattern arises.

I reached out to HomeExchange.com to ask about this policy regarding reviews, and Aidan is correct. According to one of the HE reps: “The member first sees a review and then once they approve it the review is posted on their profile.” The rep claimed this is because they want people to report problems directly to HE, who will then get involved to try to resolve the problems. But obviously many problems can’t be resolved and are just “features.” When I asked the rep what happens to bad reviews that get rejected he said they have a Trust and Safety team that gets involved and offered to put me in touch with them. That team followed up with me via email and reiterated the policy:

Any Member who contacts us regarding a problem prior to, during or after an exchange, is offered the use of our official complaints procedure.  The complaints procedure is designed to enable us to hear both sides of the story.  We collect photographs and information from both members.  When we have collected all of the details we need, our Management team considers all of the information and offers a resolution to the problem, purely based on the facts.  Every complaint that we receive is noted against the Members details.  In the most severe cases, Members and their listings can be removed from our website after the first complaint.  If we received an identical complaint from two independent Members regarding the same member, they would be removed from the website.

In practice I think this policy means you really can’t trust the reviews on that HomeExchange.com because only good ones will get published. Of course if someone has 10 good reviews, it’s likely they are accurate. But if there are no reviews, or only one or two, it’s a good idea to make sure the number of reviews matches the number of exchanges, as Aidan suggested. I much prefer the policy of AirBnb which informs users when a review has been published about them but tells them they can’t see it until they write a review about the host/guest.

I also reached out to GuesttoGuest to ask about their policy on bad reviews and was told there is no opportunity to review or reject reviews before publication. But if there is a big disagreement members can ask the staff to step in and help arbitrate or judge, and in rare cases they will delete inappropriate reviews (I was given the example of one review where the reviewer was personally insulting of the member).

While they may not seem like the best advertising for a home exchange site, I think any peer-to-peer website that doesn’t have bad reviews is hurting themselves in the long run. In fact, while looking for activities in Rome on the Trip4Real platform I was happy to see a few activities that received less than 5 star reviews (and two that got 1 star reviews). To me this suggests the reviewers were being honest, and so I could probably trust them.