freeloaderIf you place an offering ad on the CTTE web site and several people respond to it, don’t just sell it to the first who phones or emails you. It is very important for the health of the exchange that the members themselves discourage “free loaders” and encourage those who trade honestly and regularly.

The first thing you should do when someone requests your offering is to check out their trading position. It is very easy to do this. Log into your Talent Exchange account and enter the member’s name in the search box at the top right and press Enter. Then click on their name in the results list, which will bring up their personal profile record. At the top left of the record click on the View trading record button. This will show you their current balance and the number of sales and purchases they have made. It also shows a number of other metrics about their trading behaviour, as well as when they joined, when they last accessed their account, when they last bought and sold, and how many offerings they have. If you see that the member joined a long time ago and has never accessed their account or last accessed it a long time ago, you can be sure that they are not a regular trader.

Another thing you can do is to check the member’s offerings. If they have no offerings then you should not sell to them, and if their offerings contain a Rand component then you are entitled to request a Rand component for what you are selling.

Collectively we must ensure that those in chronic debit are not permitted to go further into debit. Someone who only buys and gives nothing in return is effectively stealing from the rest of us.