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Back at the beginning of February when our major web site re-write / upgrade went live, we introduced a two-tiered level of home exchange memberships. This is one change I had always resisted, in fact anyone who has read my previous posts on the subject of free memberships would be well aware of my opinion on them. But …. we had documented requests from many members and visitors asking for this much broader coverage for home exchange listings, so I agreed to a six month experiment.

Right away it became evident that these free memberships were (as I suspected they would be), a disaster waiting to happen. Our programmers had written code to very stringently control how many contacts they could actually initiate with listing (paid) members. Initially they were allowed just five contact emails in any 24 hour period, but after just a short time this was amended to a total of five for as long as they remained Associate Members. We also began asking Full Home Exchange Members to actually give us permission to allow email contacts from Associate Members.

Immediately the two tiered system launched it attracted a high volume of Associate (free) Member sign-ups. In fact, during the six month trial more than three thousand free members joined, and we were swamped checking the authenticity of the personal information the provided. I felt we had to do this to replace the otherwise standard validation of information which is part of the payment process.

A frightening proportion immediately had their memberships canceled because the names and addresses they entered were pure gibberish, but an equally scary number provided what appeared to be authentic names and addresses—until they failed validation.

Eventually enough became enough. In order to protect our Full Members we were spending hours every day administering dozens of Associate Members. As of the beginning of August the Associate (free) option was removed.

Of course there were hundreds of completely genuine free members who signed up, but as I saw it, the risk was just too great. Since we first began (back in 1986) we’ve never had a report of theft or malicious damage and I wasn’t prepared to have that record destroyed. Also, a huge percentage of those free members were already paid members of other home exchange clubs and were directing our members to check out these listings.

They were expecting us to act as “feeder pages” for xyz.com (not a real url).

Anyway, the plug has now been pulled on Associate Memberships. I believe we gave it a fair trial, but it’s not for us.

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