Tradebank Of Atlanta

Description of Work: Tradebank of Atlanta is a firm that operates a barter network and puts potential buyers and sellers in contact with each other. Costs amount to a joining fee and then when you buy something there is a 10% charge on the "trade dollars" used. No charge for selling something. Their proposal is that you will get more business using them. Finally there is a quarterly membership fee. Good News: As a restaurant owner I did experience a small rise in customers. Two service providers, a carpet cleaner and lawn care specialist both did good jobs at reasonable rates. Bad News: The whole premise is flawed. It is a very poor value for the associated transaction costs. 1) You have to hope that there is a member available who has a service you need. Also, they may have a member but that member has too much already tied up in them and is limiting their business on barter. 2) As a restaurant owner my costs were fixed and the eventual 10% charge when I used my "trade dollars" amounted to a forced discount. Not so when you use service contractors. They add that cost into their bid so that you effectively pay their 10% and yours too. I found that some bids I've received were very high and eventually chose non members to do the work. 3) Barter providers put cash customers first, making you a second class citizen. (What one would expect.) They will do barter work when no other work is available. This means there can be very long wait times, estimates are hard to come by, and provider attitude toward a barter customer is more like they are doing you a favor than as a business relationship. 4) Once your products or services are sold for "trade dollars" you are stuck; you can't reasonably convert them back into real dollars if you would like to quit. You have to use them up with bartered services. I've had $4000 tied up there for several years waiting for an opportunity to spend them somehow. 5) A lot of the merchandise available for sale is used, with Tradebank operating as a giant garage sale office. OK if you like that kind of thing, but not useful to me. Most things offered, or services for that matter, were not stuff I would normally buy. 6) The operators of Tradebank are friendly but don't do well with any complaints about timeliness, quality, etc. They quickly bow out if you have a complaint about a member. Their only function is to seek new members and then provide you with the list of members you might want to use. And of course to bill you for transactions or quarterly member fees.