Kindred Home Swapping 4+

Great way to travel

I’ve traveled with Kindred twice now and hosted 6 times. Both staying and hosting a Kindred are very smooth experiences. When hosting, the guests have always been respectful and the cleaners are great - my place is always even cleaner than when I left. When traveling, Kindred is definitely the most affordable solution for long (or short) stays. Availability at the right place at the right time can be challenging but it has gotten much easier to find a place as the user base grows

Could be better

This service is great in theory but the app really needs to work on functionality and they could learn from other home exchange sites. You can’t find the messages you have sent to people unless a booking is confirmed, making it hard to track. Once you list dates your place is available you can no longer accept inquiries outside of those dates - I am open to inquiries AND I want to list specific dates - not either or. You can’t see the who is looking for trades to your city or who has marked you as a favorite which would make it way easier and more likely to find matches. I live in a city that is dense with members on this app - someones in this company have links to Berlin and SF. So it seems like it’s just hard to get traction if you live there because folks looking have so much to choose from. All that said a few of the pluses are the points for the referrals, the photography of your home and the cleaning service to name a few. The app also vets homes for quality which is nice - the places are a notch above other home trading sites. The points for referrals also does fill the app with folks who aren’t as serious about swapping but then those folks also don’t tend to put photos up. I like this service but it needs to improve from a UX perspective. I’m on another site where I get about four inquiries a week. On this site I get none.

개발자 답변 ,

This is really great feedback, thank you for sharing! I’ve passed your message to our product team, who is focused on optimizing our messaging experience and search functions to help members find better matches. We’d love to have our concierge team take a closer look into this for you & see how we can personally help you find more matches. If you’re open to it, please reach out to our team in - app or via email to hello@livekindred. We’ll keep an eye out!

So exited, but ultimately so let down

I was genuinely SO EXCITED when I got accepted for this app - I thought the idea was amazing and that it’d make traveling so much easier for a single person in their late 20’s like myself. Unfortunately - while the concept is great - the app just doesn’t work. I have now requested 4 separate stays for a trip to NYC in January, and not a single has accepted me. I’ve created their intro videos and everything. To me it seems like a lot of people are signing up for this app with the goal of using the intro credits, but aren’t actually willing to hold up their end of the bargain and let people stay in theirs. I also have a bunch of dates listed available that no one’s requested - so it’s hard imagining that I’ll even be able to earn my points back once/ or if - I ever am actually able to get someone to accept me for a stay. I really home they figure this out - because the concept is amazing.

개발자 답변 ,

Thank you for sharing your feedback, Jasmine. We truly appreciate your excitement for what we’re building. I’m sorry to hear about your experience with your trip requests. I’ve passed along your feedback to the team, as this is not the experience we’re aiming for. We are continuing to add new features to help with match rates in the app and hope that you can find a stay soon!