Haha yes I may have been a bit over the top with the praise for the site. I've had a lot of awesome experiences I wouldn't otherwise have had. My last trip I was on a bit of a tight schedule riding a KLR650 from Kentucky to Arizona and I'd arrive into some arguably mediocre cities around 4PM each day. Instead of going straight to a hotel, paying a bunch of money, getting dinner alone...etc I was hanging out with good company, being shown cool places to go, learning new things...etc.

Also after the site's shady move from non-profit to profit you sadly are right to worry about my motives. That being said I'm not affiliated with the site in any way other than being a user and I am not receiving any type of compensation or benefit for this thread or the copy-paste of it on advrider. I just think the communities are both awesome, nearly totally separate, and could benefit from one another. Plus I'm riding from Arizona to South America and felt like a freeloader asking a million dumb questions on Advrider so I wanted to contribute.

Ahhh that sucks, sorry to hear that. Can you share some freeloader stories? Were you only hosting? And if you don't mind can you share anything about their requests and your interactions beforehand? The site definitely has some ungrateful people just looking for a place to stay, but in my experience they are usually easy to pick out. I'm pretty selective in who I host and surf with and have only had awesome experiences (surfed about 8 times, hosted 6). Eventually I'm sure I'll have some lackluster ones but I think they're rare if you're careful and know what to look for.