Use Pedal Power when in Portland on Home Exchange

New member Michael and his wife Wendy (HE20927) moved to Portland for its quality of life, and it seems that one reason why life might be more pleasurable in Portland is because there is less reliance on the car. Michael says: "Portland, also known as 'The City of Roses', has it all, a great downtown full of museums, galleries, a concert hall, world class restaurants, a stunning riverfront, more coffee shops than you can count and over thirty micro breweries and all this easily connected by bus, streetcar & light rail".

"Portland is also the perfect size for pedalling and is widely considered the premier cycling city of North America. Portland offers everything we need in a city but in a compact size so we don't have to own a car. We have two cats and lot's of bicycles (even a cargo bike for hauling our son Nathan & the groceries)and we enjoy camping and hiking. Dedicated bike paths and bike boulevards guide you safely through Portland's charming, leafy neighborhoods and into the country side".

"Out of town you are spoiled for choice as well. Within two hours of Portland (but by car this time) you can reach some of Oregon's most outstanding natural scenery, waterfalls, deserted beaches, outdoor activity areas and picturesque towns".

How refreshing to hear about people enjoying the location in which they live, but doing so in such an environmentally considerate way. So if you want to try out living by pedal power, why not consider a home exchange in Portland?

Home Exchange Activity Holidays

Although Home Exchange has perhaps not yet entered the arena for extreme sports such as skydiving or base jumping, a recent GTI Home Exchange member listing highlighted the fact that it is perhaps time to extend the list of leisure activities that can be pursued on a home exchange holiday. The particular listing that I am referring to is HE20672 at Dahab on the Red Sea in Egypt.

Lynne says: “Our house is less than one minute from the beach in Dahab which is a very beautiful area with lots to do including; snorkelling, diving, camel riding. It also has local restaurants and shops nearby. The house has 2 large bedrooms, bathroom, lounge (with Satelite TV), kitchen (with washing machine and microwave) and a cool outside tiled area with trees all around. Dahab is well known for diving and you would be able to use the facilites of Dive Urge, our dive club. We have a private beach for you to enjoy. Dahab suits all types of people looking for a great holiday. We can also easily organise a transfer from Sharm Airport.”

She continues: “We are a family of 5 including 3 kids: 2 girls 10 and 4 and a boy who is 18 months. We own and run Dive Urge in Dahab and have lived here for more than 11 years now too so we have lots of helpful information on getting the best out of your time here. We like to enjoy our annual holiday in England for 6 weeks over July-September time but, as we do not live in our exchange house, we are able to offer it year round and are flexible. We do a fair bit of exploring here and are active in trying to preserve this amazing place. Myself and my hubby are both scuba divers and I also ride horses locally too with my daughter.” Lynne is interested in visiting England, preference being for the counties of Berkshire, Somerset or Dorset.

Another gentle activity like diving is hot air ballooning, mentioned by new Green Theme International Home Exchange members Barbara and Brian, HE20831 who live in Canterbury near Christchurch, New Zealand. They describe their area as follows: “10 mins from city centre, we are also close to the port hills and surrounding bays and beaches, and yet only an hour and a half drive to the closest ski field. There are many outdoor activities locally situated including hot air ballooning, fishing, jet boating, swimming and many more.”

“We are Barbara and Brian a family of 5 with 3 children aged 9, 12, and 14. My husband Brian was born in England and hasn't returned since he immigrated here over 15 years ago, so we are very excited to have the opportunity to go back. We have never done an exchange before but have heard it is a great way to travel to other countries without accommodation costs and a great way to meet new people.” Barbara and Brian obviously can’t wait to fix up their first home exchange, so anyone interested in a home swap to New Zealand, please contact them as soon as possible.

Travel the Home Exchange Way can include Riding your Bike

Congratulations, Paris, for the introduction of the 'velib' service. Vélib’ is a Self Service “bike hire” system available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Multi pick up and drop off location points allow you to pick up your bike from one service point and drop off to another.

The Vélib’ Service Points are available 24 hours a day 7 days a week. They are located 300 meters apart, consisting of terminals and stands for fastening the bikes.

At the Vélib terminal you can:

- Hire a bike
- Take a short term subscription using your bank card (1-day or 7-day Vélib’ Ticket)
or take out an annual Vélib subscription.
- Find out information on how to use Vélib’ and access information regarding our services
- Consult a map for a nearby Vélib’ Service Points
- Top up your annual Vélib’ card using a bank card

Every Vélib’ station is equipped with roughly twenty bike stands (the exact number has been determined depending on the location of the Service Point and the estimated level of use).

