It’s been a busy year for us at HomeSwapper and as 2019 comes to a close, we’re looking back at all the great things that have happened. We wanted to share with you all some of the best bits from the past year…
The Prize Draw
First up, we’re celebrating all of our winners from the year! Congratulations once again to:
January’s winner: Carys, tenant of Guinness Partnership
February’s winner: Evelyn, tenant of Notting Hill Genesis
March’s winner: Jayne, tenant of Fortis Living
April’s winner: Francesca, tenant of London & Quadrant H.T.
May’s winner: Natasha, tenant of L&Q
June’s winner: Nadia, tenant of Westminster City Council
July’s winner: Angela, tenant of Havering Council
August’s winner: Rika, tenant of Birmingham C.C.
September’s winner: Joanna, tenant of Swindon Borough Council
October’s winner: Shannon, tenant of Sovereign Housing
November’s winner: Linzi, tenant of London & Quadrant H.T.
That means that we’ve given away over £1,000 of Love2Shop vouchers so far this year! We’ll be announcing December’s winner once January comes…
Updates
Following the success of our update to the HomeSwapper messaging function, we continued with more of our ‘timewaster’ updates based on your feedback throughout 2018 and 2019.
In January we updated our badges to offer only the ones that really matter – those that are useful to other swappers and maximise the chances of you finding a swap. To read more on how we updated your badges, just click here.
Then in May we did another update, this time for your matches and search listings. We greyed out the adverts of swappers who hadn’t logged in for over 10 weeks so that you could see at-a-glance that these swappers were not active users and move past them when searching. We had some great feedback from you all on this one!
“I’ve found it extremely useful after I realised why they were greyed out.”
“It’s brilliant! Makes it so much easier!”
“Great idea!”
“Thanks for the update. I’m sure it will save myself and thousands of others from wasting time contacting swappers that are most probably window shopping or already moved.”
Help Centre
In March this year, we launched a new website, packed full of useful tips and advice for using HomeSwapper to make sure you’re getting the most out of the service. As well as all the helpful articles from the Swapper Blog, the site contains our series of ‘How to’ articles that take you step-by-step through some of the main processes on HomeSwapper. We also have our ‘how to’ video guides for those of you who prefer to see how something is done, that show some of the key functions of the site and how to use them.
This new Help Centre was designed to take you all the way through from the moment you sign up and create your advert, to when you’re finding matches and going through the swapping process. It’s all available at www.homeswapper.me
SwapTracker
Earlier this year we also launched SwapTracker, our add-on service for landlords, that manages the mutual exchange process once you’ve found your swap on HomeSwapper. It’s designed to keep everyone involved in the swap automatically updated on the progress of a swap, so you know exactly where you are in the process.
Real swapper stories
We also chatted to some swappers this year, who were kind enough to share their experiences of swapping with us!
At the start of the year we spoke with Melanie, who had completed a 4-way MultiSwap. She gave us some great practical tips, which you can take a look at here.
We then spoke with Angela, who gave us some useful tips on looking for a swap and going through the swapping process if you’re a serious swapper. You can take a look at some of these here.
Carl was the latest swapper to chat with us about his slightly unusual approach to swapping. He and his family swapped a couple of times in order to get to where they really wanted to be. You can read about his interesting experience here and also about some of the things he found were necessary to consider when swapping with someone with accessibility needs here.
What you’ve said
We’re ending with some of your own words on how you’ve found the HomeSwapper experience…
“Absolutely brilliant team, first class service both friendly, professional and very efficient. Very, very good website, easy to use and all the necessary information available. Unlike other websites where you have to hunt around for information. A great staff team, a brilliant website a FANTASTIC service IT WORKS!”
“Thanks to HomeSwapper page I have found my dream place, it was a 3-way swap and very easy to swap, very pleased with everything.”
“Amazing – moving to forever dream home – and made new friends along the way. HomeSwapper made it possible for this 4-way MultiSwap that is benefitting everyone in the chain enormously. Thank you.”
From all of us at HomeSwapper, we wish you a very Happy New Year… see you in 2020!
The HomeSwapper Customer Support team are always on hand to give advice and tips on how to get the most from HomeSwapper. They deal with Swappers every day and have a unique insight and view on the thousands of successful swaps that take place on HomeSwapper.
