YAHOO GROUPS ~ Trade, Barter, Swap & Shopping Groups ~ Think Twice Before You Join

April 27, 2008 by Moomette's Magnificents (Admin)
Filed under e-commerce, internet marketing, networking, rantings, sahm, social networking, wahm, work at home

9 Comments

Back in January or so, I did a couple of blog entries here and here praising the benefits of joining Yahoo Swap, Barter & Trade Groups, as well as Yahoo Shopping Groups, as a means of shedding excess eBay inventory and meeting quota for the various companies I’m an affiliate rep for.

Well, I’m eating humble pie now, and am here as a hard-working WAHM to tell you, whoa nelly, slow down before you do anything like that and make the same mistakes I did.

I’m so much wiser for it now, and I’d like to tell you why. If I had come across any blogs telling it like it is before I joined, I would have thought twice.

I played by all the rules. One rep per company, listed my items, tried to join in the conversations, promoted my specials, yada yada yada.

But it’s not pretty. On the swap groups, I got taken for a ride. I’ve withdrawn from all I ever joined. I listed pretty good inventory from my eBay store – NWT (New, With Tag) kids Baby Gap PJs, Webkinz, etc. I sent my items with Delivery Confirmation when the vultures snapped them up. Any time I went online (which was really, really often) to try to “grab” an item – nothing was listed. What was on there? Pacifiers (used?)…. I’m not kidding here; coasters, probably just junk that was lying around the house.

All the gals were begging for “Walmart” gift certificates, and grabbed anything they could get their hands on, leaving nothing else. What really was the last straw for me on one group was that someone was offering to “burn DVD’s” to swap. Now, anyone with an ounce of ethics knows that it’s illegal to do that. As a paralegal, I protested and said I didn’t want to be any part of that ~ guess what ~ the group owner decided to hold a “vote” to see what the group thought about burning the DVDs. Well, I was outta there – and withdrew faster than you could hit “enter.” And I left behind probably several hundred dollars in “points to spend” and figure the Walmart gals could use them more than I need them.

My latest rant today is about the “Shopping Groups” that promote one rep per company, and you get to be Consultant-of-the-Month (COTM.) I belonged to two groups. Each month, I faithfully placed my order, and waited my turn to be COTM.

There’s supposed to be two COTM per month. As a COTM, everyone is supposed to place an order with you, and theoretically, you can get 4-5 orders, which would allow you to meet quota. Well, the other rep got all the orders, and I only got one.

I got an email from one group member in response to my withdrawal, who had this to say about me: …. maybe no one wanted what i had to offer that month?

At this point, I’ve had enough of these cliquey, greedy groups. When I withdrew from one other shopping group today, one nice gal e-mailed me and said she was in agreement with me and ‘right behind me on her way out.’ Fortunately, there are some nice, honorable people that I met on these groups, but they’re few & far between.

Am I whining? Yes, in a way, I admit it. But the only positive experience that I feel has come of this, is that I’m brazen enough to post it here and try to warn anyone who’s thinking that this is the next best thing since sliced bread, to think twice. You don’t want to end up with a bad taste in your mouth.