Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Browse the questions we're most often asked in Support and in our Facebook group.


Member and listing setup

The first thing you'll want to do when you join People Like Us is set up your home listing. There are lots of excellent tips for doing so on our Tips page https://peoplelikeus.world/tips. Go to My listings https://peoplelikeus.world/properties and edit your existing listing or create a new one. All the details for your home can be edited here: title, address, descriptions, accommodation, photos and much more. Mandatory sections are indicated by a red cross or green tick. Once all the mandatory sections are filled in, you may activate your home and it will be available for searching on the website immediately.

When you're looking for an exchange, there are two main ways to go about it: 1. Search for places you want to go and send direct enquiries via the People Like Us site. This is very targeted and has a high likelihood of response. 2. Post your home to our Facebook group. When you do this and use the direct link to your home, it will present the cover photo and title with a link directly back to your listing. It's an excellent way to put your home in front of thousands and thousands of people. You never know what you might find! You can always do both. Facebook is particularly useful if you are flexible on dates and location as you'll likely attract offers from all over the world.

Absolutely! You can have as many as you want, and your community will thank you for offering more than one home. Click My Home on the menu. You'll find a button to create a new profile (New Home Profile) at the top of the page.

No! 😀 List with what you have ready and then improve them as you have time. It takes a little time to prepare your home for photography so it's very easy to put off, but as soon as you list you can start joining in to the community and start getting to know people. The more people know you, the easier it will be to find an exchange.

Refer to our Tips page: https://peoplelikeus.world/tips. You'll find loads of good information for things that should be in your listing.

Our Facebook page is only there to support the website and make communication easier. If you want to exchange, you must list your home on our website.

Desired destinations are used for reverse search. They let other members know where you want to go so they can find you in a search if that's where they live. To add desired destinations, go to the main navigation menu, click on Exchanging, and select Desired destinations. Then search for each destination, select it from the dropdown list and add it. You need to do one destination at a time.

LGBTQ+ is an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning plus other variants of gender/sexual diversity. While we would hope that everyone in the world would be friendly toward all people, it's not always the case and some people are less comfortable with people who are different from them. The flag was requested and is supported by our PLU LGBTQ+ community. In requesting the flag, we were told of an incident on another site, prior to PLU's formation, where a gay member and his husband were turned away from an exchange home upon arrival when the host learned they were gay. We have the flag and display it prominently on listings so that the LGBTQ+ community is supported and welcomed. We strongly encourage all PLU members to tick the box, and we look forward to a world one day where the flag isn't necessary.

- Go to PLU's website and then click My listings. Then, click on your own property. - Once the property shows up, you highlight the url address on the top (it should start with https://). With your curser on the highlighted address, right click on your mouse to bring up a menu. Now you can select Copy (alternatively, you can hit Ctrl+C on your keyboard). - Once you've done this, you can go to your post or comment on FB. Then, right click on your mouse to bring up a menu again. This time select Paste (alternatively, you can hit Ctrl+V on your keyboard). - Your link (which starts with https://) should show up on your post or comment. And you're good to go! There's also a Facebook Share button at the top of your listing which allows you to post directly to anywhere in Facebook.

We use a Google service for translation and, yes, it's odd that there's no option for your own language. Click on translate and choose any language. Then click translate again and English will be the first option. If you use Chrome, it will usually offer a page translation if it's not in your native language.

There are lots of excellent tips for doing so on our Tips page https://peoplelikeus.world/tips. The quality of your listing will make a huge difference to the number of enquiries that you receive so spend some time on your photos, descriptions and, particularly, things to do in your local area. Talk about it as if you had never visited the area before, as your guests most likely will be there for the first time!

Travel Styles are a part of your home listing and they're used to explain what your home is GREAT for. If you live near a ski field, tick the skiing box so that people who are looking for a home to stay at when they ski can find you. A common mistake is that people tick the box if they, themselves, enjoy skiing even if they live by the sea. This has the effect of cluttering the database such that when people are searching for skiing homes, they see a lot of people who happen to just enjoy skiing! 🙂

Photos and all other listing details can be changed by editing your listing details. Go to My listings, then edit your listing, then click edit next to photos. You can add new ones, rearrange using the buttons, and add individual captions too.

