CouchsurfingReviews of couchsurfing.com

Couchsurfing made the worst choice to lock out it's users. I am quitting this site not because I can't pay but on principle. In today's age and time when users are your backbone, you can't force them to pay to access your own page. This is the crappiest move they have made. Sorry, I will move on to other platform. To the leadership team in couchsurfing - you have killed this couchsurfing community and you will be replaced. It is just a matter of time. That I am sure.

They want me to subscrube to unsuscribe from their spam mail. What a joke. I will just use Gmails inbuilt spam filter to block you out. Also, since when do you force people to pay to use couchsurfing? What a scam.

I initially thought I am the only to low rate Couchsurfing but I am not. I write this feedback because of its policy changes so far about charging "verified" account. During that process, I tried best but failed to get any note of how much it could charge me. They didnt mention any word, number. However, once you are curious to click, you are charged immdly and no refund from 2021 which is really disgusting. It makes me shocked as the way they charged me without any notice. I believe that if this company works in UK, the way they charge us is illegal, unfair for customer. Via Stripe, I was charged somehow £2-3 more. It costs £42-43 something. What I did right afterthat was to permanantly lock my account because I dont have any trust with this platform anymore :D . Sadly Goodbye.

Capitalism is taking over yet again...

Similar to what everyone else is saying below. The verification charge is not made clear. This is what is considered a dark UX practice - "When the users get to the last step of the checkout process, only to discover some unexpected charges have appeared" Google it, these practices benefit the company rather than the user. It is not made clear at all that this charge is being made, the verification process is made to look like it's using your card to verify your identity rather than charging you something, like many other sites do. The payment gateway is incomplete in the fact that it takes you straight to payment without asking if the charge is ok. The actual cost is in very small greyed-out text that you would barely notice. It's also displayed as if this is an optional donation you can make after you've been verified. The verification process has been made like this either to trick people into paying or the web/UX designers/engineers have completely overlooked this and not tested the system before release. I've pressed the support team but they say that they don't offer out any refunds as of the 14th of May 2020 with no context given as to why. Currently, I'm disputing this with my credit card provider to get the money back but I'm also going to pursue other means of exposing this issue. These dark UX practices are something I can't stand for, I work in the industry myself, and these patterns are unethical. It should be made much more clear what you are being charged.

Sucks that couchsurfing was taken over by a company that decided to destroy such a great community, just so the directors can take home a big pay package. Now I am required to pay, even to let a traveller stay in my house. I refuse to give into their greed and will look for alternative websites to host travellers who want to explore my city. It's a sad day when even couchsurfing has been rinsed by the suits.

This platform is nothing without it´s users. So the decision to kick everyone out who doesn´t want to pay, ended couchsurfing. You can´t even access your profile anymore, so couchsurfing pretends to have thousands of potential hosts that are not even able to answer a hosting request. I reveived a couple requests recently and I´m not able to answer these or change my profile to show I´m not hosting. If couchsurfing restricts someone´s profile, the least they can do is not show you as a potential host anymore and make people think they actually get anything in return for paying the membership fee.

Même expérience que les précédents messages : prélèvement de 58,80€ (à croire que ça a augmenté) sans avoir été prévenue. Soit disant il faut "valider notre profil" ... Mais à aucun moment la somme n'apparaît, aucune demande de validation sur l'application de la banque, rien ! Ils auraient pu me prélever 10000€ de la même manière ! Bien entendu la demande de remboursement n'a pas abouti ! Quel scandale de tels agissements ! Sans compter qu'il a fallut verser déjà une petite somme (2€ par mois je crois) pour accéder aux offres ! Et bien entendu, suite aux dizaines de demandes d'hébergement envoyées, aucune ne m'a permis de trouver un logement. Donc merci couchsurfing pour votre vol et votre inefficacité ! Vous aviez une bien belle image, mais c'est à croire que tout à une fin.