That's the Life

Have you got your head around the idea of Home Swapping yet? It has a lot of advantages once you jump the mental hurdle of having strangers in your house. Don't forget they will want to have their house treated in an equally respectful fashion: a variation on the Golden Rule.You're trading house of similar standards, not with low lives who want the chance of a lifetime to holiday in a nice villa and trash it while at it....:)
We spent the last 2-3 weeks on finding an extra spot that we could add on or visit before our stint in Meck-Pomm..This spa resort is one of the most prestigious At long last, we found it! A beautiful second home of a family in Baden-Baden.Lovely scenery, a Casino to satisfy all our gambling needs, shopping!!!All of this in walking distance. Pretty cafes  to watch the world go by ( and it will be a nice world in that town...),
great restaurants and food ( and it will be an expensive one at that). Oh I know why I miss my home country!

Agreement

So we've signed the contract for our next exchange in July. The company we're using and where we are members calls it "exchange agreement". There are two sides to the agreement, ie. each exchange partner lists the names of the visitors and contact details. This is also the place where relevant insurance details are listed about the cars that are going to be swapped-- if you want that part of the deal.   
Only these people are allowed to stay--unless otherwise stated. E.g. I always mention that I may have my children stay the odd day while we are there. Otherwise people could be inclined to run a B&B, have wild parties, or come with a gang of 8 family member, I suppose.
Under special arrangements we list that the other party will be responsible for using our Pay TV option. After last year's experience where the French had run up a bill of almost $80 I can only advise you to include that in your agreement. In all fairness, this bill was paid without any quibble. Well, after all they had agreed to it in advance. How feasible it is to enforce any financial arrangement between two countries that are so far away and have different jurisdictions I can't even start to imagine.
The only recourse I can see is to complain to the organizing website and approach them as a mediator. The is a special process that can be invoked...if it comes to that, an official complaint.
This agreement is also made online. Each partner has the chance of making changes and then the agreement is signed electronically.
"By signing this agreement you are acknowledging that you accept the conditions and understand that the cancellation of an exchange, once an agreement has been signed, is a serious matter and may lead to exclusion from further participation in a ...exchange."
Sounds reasonable? I left out the name of the company on purpose. It is available upon request.

Pay TV mystery solved

A big sigh of relief this morning. After yesterday's shock about our Comcast bill where we found out that the French family had rented 20 videos at our expense.We were mostly troubled by the question how this could have happened since we put a 4 -digit Lock Pin on our View on Demand feature. Even a very math/ PC savvy person would be hard pressed to go thru the 10,000 possibilities. We could barely remember that pass-code ourselves.Comcast was equally puzzled. Of course they thought we'd left the code floating about.Yeah, right; or that it was the same as the house alarm. Anyway, last thoughts at night, drifting off into a half-awake state sometimes give answers.We have numerous TVs in the house and with the new digital decoders that Comcast introduced last year, we were carried away and got a second for the bedroom, in case we ever want to buy a film there. In fact, we have never used it. And lo and behold, we had only protected the family room TV with a pass code. You would think that your whole system, every TV in the house, then would be protected. Only makes sense. But  not so. So that mystery was solved. And even better news this morning.
On perusing our exchange agreement, we found a clause we had put in  "You agree to pay for any use of our pay-per-view television service that you do during your stay, if you want it, otherwise we'll deactivate it".
They signed it. That's how we can get our money back, theoretically anyway. Of course they also signed the following, "We will leave the home clean. We will ensure a high standard of cleanliness, and make sure that the floors are vacuumed and mopped, refrigerator emptied of outdated food, stove and oven are grease free, bath and shower are free of mold and grime. You agree to maintain and leave our home in the same state."
What became of that I started to describe.
In not heeding this clause, they actually violated several principles of home exchanges that that website lists at the top. More about that....
Advice #3: make sure your ON DEMAND/ Pay TV function is disabled.Password protect it to avoid quibbles over money.