Home Exchange Membership Amendments
When, early in February, we went on-line with the major overhaul to our web site, we bowed to pressure from many members and visitors and introduced a two-tier membership system, effectively allowing non-publishing—or “Associate”—members to initiate contacts with members who paid to list their homes for exchange. We did however exercise an important constraint that limited Associate Members to a maximum of five email contacts during a twenty four hour period.
Once the upgrade got into full swing, we began receiving feedback split just about fifty fifty. Half of those contacting us congratulated us on the move, but the other half were suddenly very vocal in protesting the contacts they were receiving from non-listing members. Just as a side note, before finally deciding upon this two-tier level of memberships we had polled all current members requesting their opinions on the proposed change. Not one had responded with an objection!
Anyway, it was clear that we needed to appease the members suddenly unhappy with the two levels of memberships. Our programmers added a field to the page used to list a home exchange, specifically asking the Full (listing) member whether they wished to be contacted by: a) Full (listing) Members only, or b) Both Full and Associate Members, with the default being (a). In other words, if any Full Member was happy to receive contacts from Associate Members, he or she had to edit their listing(s) to indicate this.
Another change we’ve implemented is with the number of emails allowed to an Associate Member. When we initially allowed just five per day we thought that was sufficient to discourage abuse in the form of email spamming, but we were wrong. During February one person joined with four different memberships (identical IP addresses), so that he could send out sometimes 20+ spam emails per day. Thirty days later he had sent out more than five hundred emails.
He and a handful like him have forced us to limit the number of emails allowed for an Associate Member to be five total, as opposed to five per day.
Personally I’m extremely happy with these amendments. I’ve always firmly believed that a genuine, committed home exchange participant will always be happy to pay a small fee and join a club as a listing member, and many of my earlier posts have reflected as much. But, as the owner of a long-standing home exchange club, I also had to listen to, and act upon a continually voiced request from members and visitors alike. I think we’ve now resolved the issue to everyone’s satisfaction: those members who have no objection to being contacted by non-listing members can allow this to happen with a click of their mouse, and similarly, all members who are only comfortable being contacted by fellow “Full” members can implement this restriction, also with the click of their mouse.
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