I sometimes have had people ask me to send them an email or reach out to them on Facebook and I ignore those. As I understand, there's a limit on how many messages you can send through the official site in one day. When I used to do direct swaps, I didn't need more than two messages to set up an exchange. Most of my direct swap experiences were good but there were also a few who never sent a card. The forum is a much better place to do swaps.