Swap Shop Returning?

The comments about the "current security climate" are interesting - but in a way Swap Shop was essentially a proto-Ebay. Regular users of Ebay will know the whole thing works around trust - and that things are "sold as seen". Ebay may have their own trading regulations but transactions on the site are effectively private deals between two people and with goods being shipped directly from seller to purchaser, there is no (obvious) way of security-scanning packages.

Carefully-worded T&Cs might in any case absolve the BBC of too many responsibilities in the event of a dispute.

Can't really see how it'd work with Basil Brush in charge. Needs a person not a puppet IMO.

Didn't CITV do something a few years ago with Fearne Cotton at the helm which involved swapping items?

I think you're on about Wanted.com which was shown on Boxing Day one year presented by all the CITV presenters at the time but not Fearne.
That actually involved people either going into STV offices to swap items (Where it was recorded), Or sending them straight to STV for them to be taken care with from there.
Very much like Swap Shop actually.

That could be right, so that it ends at the end of January, its a shame that it isn't on longer. As for the length it's an hour and 15 minutes less than last year, but I agree that you get more actual TMi. I just hope that it will return. For me it isn't the length, it's the fact that it ends so early.
I think I'd prefer for it to start at 10 and end at 1130 (well make it 45 to lead into sportsround).

As for wanted.com, the idea occured Christmas 1998 with Chop & Change, which was a similar programme, but was CITV extended live links with Stephen & Dannielle with details running through programmes, and using the Gas Street Central studios too.

Think you are missing my point.

Swap Shop is aimed at kids - eBay isn't.

Swap Shop was a two-way process (you both sent your goods to each other based on trust), eBay is essentially one-way. The seller knows the buyers address, but not vice versa.

If a new Swap Shop were to provide kids names and home addresses to total strangers, over the phone or by internet, there would be real potential problems.

I realise that the likelihood for abuse of the system is probably, in reality, no greater than 30 years ago. However the perception of risk has changed in 30 years, and people are now much more aware of stuff than they were then.

Yes.

Now see the headlines in several national newspapers, concerning "waste of licence-free payers money", "bbcBay: BBC sets up eBay rival with licence fee money" (worse if they need to warehouse the stuff themselves) and heaven forfend what happens the first time someone defaults after all the headlines this summer...

I can understand baby goats or any cloven-hooved animal having trouble using a computer but that's not to say children aren't EBay literate - probably more so than their parents and what's to say they're not using Mummy or Daddy's account to buy or bid for things they shouldn't be?


But with Ebay you trust the seller to deliver the goods as much as he trusts you to pay what you have agreed. Though I have never sold anything on Ebay myself, what I have bought gives me more than enough experience of the site and in most cases the seller does give his address when the item arrives.


A problem easily solved by having some sort of "middle man" to receive and deliver the goods, but then, as Reboot says, the BBC-hating tabloids would then accuse the BBC of wasting money.