We started YoungPlanet for 2 main reasons, firstly to help reduce wastefulness and landfill.
So much children's stuff can be reused and re-housed and we are acutely aware of how many things just don't get used in our house...and it just sits there. UK households waste 25 million tonnes a year, approximately ¼ of this goes to landfill - this is equivalent to almost 5 million cars being dumped in annually (DEFRA)! We don’t want usable children's things to contribute to this.
Secondly, we wanted to bring parents together and make parenting easier. We know the rising cost of raising children and wanted to do something that eased the cost for as many people as possible.
No, YoungPlanet is a free exchange platform we’re insistent on this so if you see someone bending the rules, please ‘shake your phone’ to activate our bug reporting software :)
Go ‘Home’, click ‘+ Icon’. From here you will fill in:
1. Take a photo of the item in app [or upload from your library]
2. Category - eg. toys, clothes
3. Item age - eg. Aged 6-7
4. Item name - eg. blue skirt
5. Item description - eg. Aged 6-7, blue, cotton, long skirt
6. Postage option - eg. Pick-up
We suggest :
1. Contact them again in a few days after you sent the request – they may be offline.
2. If you haven’t heard back after 1 week, please email us at info@youngplanet.com and tell us your situation.
To show users that your item is no longer available, go ‘Profile’, click on the item, and click “End listing”.
Keep checking the app! As our user numbers grow, so will the number of items on the app.
Wherever you want. We suggest organising your own meeting point like a local park or school gate or see suggestions for postage in FAQs
Unfortunately, we can’t control the product quality. In this scenario, please email us on info@youngplanet.com with what you received and how it was described. We will use this information to improve the process.
To avoid this situation ensure you ask as much as possible about the product before your exchange.
If you want to receive or give an item by post, the giver must supply some detail to the receiver and we recommend that the receiver then books the postage. Once the receiver has the information, they can book it in all the while liaising with the giver (don’t worry, it's relatively easy as long as you keep in contact with each other).
You will need to know if it is more or less than 2kg in weight. If less, go to https://parcel.royalmail.com/ and follow the instructions (do stay in touch with each other with the messaging in the app as there are choices to be made).
If it is of a tricky size or shape, or more than 2kg, then go to https://www.parcelmonkey.co.uk/ to arrange and again communicate with each other as your preferences will vary. Please note this is a temporary solution - we are working on a number of partnerships that will make this easier to do, please bear with us…
The app has a service called Instabug built in which allows reporting of issues or to provide feedback. To activate Instabug, shake your phone and a pop-up will appear. In addition we have a general support email at info@youngplanet.com
