What were your most common problems while hosting/staying?

I do believe we already have such a feedback. I recently hosted on Couchers. Before I was able to write my reference I was asked whether I felt safe/unsafe with that person and then I rated my overall experience (ranging from negative to excellent). This feedback, just like the safety question, was private.

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I wanted to point out for those that are not aware: When you are leaving a reference for someone, if you indicate that the person’s behavior made you feel unsafe or uncomfortable, then we give you the opportunity to provide additional information (if you want) and the Safety & Trust team reviews the situation based upon the information provided.

You can also report users at any time by viewing their profile and clicking the menu button in the sidebar:

If you encounter something you want to report that is not on a profile, you can click the red button in the upper-right corner of the website:

In addition to these features, the Safety & Trust Team is available via e-mail at: safety@couchers.org
The Support Team is available to assist with any general support questions at: support@couchers.org

PS: I’m so glad to hear other people are already hosting and surfing! I just hosted my first person last week and this week I hosted 2 more! The community is really growing fast. It’s great to see!

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Why “were”? Surely we’re all active members here?

This topic was started in October last year in reference to experience on CS, I don’t think many people were travelling at that time :sweat_smile:

About saying if one felt safe: feeling safe has a lot of different aspects. I had a couple as guests some weeks ago. I felt absolutely safe with him, not so much with her.
It was for certain behaviour they had when at home (that is not bad by itself, but do not let you feel “safe” on a particular aspect).
I guess that maybe 55% of people (and maybe 90% among women over 60, while less than 10% on males under 30) would have had the opposite attitude.

Was this hosting experience on Couchers.org? If yes, just out of curiousity, when you left a reference, did you use check the box that said “At any time during their visit, did the behavior of this person make you feel uncomfortable?” or the checkbox that said “At any time during their visit, did the behavior of this person make you feel unsafe?”

the experience was not in couchers, where I have received so far only two request, that I had to refuse both because were from people that did not even care to read the profile, and couchers messaging is all but friendly, so I had no option. Say that “safe” has a lot of nuances for different people, so I would say that her behaviour is in general considered safe and desirable, but not when taken to a level that looks as he would show to other people “I am better than you” (and had the same attitude also with her boyfriend!). so if she did less than 20% of what she did I would have said that was not a desirable guest, if she did 80% of what she did I would have said that she was a really desirable host, but she did 100 and in a certain way “busted” and made me (but also her bf) unconfortable, maybe because doing 100 did not let the other people do their minimal 20, so making me and the other two guests with the dpobt on “did we did enough ?”

I quote because I agree totally, not to answer.

My main issue with hosting is that after accepting the guest’s request I didn’t get any news from them for days or weeks (20-25% of the time). On CS the guest has to confirm their stay, which I find extremely important. Couchers is not Booking.com, the host deserves to know! Do you plan a feature like that on Couchers?

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Almost two years ago I wrote that cs messging system is all but friendly.
Now I specify more on detail: it makes requests unfriendly, when send a notification, you are quick to answer, and while you are writing a reply send the second message telling that you have missed a notification.
I canceled the (tendentially favorable) reply I had written, and replaced with a tendentially unfavorable,due to the bad and unrespectful behaviour (not to say lieing, since if I was already answering should have known that i had not missed it!) of system.

I know what you are talking about, the system always sends two notifications. First one “You have received a host request from XY”. And within ten minutes another one “XY wrote a message in their hosting request” telling you, that you have an unseen message from them, even though you might have already seen or replied to them.

I agree that there is no reason for two notifications. Logically, if you get the request, it is not an empty one, there is always something written in it, so it is pointless to send the second notification, that in some cases can become obsolete by the time you get it…

Maybe I misunderstood, but did you turned down the surfer you were about to accept, only because you got the second notification that was not accurate anymore? I understand your frustration behind it, but as you said yourself, it is the system, not the surfer. The person sending you the request might not even know, that you receive two notifications that might bother or upset you, and even if they knew, they can’t prevent the second notification coming.

I am sure this might get fixed one day, but I don’t think there is any other solution for you right now, other that WAIT 6-10 MINUTES to receive the second notification, so when you finally open the email and see “you have an unseen message from XY”, you won’t have the feeling that the system is lying to you.

The problem actually is not sending a second notification, but that notification telling “You missed a notification”, giving me the culprit for not having read it.
Incidentally: the answer I was writing was “I cannot accept your request because you did not wrote anything about your travelmate, please ask it to contact me directly” . after the scolding by the system I removed the part between «please» and «directly», included.
It was one of the requests extremely borderline for acceptance where my decision is based on mostly my mood (or even trhowing a dice if mood is not enough).
I had then a neutral mood, the second notification made it sligthly bad so the decision slipped down on that side.
About The person sending you the request might not even know, that you receive two notifications that might bother or upset you, and even if they knew, they can’t prevent the second notification coming. :
In my profile is clearly written that I prefer direct email messages, and not through the platform. so who wrote that requesd did not even read the profile.

and today the bottom: I got the message “you missed a notification” not just a few seconds after the notification was sent, but 7 minutes BEFORE the actual notification had been sent. (I say sent, not delivered, so it is a couchers fault)

Ok, the second notification itself isn’t the problem. The issue is what it says.
You want to change its text to fit your “truth”, right?

Not many people are as quick to answer as you are. Usually it takes people anything between 10+minutes/several hours/days or never :slight_smile: to acknowledge the request. Only a handful of individuals like you reply in or under 5 minutes. The selected text “you have an unseen message in your hosting request” is usually true for the largest part of the community. Any idea what would you want to see written in the second notification, so (as the representation of individuals with extremely speedy response) you can feel included instead of being reprimanded?

Since this has been an ongoing issue fo you, you can keep bringing this up every now and then and maybe one day someone will fix this for you OR as I wrote in my previous comment- realizes that sending that second notification few minutes after the first one is completely unnecessary.

Meanwhile, maybe try giving those second notifications less attention? They are not important, they are not useful, they deserve less energy than you think they do. I select and trash them without actually thinking about them.

Also, I would like to address the very specific words you keep mentioning “YOU MISSED THE NOTIFICATION”

Please, see how my notification #1 and #2 look like. They don’t ever say such thing and maybe that is why I have troubles to understand what your problem actually is.


maybe you have a different treatment because i still receive messages saying “you missed a notification on Couchers.org” and not “you have an unseen message from *”.
Better to avoid misunderstanding us “you have a message that could need an answer”.
This would also put a small push toward answering, while the “you missed a notification” could mean “shit, I missed an oppurtunity”, and some people consider it as expired and do not care even to read carefully.

Hey’
glad to hear ^^
AS long as the host explained clearly , beforehand, what are the conditions at his place
it is surprising that people could expect host to change that…
If someone tells me he is vegan and dont want any animal food in his home…
whether I like i t or not, I’m not going to explain him, that to be a good host , he has to accept that I 'm eating beef and that I 'll put ham in his fridge…
If i’m not comfortable with that, I will say ,thank you , this place is not for me, I won’t be comfortable, and I will search for an host whith who I have more in common !
that 's probably what profile are mode for…finding a good match and know what to expect…

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resurface:

Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2023 22:19:59 +0000
You’ve received a host request!

and it does not say anything about it.
Then:

Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2023 22:20:42 +0000
You missed a notification on Couchers.org

and this contains the text of the request.
The text should be in the first message, and the second should be sent if no activity is recognized for at least 6 hours.

so this really annoying behaviour is still active (at least they were good guests, but arrangement was all outside couchers)

Discalimer: i did not put the bold and the text has been changed (removing some parts) by your shitty platform. send me your email address and will send the original text !