I wrote to a host last night, not to stay with him, but to offer that he comes over here, or we meet up somehow, as we live so close to each other. I couldn’t figure out if there was a way to speak to him without sending a surfing request or specifying dates, as we’re not “friends” so I couldn’t set up a chat.
Received a reply this morning: "Sorry I can’t help you tonight. I hope everything works out and you find a place to stay."
This means he probably didn’t read my message because he just saw the request dates (I’m not sure what these kinds of messages look like to hosts)
Perhaps there could be a feature called “reach out”, which allows me to contact hosts without them getting confused that I want to stay with them?
There is a simple message mode in the making. Sending messages was restricted to just friends (I guess to prevent for dating approaches) but it just lead to people spamming friend requests instead of writing “Hi”, which is not much better. Until there is a definite system the direct message would be the way to go.
I see. Personally I don’t feel comfortable sending friend requests to strangers, or receiving them. I never liked that aspect of CS. So I’ll just have to hope he reads my request message!