Go to the Login page where you'll find a button Forgot your password?. This will send you a link to reset your password.

One common issue is when people accidentally register with the site twice. Most commonly, this happens when a member registers first with an email address and then logs in with Facebook. If the email address attached to the Facebook account is different from the one used with the site originally, a second account will be created. That second account won't have any access to the listing or messages of the first as we don't know that they are linked. To fix, log out and log in with the method used to create the listing initially.

Easy! Edit your listing (My listings, Edit button) and then press Edit next to your photos. Each photo has buttons to move left or right, rotate left and right, and to delete them.

Click on your photo on the menu and select Change Password. You will need to enter the old password, a new password and confirm it by entering it twice. If you don't know your old password, log out and go to the Login page where you'll find a button Forgot your password?. This will send you a link to reset your password. You need to be logged out to complete this process. If you try when logged in, when you click on the Reset link in your email, you will be taken directly to the Homes page as you're already logged in.

Photo formats accepted by the site are the universal jpg (also jpeg) and png formats. Some newer phones take photos in either heic or webp formats which can't be displayed by web browsers yet. The website has a filter so that these photos that can't be displayed cannot be uploaded. Some phones, however, will allow you to upload those formats anyway. If you do, you'll see blank photos on your listing. The best solution is to still take photos in jpg format. Every phone has a camera setting to take photos in this format, often called most compatible, meaning that the photos can be freely transferred between devices. If you already have heic or webp photos and want to change them to jpg, there are free numerous online websites which do this. Search for free online heic to jpg or similar.

Captions can be simply added to each of your photos. Click the caption button below the photo (a little pen and notepad) and you'll be taken to the caption screen. 1. Type a caption in your own language, any language. 2. Click Save & Translate.

No, People Like Us does not offer insurance. Quality travel and home insurance is important, and more expensive than that which could be offered within our subscription fee. Members need to organise their own insurance which will cover exchange guests in their home and their travel.

Each Premium Member can nominate one Partner. The Partner must have a membership but no active home profile i.e. classed as a non-Member currently. The Partner membership is for your partner to be able to see all parts of a home profile. As they inherit your membership level, they'll also be able to see all photos, descriptions, feedback, calendars and desired destinations. They can also save favourites and message other members. Your Partner can't create exchanges or a new home profile and they can't act on your behalf. You have complete control and can delete the relationship at any time.

Go to your Member Menu (click your photo on the menu) and click on My Partner. On the My Partner screen, enter the email address of your partner. The email address can be for a totally new profile, or the email address of a PLU account as long as it does not have an active home profile. Partner accounts cannot have active home profiles. Click Invite. Your partner will be sent an email to join People Like Us. They should click the button in the email, Accept Invitation.

Go to your Member Menu (click your photo on the menu) and click on My Partner. On the My Partner screen, click Delete Partnership and confirm in the popup.

High Speed Internet is considered 100Mbps and above. This is the connection into the home as opposed to the speed of the WiFi (which would typically be higher). In some countries, it is typical for 100Mbps to deliver typical speeds a little below this speed. This is still acceptable as High Speed Internet, as long as the package provided is 100Mbps+. If unsure, it's better to not tick this box as remote workers may require it.

Go to My Home on the main menu (or My Homes if you have more than one and then edit the one you want to change). Scroll down to the Calendar section and click Edit. On the calendar, click your start and end dates then select that period by either: - on a mobile device, clicking the period, or - on a device with a mouse, hovering over it Select the applicable exchange types and, optionally, add a comment. If you want to mark the period is unavailable, click Make Unavailable. There's extensive documentation for how to use the calendar in our blog: https://peoplelikeus.world/blog/calendar-help-availability.