The Bike Stands consist of :

Bike locking mechanism
Pilot light (the color of the pilot lights lets you know whether the bike is available or not)
Card Reader

Even better, if you subscribe for a Vélib’ Account they give you the first 30 minutes of each journey free of charge. The Vélib’ Bike Card allows you to make an unlimited number of journeys for one year. Cost of journeys longer than 30 minutes will be debited from your Vélib’ account. Top up your card anytime at Vélib’ terminals near you or on the web using a bank card.

Of course it takes a little nerve to ride a bike through a big city, but think how much more easily you can stop at will and take a closer look at the sights, whilst doing your bit for the environment!

Dream Home Exchange Holidays for all the Family

Exchange on Island of Arabella, south of Venice, Italy


Dear Kath,

This year I'm trying to arrange a double linked swap in Ireland in summer or, second option, in Denmark. Due to the fact that this year I can't ask my father, as last year, to supervise the cleaning and the checking that all is OK at the end of the stay of the first family and before the arrival of the second, I need that one of the two swaps be non simultaneous, that means, that one family must come in my second home in Albarella - stay and live, before my departure or after my return. Looking at Ireland in our GTI I found listed only 37 homes and if I remember well, no second homes. Anyhow for the first swap I’m in contact with a GTI home/family in Dublin.

Only due to this fact - linked to a my particular situation and requirement - I feel me forced to move to another home exchange web site, maybe Home For Exchange. On the contrary last year Green Theme International did me the opportunity to do a double linked swap in London (more that 157 entries) - the first swap of my life and dream holidays for all my family.

I'm really grateful to GTI and I cherish it. I think also that Green Theme is a really beautiful Home Exchange web site, fine, welcoming and with a very nice design. GTI is also easy for all, well functioning and not expensive (thanks for the discount offered).

If of interest, GTI can feel free of keeping listed my home listing HE19622 and give to interested members my e-mail. Anyway consider me please at complete disposal for the present and future.

Very kind regards and thanks for the important work done since 1989.

Alessandro

P.S.: apologize me for my bad English

Dear Alessandro

Thank you for your email and for the very kind comments that you have made about GTI and our web-site. Of course, I am disappointed that we are not able to offer you a great selection of homes in Denmark to facilitate the double linked exchange in Ireland and Denmark that you are seeking this summer.

Naturally I am also disappointed that you feel it necessary to join a competitor agency, Home for Exchange. As this agency is based in The Netherlands, it may well be able to provide more opportunities for you in nearby Denmark. It certainly has a very attractive and innovative web-site regularly introducing some very nice features. However, it has not been operating for many years (only since 2005) and in order to achieve the number of listings it now claims, the owner did indulge in some dubious practices at the outset, such as pirating other agencies listings, or offering free listings. (See earlier blog item The Home Exchange Poacher posted on the GTI Home Exchange Travel blog on 16 December 2005.)

We have always found that the agencies which offer free listings are never as effective as those clubs which require people to have paid a small sum to participate, because they encourage many people who are not so committed to home exchange to list their homes with many free sites just to see what offers turn up without they themselves having to put in any effort. Many people who join free sites even seem to forget which ones they have in fact joined, as we have found on a number of occasions when people have mistakingly contacted us with their queries, or to say that they are not receiving replies from a particular listing which turns out not to be one of ours anyway. Now that Home for Exchange has become more established, it no longer offers free listings, but nevertheless unless I am mistaken, I don't think the listings on the site display when their members joined and when their listings are due to expire as do those on GTI. In contrast on GTI Home Exchange we prefer to be totally transparent about when a member joined and therefore how old the listing is, and consequently how active the members are likely to be in genuinely seeking exchanges.

Anyone reading my comments may feel that it all sounds a little like 'sour grapes' (I don't know whether you know that expression in Italy?) because you are finding it necessary to register with another club this year in order to find an exchange in Denmark. But in order that you may be able to make a true comparison between our two agencies, I would like to offer you an extension of six months to your membership in the hope that at a later date you wish to renew your membership and can continue to benefit from our discount for renewing members.

Once again, thank you so much for your very encouraging comments about us.

With very best regards
Kath

IMPORTANT REMINDER about GTI Home Exchange Site Based Messaging System

Whilst full details of the changes have been posted within the Site Administrator's Message in the Members' Area on the web-site: it appears that some members may have have missed the details about these changes, as some messages remain recorded as UNREAD in Members' personal Admin Areas.

