Jacques Bedard wrote:
Didn't say that. It's not a question of paid versus volunteer or suspicious hidden agendas???
my bad. I have misinterpreted your first post, sorry
Jacques Bedard wrote:Couchsurfing is free and offers some security to hosts and surfers alike. These other sites have no feedback mechanism for either hosts or helpers.
Couchsurfing is collecting your information, the more complete is your profile the better. Have you read their term of use? That's how they raised $15 million.
Feedback mechanism? If someone gets a negative review or 2 he/she can make another profile just like that.. I have seen ppl doing it, in all networks.
I have been a member of Hospitality Club (sold out with airbnb) and Couchsurfing since 2005, Helpx and WWOOF Internationals for years. I have used the networks A LOT while traveling,
enough to know that people are not completely honest with their reviews, is simple: if you write something negative you will get a negative reference back and how is the reader going to know who was right?
unfortunately, bewelcome.org a much more ethical alternative didn't manage to be popular enough
I have had good and bad experiences hosting and surfing/volunteering, we are talking about human relationships here, you never know how is going to be.
Google: "wwoof/helpx/cs bad experience" and you will get plenty of results
At some point I decided to stop paying attention to references/ratings from hosts/surfers and I had "not-so-positive" experiences with people who had only positive references. Also worked the other way, I had positive experiences with people who had negative references.
I have never been verified in any of the networks, never paid for CS verification scam (that claims you are more likely to find a host if you are verified) and used paypal/prepaid
cards to buy my memberships in the other sites.
Jacques Bedard wrote:But I'd argue that $15 a year is a small price to pay to show a host you are serious. It's not like the money is going to some faceless corporation.
I don't see how can you be more serious when you pay.. recently, in the helpx group in fb someone asked hosts how often volunteers don't show up/cancel and
the answer was 50/50..
I have met people (including some of my friends) buying 3-4 wwoofing list for one trip (1 per country) just to find out they weren't accepted by any host for different reasons (skills, availability, etc).
All this from my personal experiences, you had yours and it was probably different
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