Bartering Products and Services

This is not unique to San Diego, but it's our first experience with bartering, so I thought I'd share some thoughts, in case you are interested...or perhaps are already involved.

We learned about this from our good friend, Joy, who happens to be an Arbonne Consultant. Esstentially the way it works is that people who have products and/or services they want to sell trade these for other products and services they want, and earn points for doing so. For example, you can trade the value of the oil change services your autobody shop provides for a product that another vendor in the barter system sells. No money exchanges hands, except for sales tax.

The cool thing is you can use the points you earn for things you sell to others in the system for ANYTHING you want (that is offered by barter members) - travel, food, clothing, jewelry, art, gift certificates, chiropractic services, dental services, TVs, appliances, almost anything you can imagine. We were at a December annual show for participants (our first) yesterday and it was amazing the activity and the products and services being traded. Some people earn tens of thousands of points they use for all the things they want!

If you are interested, check out ITEX (there are other barter systems, but this is one of the biggest). If you already in this sort of system I would be curious about what your experiences are, good or bad.