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I want to share my experience and open…
I want to share my experience and open eyes to what is couchsurfing: started as member in 2010, hosted around 25 people in 9 years and used as point of concact while traveling. Never been hosted because I have a fix holiday schedule and it's not easy to find accomodation in this way. At beginning I had very nice experiences with people from all over the world ( Australia, Canada, USA, Poland, Argentina, France, China, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Mexico ) and with some of them we are still friends. I had a couple of so and so experiences with people who were not ready for such cultural exchange and on some topics were a bit controntational, but nothing was really bad and it's part of the game and the risk of meeting people of different background. In 2019 I hosted a woman, 36 years old, a russian but living in USA, a PhD student at UCLA, with several positive references. I always ask a working phone with whatsup to arrange and keep contacts. The nightmare began: after very nice messages ( including whatsup ) she said she arrived around 10,30 PM from airport. I've waited for 3 hours, calling her without reply. I made the huge mistake of not forgetting her and go to sleep. She arrived at 1,30 AM in the night saying she gave me the wrong flight number, and she had a fight with cab driver from airport to my house for price ( she wanted to pay 10 USD maximum ). First surprise, 6 months pregnant, a condition I would not have accepted. But, I had a low defensive mechanism in my mind, because our previous chats and good past experiences with CS. I gave her food and a private room with a double bed. The next morning she went for a full day tour, I gave some tips and asked at what time she would come back, because I like to organize my life. She said arond 10 Pm. During the day I sent a couple of whatsup messages, without replies and on one phone answer she said she did not know the arrival time. She arrived, without any communication, at 12,30 AM, without apologizing. She went again to sleep and she left my house, with lots of smiles and thanks the next morning, and having a free breakfast at my house. It was a bad experience but I tried to forgive. After 2 days I received a notification of reviews. Now recently CS changed the system, so you can not read the review of the other one. I gave a dry but positive review and surprise, for the first time in 10 years, I receive a horrible negative review, full of lies, violating at least 3 of the couchsurfing rules: describing a medical condition, false statement and defamation. I immediately wrote to CS, describing the whole facts and give them proofs ( with whatsup messages ). They repeately refuse to delete this review, even if it violates clearly 3 rules. They want to decide if the rules are violated. After I wrote to the hosting site ( amazon ) and to the venture capitals who are financing them, nothing changed. I read on glassdoor website, many horror stories of people employed there, greed and so on. CS is now a for profit company, who only has a database of community of peole who are willing to put their private property at risk for FREE, only to let them profit with advertisement, data profiling and some fees paid by verified members. CS does not care at all to the safety of all this ( like AirBnB is doing actively and it's a business ). They exhibit a terrible arrogance and ingratitude, like the worst for profit company you can imagine. This is sadly the real face of CS. In my case they do not accept the fact that a long time member is getting defamated and is warning them about a dangerous experience with a person with potential psychosis. CS must disappear.