Why Is Swap or Barter Important?

[Bob Perry]

Why Is Swap or Barter Important?

By Asif Osman


As a kid, did you ever swap something? Maybe swapped you bike for you best friend's video game? Or at least you must a swapped a candy bar for a cola?

Everybody swapped. Why did I say that is "past tense" Well... its because when we were kids we swapped all the time and as we... read "I" couldn't bring myself to suggest swapping my Nokia mobile for my friend's PlayStation. I knew it was a fair trade but what if he said no?

It's the embarrassment we're all afraid of. Once we get past that we'll all be swapping again. After all, in the old days, that's the way our ancestors did trades didn't they?

Our ancestors were practical people and perhaps we should be taking a page out of their lives and their ways of doing trade. When they wanted something, they weren't embarrassed to go make an offer to someone who had what they wanted. I guess we have become an overly "consumer centric" society. We love to buy and buy and buy. Lets step back and try to exchange some of the things we have for things we want. This way - your saving some cash and also helping someone else get what they want.

These days there's loads of websites that actually sell stuff. Millions of them. Not quite as many swap sites. That's why when I checked out the GCC's only swap website I found a real lifesaver. It helps you find other swappers - for free - and it focuses on the geographical area that I live in - that's Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait.

So, give SWAP a go. Some websites allow you to swap both goods and services and there's one that I found that caters to UAE,BAHRAIN, SAUDI ARABIA,QATAR, KUWAIT AND OMAN too.

The other day, my brother wanted to get rid of his 2 year old refrigerator. That's it... he just wanted to get a new one. So it was junk to him. But, not me. I just gave it a go by listing it on a swap site and to spice it up I put a really low monetary value on it. Soon enough, my email was getting flooded with inquiries and offers. Some good, some excellent and a few useless items were being suggested in exchange for this unwanted baby - my bro's old fridge.

Within the week I had settled on swapping the fridge for a set of history books one the users had. It was a 20 minute drive for me to go check out the condition of those books and once satisfied all I had to do is convince him to check out the fridge and arrange for him to come over and pick it up. Easy as pie.

I heard that millions of tons of electronics are thrown away each year and they will soon run into a problem with all that waste.

I guess we need to work around our wasteful nature too.

Start swapping - it's fun.

Enjoy the savings!

Check out the only website dedicated to encouraging swapping in the GCC. Call it swap, barter, trade, exchange - whatever - as long as you try to use as little money as possible - we love you on this website. So start swapping today.

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