'Swap-Spammers'

Or, How Not to Communicate with Fellow Home Exchangers

As if we all didn't get enough unwanted junk email every day, one very experienced home exchanger has drawn attention to a special sort of s**m now propagated by a few home exchangers. Horrors! Members of the home exchange community are generally very thoughtful, kind and caring people - not at all the sort you would associate with the dreaded s**m word.

Nicole, the prolific author of an excellent personal blog about home exchange, has coined the term 'swap-spammer' to describe a minority of home exchangers who abuse the ease of communication that email enables. Living in New York City, Nicole is in a popular home exchange location and, no doubt, receives more than the average number of exchange offers. As a conscientious home swapper, she will spend much time responding to all offers whether of interest or not. But, here is the real crux of the problem, the few home exchangers Nicole has labelled 'swap-spammers':

'What always surprises me about the flood of swap offers I receive is when I reply that I am interested and never hear back from the exchanger. I keep my responses short, edited and professional, so I know they're not being turned off by my weird writing style. Rather, it is pretty obvious that these folks have blitzed fellow exchangers in my town with as many exchange offers as they can type. After sending out several dozen or, for all I know, a few hundred, emails, these swap-spammers wait to receive the best offer and ignore all other replies.'

Nicole has touched on a real problem for some. Home exchangers need to distinguish between being pro-active (sending thoughtful, personal exchange offers rather than waiting to be contacted - a good thing), sending an impersonal mass mailing to dozens of people without thought to their destinations/dates requests (a bad thing) and, worse, not replying when someone responds positively to their exchange offer (a definite no-no!) It is, of course, likely that more than one recipient of an exchange offer sent to several at a time will express interest. It is only common courtesy to promptly acknowledge all such replies. However tempting it may be to try to hedge your bets by keeping some exchange possibilities 'on hold' until you're sure your first choice is definite, this is very unfair and will more than likely backfire. Anyone who doesn't receive a reply to a positive response to your exchange offer is unlikely to be interested if approached again later on.

In pre-email days home exchangers would always give much thought to targetting those members most likely to be interested in their offers, often compiling thick packages of information that included an introductory letter, photos and local tourist brochures. As it was costly to produce and send bulky letters, especially by airmail, swap-spamming was unheard of. Email has been so useful in enabling quick and cheap communication between home exchangers but care needs to be taken not to abuse this.

As Nicole says: 'We all need to treat each other with respect for home exchange to work. Swap-spamming is disrespectful.' Read Nicole's full post on this topic and view her next exchange offer on Home Base Holidays (HE18495).