Lately there has been a huge increase in buyers and sellers performing "offsite" trades.

Rather than using the actual auction facility, the site is being used merely to give a buyer access to a sellers phone number or email and the trade is being completed away from the site.

Despite the obvious fact that the seller is rarely going to get maximum value by not allowing the auction to run full course, it also avoids the buyers small 2.5% end of auction fee.

This small fee is only payable on completed sales and is so small it does not go anywhere near covering the costs of the site.

Unfortunately if the trend continues, we will have no option but to change the fee structure and have the sellers pay an upfront fee to list their items.

From today (7th August 2008), no contact information such as email addresses or phone numbers are to be made available on any listing and all communication is to go through the auction site's inbuilt messaging system only.

Anyone found to breach these guidelines will be removed form the site.