Site based messages between members

For your security, and to protect your privacy, all contact with other members is now done from your member area. Your sent and received messages are stored there in folders (Inbox and Sent messages). Your on-going correspondence with each member is stored separately for easy reference. Please note: as all contact information you entered on your form (email, phone, fax, mailing address) is hidden, you choose when you are ready to provide contact details to another member.

New message alerts by email

Whenever there is a new message for you (a reply to a message you sent or a message from another member), you will receive a brief email, with the subject line, New Home Exchange message for you from HExxxxx, to alert you to log on to your member area to read and reply to the message.

A few new message alerts may end up in junk folders by mistake and so it is important to skim through all mail in your junk folder before deleting it if possible. It's tedious but, until there are better filters that can sort all legitimate messages from the masses of unsolicited mail, there may be a few 'good' messages that need to be rescued from your junk folder and moved to your in-box. If you can't check through your junk folder, be sure to log on to your member area regularly to check and read any recent messages you may have overlooked.

Home exchange offer messages

When first contacting a member with your exchange offer, use the form at the bottom of the member's listing. If you have compiled a standard exchange offer message and saved it on your computer, you can copy and paste it into the form and then personalise the message before sending. The subject line is already completed and includes your User ID so the member can easily find your listing. When you have finished your message, click Submit. As soon as your message has been sent, you will see the member's User ID under the Recently contacted list in your member area. You can save a record of up to 20 messages sent at a time and delete any you don't want to keep by clicking the 'x' beside it.

The Magic of Home Exchange

Dear Kath,

Hi, I'm Julia Recasens, HE 19610 and I wish to thank you for your nice website and for the fantastic work you do. I really appreciate it as a means to discover new worlds and cultures by an alternative and real way of travelling. I have some friends who have joined GTI and I keep on recommending it because I truly like it. We have had five nice exchanges and have meet friendly people everywhere. I call it the magic of the home exchange.

Today my husband received a phonecall from Chile asking for information and afterwards I found this e-mail. He answered the girl and did what he could to help. We just wanted to let you know that we are very glad to be useful in any kind of matter which involves cooperate with nice projects like this and we wondered if there is any other way in which we could help. I speak several languages and I would be very pleased to help you from here. I work as a teacher in a secondary school but I think I can offer my collaboration since it is a matter which I really trust.

All the best,
Julia

Julia, Thank you so much for your message: we do so love to receive these accolades from time to time which makes our hard work all seem worthwhile.

Rogue Home Exchange agencies don't deserve your trust!

Dear Green Theme International,

What is your policy regarding data protection?
I'm asking as another home exchange company called "All Home Exchange", contacted me directly by email and I'm curious to know who passed on my details.

Also, on that company's website, there doesn't seem to be any contact details nor a company registration number.

Thanks.
Delphine

We have also been advised that another home exchange agency's member reported: "I just wanted to let you know that the information on this site is stolen from other home exchange sites. My name and email address are used on this site (without my prior knowledge or consent) along with a photo of a someone else's house. I am guessing but it seems like all the home profiles are bogus because the details are all sketchy and the locations people desire to go are quite random."

Dear Delphine

Thank you so much for bringing the unscrupulous activities of "All Home Exchange" to our attention.

Firstly let me say, if they have obtained your details from our site and contacted you directly by email, they are acting unethically and your details must have been obtained from our site by illicit means. Our Privacy Policy is very clearly stated on the site on the page:
http://www.gti-home-exchange.com/privatepolicy.html, where you will see that we are registered with the Data Protection Registrar. Please also refer to the final two paragraphs on our Company details page:
which explains our relationship with two other agencies forming the First Home Exchange Alliance group with which we have worked for more than 18 years and who share our database. Reference to our participation within this Alliance is also made on our home page, directing you to the above quoted page for full details of the agencies within it. These are the only two other agencies from whose members you should ever receive enquiries.

The only other means by which the disreputable home exchange company "All Home Exchange" could have obtained your details from our site is if they have themselves registered as a 'pseudo' member in order to have access to the contact details of our members. In order to avoid this type of fraudulent behaviour we have recently carried out a further very detailed upgrade on the site with the sole purpose of increasing member security. The details of this security upgrade are as follows:

"The following recent changes in the Member Admin area have been made to incorporate a site based messaging system for initial contact with other members so that member email addresses are no longer displayed on listings in order to provide members with added security. This allows you to decide when you wish to disclose your own direct email address to another member for further communications.

Site based messages between members

For your security, and to protect your privacy, all contact with other
members is now done from your member area. Your sent and received messages are stored there in folders (Inbox and Sent messages). Your on-going correspondence with each member is stored separately for easy reference. Please note: as all contact information you entered on your form (email, phone, fax, mailing address) is hidden, you choose when you are ready to provide contact details to another member.

