Trading guidelines

IdealTrade we recommend the following for the best experience. These Guidelines are advisory only and do not form part of the User Agreement between you and IdealTrade.

General

• We urge users to report users who break our rules. We need your help to make a friendly, safe and reliable community.
• Don’t give out personal information, unless you are sure you are safe. Use methods such as social media accounts, video calls, and external websites to verify who you are trading with.

User Account

• Please only make one account with all of your skills and items listed. Making multiple accounts is confusing for fellow traders and will not help you reach your full potential in trading, as the more 5 star trades on one account will give you greater trading options.
• Never trade using your friends or family members account, this is dishonest and could lead to disagreements in real life and online. Trading should be personal and fun.
• Transparency is important and we urge users to be precise, honest and friendly when talking to each other. We believe this will create and grow a community that is safe, reliable and fair.

Ratings

• When choosing who to trade with check the date that they joined, past trades, and their feedback rating.
• Leave honest reviews based on communication and execution of trade, any criticism should be constructive. We all make mistakes, we all want to improve and we all like hearing positive feedback.
• Try to sort out any disputes like you would with a friend. Be polite and respect each other, people are more understanding than you think if you are honest at every stage.

Posts & Ideas

• Be inspired by others and how they post and trade, but do not steal their posts/identity/business model to use on IdealTrade or other websites.
• If you see a great idea, it is fair to take what you like from it and add it to your own idea. We also encourage collaboration.

Trading

• We recommend when meeting another trader for the first time to meet in a mutual location during the day. This is particularly important for tuition or expensive item based trades.

• Always trade in stages or at the same time. It is bad practice for one side of the trade to be complete and the other side not to have started.
• Be clear about what you want from the trade and be very specific if you need to.
• Be realistic when making offers. Make sure you can keep your side of the trade.
• Like the old saying goes if a deal sounds too good to be true, maybe it is.

Finding like-minded traders

• If a trader has not completed any trades yet, it is sensible to do a smaller stake trade. 
• If there is a trader wanting to make a large stake trade and it’s your first trade with them, start small, see if personalities are compatible.
• If you find yourself unable to complete a trade, offer an alternative solution to complete the trade with a new date & time of execution. Hope your fellow trader can understand and be patient i.e. if you get a broken leg it doesn’t mean you need to break your side of the deal, it just means you need to re-negotiate, to find a suitable resolution.