More Swap Site Updates!

Liz, how do you handle being swap lifted? I mean outside of leaving negative feedback and possibly ruining my own? Ignoring it then others aren’t warned.

In regards to the negative feedback. I have been lucky and not have not had any bad swaps. Everyone’s been great! But, I do have a suggestion. I like how Liz added the reminder when you leave feedback that says something like “you are about to leave feedback, can’t be withdrawn, etc”. Maybe what we could do is if the swapper clicks negative feedbck, then a series of questions could appear to click through before submitting the feedback. Off the top of my head, questions like
1. did you contact the swapper to resolve the issue?
2. what was their response?
3. Can you work through a resolution? (i.e. return items, send additional items, cancel swap, etc.)
Those are just a couple ideas, not sure of exact questions to be asked. But, then once those questions are answered, then the system could say Now you are leaving negative feedback, are you sure? etc. Just an idea. Not sure if its too complicated but maybe those questions will prompt the swapper to contact the other swapper instead of just getting angry and leaving negative feedback before really thinking it through. I know that if someone was unhappy with a swap and contacted me, I would try to make it right.

Yay!! I’m so glad that you’ve come up with a solution regarding the auto cancel after 10 days. Thank you so much for listening to those of us that were unhappy about the force cancellations. I think the keep swap open button is a wonderful solution that would satisfy all swappers.

My main suggestion is regarding the feedback. I think leaving the feedback blind until both parties full out the information, would be good. I’ve seen and heard of so many people leaving honest feedback over a negative experience. In turn the other trader retaliates and leaves negative feedback in anger to get back at the negative feedback left on them. I’ve even seen people leaving feedback that says “I’m leaving negative feedback because they gave me a negative feedback!”. If the feedback was left hidden, until after both traders fill out the info, there would only be true feedback and not something posted just to get back at someone in response over what they posted. Thanks again!

Liz, I need to cancel a swap. I sent the request to the swapper, but she will not respond. Can you please cancel it on your end??

I’m new to this and it’s Becoming a addiction.
Do you have a link or anything that tells me what and how to do the swaps. Like a how to. Lol. Thanks 🙂

Are there other swap sites around? Ive been on the waiting list for at least a month, and i really just wanna try it out.

Oh, I forgot:

I would love to be notified if someone just listed something I’d been following! That would also help me when I post something, since someone else who follows one of my items would be notified.

As far as what others have posted here in the comments:

I agree about deleting accounts with too many negatives. OR…have someone with a certain number of negatives have to ship first, just like someone with no feedback. That way, a “bad” swapper who maybe just had some personal issues or something could make amends? But I agree with Vanessa about a place to respond if someone gets bad feedback. When I read a negative review, I’m curious if there’s a reason, or if someone just never intended to send their stuff or something.

For the price issue, maybe a way to indicate a *range*. I don’t care about exact price swaps, but sometimes I’ve asked for a swap and been surprised when someone asks for a bunch of stuff because their item is actually more valuable than I’d thought. So, for example: Foil sample, deluxe sample, $5-10, $11-20, $21-30, $31-50, $51-75, $76-100, $100+

New vs. Used: can we have a “swatched” choice? I list swatched items as used, but I do think it’s not the same, since I don’t just put eyeliner on my eye, for instance; I put it on my hand to see if it smears and how intense it is. And then if I don’t like it, I clean the tip with a wipe before capping and listing to swap.

I’d like a notification of a swap that was cancelled because it “timed out.” I keep a list on my desktop of swaps I have requested. Sometimes someone may be waiting until I have more, and sometimes it might be because someone just doesn’t swap despite having some things listed.

I’d love a way to check off if someone only wants to swap for the same category of item. I’ve often requested to swap for a cute top, for instance, that person only wants to swap for other Golden Tote things. Or on the other hand, I have things that are more unusual, and someone asks to swap but only has makeup items available that 50 or so other swappers have. I want to state that I’ll be picky because I value it higher than its retail value. That lipstick you got as one item in a Birchbox just doesn’t equal my hand-painted music box, even if the *dollar* value is the same. I’d also like to know if I’m wasting my time asking for something because 5 other people have requested it.