There are two ways to specify availability on your home profile calendar: Available dates and Unavailable dates. 1. You can specify exactly when your home is explicitly available. By default, all other dates are unavailable. Use this method if you have limited availability, if you want to be specific about when you want to exchange and the type of exchange you want, and/or if you want to appear in Last Minute searches. 2. You can specify when your home is unavailable. By default, other dates are available. Because the lack of unavailability does not necessarily mean your home is available for exchange, your home will not appear in Last Minute searches or searches for explicit availability where the exchange types are specified.

You can, but you probably shouldn't. If you are marking Available dates, all dates that are not marked as available are automatically unavailable. To mark some of these dates unavailable doesn't make them any less available but it introduces confusion as to what would be meant by dates that are neither available nor unavailable.

No. It doesn't make sense to make a date both available and unavailable, nor to mark it available more than once.

You can use filters to find some cat and dog free homes. In the filters page, click on See more filters at the bottom and scroll down past two other filter categories. You will find an Allergens heading including cat free and dog free filters, as well as other allergy-related filters. Not everyone completes this section when filling out their home profile, so homes that do not indicate these features may also be pet-free. Ultimately, it would be best if you asked the host about the pet status of their home to assess your personal risk. Some people forget to remove those filters when they obtain pets.

You can view the the number of completed and finalised exchanges and the number of nights hosting guests, and also the number of nights spent as a guest. Go to any screen that displays your member card, for example your member profile, https://peoplelikeus.world/my-member-profile, and then scroll down to the PLU Experience section. Click on the info button next to the field.

Facebook caches the copy of your page and only refreshes it once a month. It would eventually change over time but you can force it. Go to https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug, enter the link to your profile and click Debug. It'll show you the existing version, then click Scrape Again and it will get a new version from the website.

Your member profile photo can be changed on your member profile. Click on your photo on the menu and go to My Member Profile. https://peoplelikeus.world/my-member-profile Scroll down a little and you'll see a field to select a new profile photo. We accept jpg, png and webp file types.

Cleaning fees are permissible if you have to, but discouraged. Most exchangers will host as often as they are guests, so cleaning costs become equal on both sides over time. They are, nevertheless, permissible for non-reciprocal exchanges if they are clearly marked on your profile, reasonable, and at the cost price. Cleaning fees should not be charged for reciprocal exchanges.

Go to your Member Profile (https://peoplelikeus.world/my-member-profile). Scroll down to the phone number field, just below the email addresses. Choose your country code from the dropdown and enter your phone number without the leading zero, and without the country code. Click Verify. The system will send you a code and provide a popup window where the code should be entered. Enter the code and verify it. The phone number will be saved and marked as verified. Phone numbers are provided only to finalised exchange partners.

Is the device connected to the home carrier's network? Message delivery on devices roaming internationally or off-network are more likely to fail due to the extra message hops involved and some users having restrictive messaging plans. Wait until you're on your home network to retry. The phone number will still be saved but won't be marked as verified. If you need assistance, contact our friendly Member Support team. https://peoplelikeus.world/help

We're committed to ensuring as best we can that the People Like Us Premium Community is a place for Premium Members only. Many people don't use their real names on Facebook, so we needed a way to know who was who. Your Facebook name and email address are kept in our database but not shown to anyone. It is only used for us to verify that you are a Premium People Like Us member when you apply to join our Facebook Community.

We're verifying the identity of our members to provide the safest possible environment for home exchange. We want to give our members, particularly our new members, the confidence to exchange their homes within our community.

While identity verification is not mandatory, we highly recommend it. Verifying your identity boosts your profile’s credibility and helps foster trust within our community, making it easier to connect with fellow members for exchanges. Identity Verification is available to all Premium members of People Like Us, including members who are trialling our Premium service.

People Like Us works with Stripe to conduct identity verification online. Stripe builds technology that’s used by millions of companies around the world such as Amazon, Google, and Zoom. Stripe helps with everything from accepting payments to managing subscriptions to verifying identities.

