When someone contacts you for a trade, take a few minutes to check his or her feedback to see what kind of trader they are. If you see they don’t have any feedback, ask them if they have a feedback link from another board. It could be they just signed up with Families.com and haven’t yet established feedback at our board.
If they are new to trading coupons and haven’t established any feedback, ask if they have any feedback from ebay or any other site, which might allow you to see they are a trustworthy person.
If they don’t have any kind of feedback, use your gut instinct to decide if you would like to go ahead and make a trade with them. To help you decide, check their previous post they have made on the board. Are they an active member and participate on the board? If so, that is usually a good sign. Everyone has to start somewhere so, it’s likely they are just starting out trading coupons and haven’t established feedback.
In addition, consider what you are trading. If you are trading plain Sunday insert coupons, then it might not be a big deal to take a risk and make a trade. You don’t have much to loose if the trade goes bad. However, if you are trading hot or high value coupons such as, winetages or free product coupons, you might not be so willing to take a risk with someone who doesn’t have any feedback.
Another option you might consider is suggesting they send their end first and after receiving their end, you can send your end. By doing this, they are proving themselves as trustworthy person. After receiving their end, leave them feedback promptly so they can establish good feedback and won’t have to do this again in the future. Never hold someone else’s end without communicating or asking the other person first. It’s not very good coupon etiquette to expect them to do something, and not do it yourself.