I’d love to have a field for address in my profile so that when a swap goes through, it posts that info automatically for both parties.

I agree with the idea of being able to ask a question about an item. For instance, I’ve wanted the Peruvian Warrior ring with the silver and black stone combo. I’ve done TWO swaps for it where people have posted theirs were the black version, and NEITHER was that combo. One had a black ring with white stones, and the other was a black ring with black stones.

My only suggestion is to put a limit on the character count for item name. There are a few users who keep creating new items (for already existing items) and putting the box name, retail value, phase of the moon etc. in the name. It drives me insane. But maybe that’s just me…

Oh, one other comment, make sure you go through your available swaps periodically and check for things that are expired. I see a lot of coupons and discounts up that I know expired months ago. 😛

Here is my two-cents (heh) about listing prices:

I have a few higher ticket items, but not many, just a couple. While I’m not personally super hung up on the cost of them because as mentioned none of us paid retail cost for any of this, I know others are, so I’ve been super picky about what I’ll swap those items for, simply because they’re the only things I have of higher value that someone might consider if I wanted to swap for a purse or something. So there have been some swaps that I would have considered, except I feel I have to hoard my few “expensive” items in case I might be able to use them to swap for something higher value I really want. I hope that makes sense.

I would also like to see a grey area where I could put that an item is “pending” a swap. The pending would be no more then 2 days.

I think people forget that beauty items have expiration dates. It would be great if they last forever but they don’t. — If you look through all 300+ pages of the swaps, I’m guessing the beauty items added on the last pages might be not as fresh as beauty products now. – some beauty items last for 2 or 3 years unoppend. yet once swatched 6 months at the most for makeup.

I would prefer: Unless otherwise mentioned via comments, the swapped items should be mailed off within 3 business days of it being agreed on. Most the time I don’t mind waiting a few more days if someone needs more time to mail off an item, yet communication is important.

Move been a swapper for a couple if months now and love it! A few suggestions to make it even more awesome:

1) show average time it takes a swapper to ship out item: I recently had two “swap lift’ incidents where the other swapper did not ship out their item at all. I noticed in their previous reviews both had reviews that mentioned items took a while to arrive. Maybe this would be a helpful “warning sign” to other swappers to be more cautious when initiating swap? Alternatively we can add a optional field in the review to input a number of days it took for the swapper to ship.

2) for skincare/makeup description, add a field for which month/year box the item was from. This is particularly useful for unsealed/preservative free skincare and makeup, as they lose their potency as they are sitting around. I personally wouldn’t want to use anything that’s unsealed and been sitting around for more than 6 months on my face!

3) agree about the follower alert feature. If I can do a search for both swapper who have followed more than 2 items on my list, as well as swappers who have listed more than 2 items I’m following, it would make swapping so much easier! Especially when I’m looking for an item that had over 10 people listing it!

This is such a great site, Liz, thanks for providing it to the community. Here are my suggestions/comments after using it for a couple months.

1) ability to look for a certain category within a persons available trades if someone requests a swap. For example, if someone wants one of my clothing items, I generally want to see what clothing they have to swap.
2) on the persons profile there could be a choice – only consider trades of equal monetary value or open to all trades. I have requested items from someone who maybe received it as part of 7 items in a $50 box and have received replies – but this is a $125 dollar item! Which personally I don’t care about, I just want items traded that I want to have and the fact is, people who have subs are rarely paying anywhere close to retail for what they get
3) non sub items. How do these get removed? I will flag obvious non sub stuff, but it never seems to go away and clutters the inventory for the rest of us who are playing by rules

Liz: GREAT! ——— My biggest suggestion to the swap site —- is I wish we could ask a question about the item before putting a swap request on it — Because some details on a specific item are tough to find online. —– Like length of necklaces, aprx size of purses

I wish swappers would be more honest when it comes to swaps, take more photos about little defects. So many times I’ve come gotten an item that is supposely new yet the seal is half peeled back. I’m also still bumping into the issue of people not disclosing the true size of an item when it is a sample size.