New message alerts by email

Whenever there is a new message for you (a reply to a message you sent or a message from another member), you will receive a brief email in your own email box, with the subject line, New Home Exchange message for you from HEXXXXX, to alert you to log on to your member area to read and reply to the message.

A few new message alerts may end up in junk folders by mistake and so it is important to skim through all mail in your junk folder before deleting it if possible. It's tedious but, until there are better filters that can sort all legitimate messages from the masses of unsolicited mail, there may be a few 'good' messages that need to be rescued from your junk folder and moved to your in-box. If you can't check through your junk folder, be sure to log on to your member area regularly to check and read any recent messages you may have overlooked.

Please note: if you change your email address, remember to log on and change it in your listing (Edit personal details) so that you continue to receive alerts when you have new messages from other members.

Home exchange offer messages

When first contacting a member with your exchange offer, use the form at the bottom of the member's listing. If you have compiled a standard exchange offer message and saved it on your computer, you can copy and paste it into the form and then personalise the message before sending. The subject line is already completed and includes your User ID so the member can easily find your listing. When you have finished your message, click Submit. As soon as your message has been sent, you will see the member's User ID under the Recently contacted list in your member area. You can save a record of up to 20 messages sent at a time and delete any you don't want to keep by clicking the 'x' beside it."

As you will see from the above details, we take the matter of Member Privacy and Security extremely seriously, but at the end of the day if an unethical home exchange agency is prepared to go to such lengths to try to poach other
agencies' members, probably one of the most effective things which we can do to deter them is to Name and Shame Them, and this we do by
confidentially circulating information about such an agency's activities amongst a large group of long established and respected home exchange agencies who are voluntarily working together to eliminate and expose the activities of a small number of dubious agencies which could spoil the concept of home exchange and its reliance on mutual trust for all.

Unfortunately, you have not given me your own Membership User ID: HEXXXXX which would help me to follow up my investigation about All Home Exchange, and their ability to be able to contact you direct by email. It would also assist me with my enquiries if you could send details of the email address from which All Home Exchange sent their contact message to you.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask them, and please continue to be vigilant and report to us any other similar unsolicited suspicious contacts.

Kath Botterill

Dear Kath,

It actually dawned on me this morning that the rogue company All Home Exchange must have got hold of my details and this other lady's details through another website than your company or others within the FHEA. I re-read Home Base Holiday's reply to her that she forwarded me, and she's in fact not a member. As for me, although I'm a member of GTI, last July I registered with 2 other free home exchange programmes on Google France (/Le guide du routard/ and /Bienvenue à la maison/) that I've never used nor checked, and that I had completely forgotten about, and I'm now sure the leak comes from them.

The reason why I wrote to you first is that I use your website a lot, and I had just literally completed the first part of a non-simultaneous exchange through your website when All Home Exchange contacted me. So I thought that somehow, because I had actually exchanged, I qualified to be on some kind of bigger network. Also, the names being so similar, I sadly fell into the trap thinking it was all the same group.So, although this story could happen to other members of GTI also registered elsewhere, I
don't think you need to worry about the security of your system. As you said yourself, you've endeavoured to make it very secure.

I like your website a lot, for this very reason. Sorry to have caused undue alarm, I'll delete my details from these 2 websites I have mentioned.
Thanks,
Delphine

WARNING - Please be on the alert should you receive the All Home Exchange agency offer shown below:

Free membership is only offered to world experienced home exchangers.

How to get FREE trial membership?

● 1 year free membership if you would update your house information in 1 week since today;

● 1/2 years membership if you would update it in 2 weeks;

● 3 months trial membership if you would update it in 1 month.

Features of this site:

●Largest database in the world now, 21,000 + listings. which will highly increase the match rate and more unexpected exciting offers. (As a new agency it is highly unrealistic that All Home Exchange could have attracted so many members in such a short time by legitimate means.

Anyone who inadvertently registers with them is able to delete their details from their website, although they cannot delete the record of the membership which is part of their scam!)

As some Green Theme International Home Exchange members have been targetted, I have added a warning to the member area to not respond to an invitation to join this agency (or any other that sends unsolicited, i.e. spam, messages). Also, should you receive any exchange offers that seem to come from members of this site, don't respond but rather forward the offer message to us.

Once again, thanks to the vigilant GTI Home Exchange member and other individuals for reporting this. When a free offer looks too good to be true, it usually is!