Stripe helps People Like Us confirm your identity by conducting the following checks:

  1. Stripe captures images of the front and back of your government-issued photo ID and reviews it to make sure that the document is authentic. They’ve built an automated identity verification technology that looks for patterns to help determine if an ID document is real or fake. This process is like a bank teller checking your ID document to confirm that it’s real.

  2. Stripe captures photos of your face and reviews them to confirm that the photo ID belongs to you. They’ve built automated identity verification technology that uses distinctive physiological characteristics of your face (known as biometric identifiers) to match the photos of your face with the photo on the ID document. This process is similar to a bank teller confirming that the photo on your ID document is you based on your appearance—but it’s a higher-tech and more accurate way to identify you as a unique person.

  3. Stripe collects your name, date of birth, and government ID number, and validates that it’s real. They’ll check this information against a global set of databases to confirm that it exists.

Stripe asks for your consent before collecting and using your biometric information. They’ll only use your verification data in accordance with the permissions you grant before starting the verification process, and based on their Privacy Policy.

Learn more about how Stripe handles and stores your data.

Before starting the verification process, here’s what you need:

  • A valid government-issued photo ID document. Not a photocopy or a picture of an ID document. Make sure that the ID document isn’t expired.
  • A device with a camera—use a mobile device if possible. Cameras on mobile devices typically take higher-quality photos than a webcam.

The quality of the images you capture affects success rates dramatically. Below are a few best practices to help make sure that your verification succeeds:

  • Capture a clear image. Make sure that the images aren’t too dark or bright, and don’t have a glare. Hold steady and allow your camera to focus to avoid blurry photos.
  • Don’t block any part of your ID document in the image. Ideally you can lay it flat to take the photo.
  • Don’t block any part of your face. Remove sunglasses, masks, or other accessories.
  • Find a location with ambient lighting. Avoid spaces with strong overhead lights that cast a shadow on your face or ID document. Avoid sitting directly in front of a bright light which can wash out your face and add a glare to your ID document.

Stripe requires a valid, current, original, government-issued photo ID document. The list of acceptable documents varies by country but, in most countries, a passport, driver's licence or official identification document is acceptable. For a full list, see Acceptable Stripe Verification Documents, select your country and view the Identity Documents list.

Both People Like Us and Stripe have access to the information that you submit through the verification flow during the verification process. We rely on Stripe to help store your verification data while the process takes place. Stripe uses access controls and security standards that are at least as stringent as those used to handle their own KYC and payments compliance data.

Following successful completion of the verification process, Stripe deletes the verification data and only the verification status is retained by them.

Learn more about how Stripe handles and stores your data.

People Like Us stores your verified first name and surname and displays it to any exchange partner with whom you finalise exchanges. No other verification data is stored or displayed to others. See our Privacy Policy for further information.

Following successful completion of the verification process, Stripe's copy of the data is deleted and only the verification status is retained.

People Like Us retains your verified first and last name. You may choose to use a different first name on your profile (your preferred name), but your verified name will be shared exclusively with your exchange partner once an exchange has been finalised. For more information, please refer to our Privacy Policy.

Once the Stripe Identity Verification process completes successfully, People Like Us receives and saves your first and last names scanned from the photo ID you used. This may include middle names, if given on the document. Exact spellings and case are preserved exactly as given to us on the document. As these are the verified versions of your name, they are saved and can't be updated after verification has been successful.

We recognise and understand that you may want to use a different form of your name to the one on your official documentation. This may be a shortened form, include a partner's name, a middle name or any other name. We provide a Preferred Name for this purpose, which you can update on your Member Profile. If present, your Preferred Name will be used throughout the system. You may also hide your surname on the platform by updating your Member Profile.

When you finalise an exchange, your verified first and last names are shown to your exchange partner, together with your preferred name.

The process of capturing your government-issued photo ID and your live photograph in Stripe will take 3-4 minutes. You can then return to People Like Us while your verification is processed. This may take a further 3-5 minutes. When complete, your People Like Us profile will display a Verified badge. If further information is required to complete the verification, you will instead see a notice that Stripe requires input and an explanation as to what is required.