There was something else that caught my eye tonight; people listing items as new and in the comments they mentioned swatching the nail polish, testing the lip gloss on their hand or not having the box. Well then the item isn’t new and really shouldn’t be listed as such. If I’m swapping to get an item that I’ll be gifting I don’t want to receive it without the safety seal or obviously opened, not to mention the hygiene and safety issues behind claiming something is new when it’s actually been opened, used and sitting in a steamy bathroom for a year.

Is there a way to let users report listings that are ‘New’ but have actually been used?

Thank you so much for the update. You’ve done such a wonderful job of being balanced and trying to please as many swappers as possible. I have so much fun in this site, thank you for all you do!

Please do not make listing prices a requirement, but allow it to stay an option as it currently is. Some swappers are not as concerned with retail value and simply want to swap for items they like. I would gladly swap a $100 pair of earrings for that $40 pillow I’ve been wanting, and I do not want other swappers to be dissuaded from requesting a swap just because my item has a high retail value. (Or vice versa.) Also, not all sub companies include the retail value of an item, and I do not want to have to do the research on the value of a mascara sample (for example.)

For swappers, who feel that swaps should be equivalent on retail value, they have the option to list prices and to only swap with other swappers who have listed prices. Or they can look up prices if dollar value is their priority in a swap.

Personally, when I see a person has listed a dollar value for each of their items I assume dollar value equatability is their top priority and I may not request a swap with them since I do not want to make the mistake of offering a swap that they would deem unfair.

Also, I would love to see a little number next to people’s profile that would tell me how many total items they have listed. That way, if I want to request a small, but popular item I know whether it is worth it to me to start the swap request or if I should move on to the next listing. For example a bar of pine soap may have been listed by 50 people. I don’t want to swap for just the soap, but I don’t want to check the contents of all 50 people’s list. It would be nice to go the on and just check out the ones that have (for example) 15 or more total items listed.

Thank you again, Liz! And thanks to the community of swappers on here. This is a wonderful group of people and I’m grateful to be a part of this swapping community!

Hi Liz,

I’m fairly new to swapping, but from my experience on it I do have a few ideas. Is there a way to see a users wish list/watching I know it shows items their following if you have it, but I was thinking if you could see everything a person is looking for it might help, maybe you have that item but you haven’t listed it yet.

Also is there a way to search within your own following list. Like I could look at the items I’m looking for and within that see all the users who currently have that item listed, and maybe be alerted to users who have more than one of my followed items. That way you could go straight to them for a swap vs searching out who has them.
My last suggestion is price. It would be nice if the price of the item displayed in the swap that way each party could request fair trades knowing the value of each item in front of them.

Thanks so much for all you’ve already done.

You rock Liz!!

First off I want to say I love this site and I’m in awe of what you’ve been able to build in such a short time. If there were no changes from here on out I would be a happy camper, but since you asked for feedback I do have some based on selling/swapping on other sites that might help here.

Would it be possible to delete the accounts of members who have racked up a certain amount of negatives? I’m not sure what the threshold should be, either a certain percent (if someone drops below 90% after 20+ trades) or if they’ve incurred X number of negatives after Y+ amount of swaps but I just saw someone with 34% positive feedback. Granted they had 3 total swaps and the last 2 were negatives, but the default sorting put them higher than someone with 1 swap and 100% feedback.

Also is there a way to track and show which members leave the most neutrals and negatives for other members? When I’ve looked at the feedback of members who are at ~95-99%, I keep seeing the same few members as the source of the negatives. I don’t think they’re out to damage the reputations of others, but maybe they have impossibly high standards that the vast majority of members won’t be able to meet. Perhaps this could be displayed like the % positives and number of swaps is under the member name? X number of feedback left for others, Y% neutrals, Z% negatives.

As a last suggestion, is there a way for people to make their swap lists hidden, so if someone is moving or on vacation and unable to swap they could simply hide their items and when they’re ready to swap again they could reactivate their listings with a click or two and not relist each individual item?

How long does it usually take to get off the wait list for the swap page? I really want to list the Kendra Scott necklace from PopSugar here rather than on eBay, but I don’t want to completely miss the initial wave of interested swappers while I’m waiting to be approved. Thanks!