Simon Bell .biz

Yesterday morning we had a visit from a Bartercard salesman.

If you don't know what Bartercard is; it's essentially privatised currency. Currently operating in the United Kingdom, Australia (founded in Australia), New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Thailand, Lebanon, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar and Cyprus.

Here's how the system works: You get a visit from a salesman explaining all the benefits of the Bartercard scheme. You have to pay an initial fee to join. We were offered three different joining fees: £795, £995 and £1,495. Once you join you get between T£3,000 and T£5,000 "credit" in your account. (T£ = trade pounds – special Bartercard currency). There is also a monthly fee of about £30.

Also, for every Bartercard trade there is a 5.5% cash and 1% T£ charge. This fee applies for both sending and receiving T£ money.

So for example; if we received a T£1,000 website project we would be charged T£10 from our Bartercard account and £55 English pounds (invoiced each month).

When you join you're assigned an "account manager" that will "actively seek new business for you". When you want to make some T£ money you phone up your account manager and ask for some work. They will market your business and send clients in your direction.

When you want to spend you're hard earned £T you simply call up your account manager and ask for it; a laptop, new car, a holiday, new clothes or even a local restaurant.

It's simple; you pay about a grand for the Bartercard and you're given an account with T£5000 loaded and ready to spend!

So how do you make Barter money?

Using any spare resources your business has you sell these to other Bartercard members. If you sell office furniture you might sell this onto other members or ideally if you sell a service you might sell this to other Bartercard members.

So that's how the Bartercard system works.

The sales representative stayed for just over two hours drilling a very hard sales pitch. He listed all the benefits, answered any questions and allowed my business partner and I about 15 minutes to read through some local businesses testimonials. The final 10 mins were spent going over the joining fee and monthly costs.

Interestingly the salesman didn't leave us with any literature on the Bartercard system and there is very limited information out there on the web, other than in forums where people are freely expressing their own opinions!

After the salesman left we received a phone call from the secretary of our business park. It was the jolly salesman using the secretary's phone at main reception to let us know he can source us some good office furniture for our office through the Bartercard system.

My business partner and I can't see any real benefits of joining the Bartercard scheme. So we kindly declined the offer to join.

The reason for this lengthy blog post is this: Before our salesman's visit we couldn't find any information on Bartercard other than opinions in forums. I wanted to add this detailed description of the scheme so others don't have to waste two hours of their time listening to a hard sales pitch if they're thinking of joining Bartercard. I'm not saying that the system does or doesn't work. I'm just giving out some information that was a real struggle for us to find.

All the best
Simon