Welcome to UnBuyThat! The peer-to-peer reservation and experience marketplace. I am extraordinarily excited to announce our beta launch. You can learn more about our origins and the team behind UnBuyThat in the video and the text below. As always, you can contact me atneil@unbuythat.com.
The idea for our company came about in June 2011. I had been trying to impress my then girlfriend, now wife and UnBuyThat co-founder, Melissa, with a trip to the Berkshires in Massachusetts. Trying to book a last-minute hotel room during a peak travel season was a big mistake. I was unable to find any sort of lodging within 50 miles.
As most summer weekends in the northeast go, we found ourselves stuck in traffic on our way to the City of Brotherly Love. Along the way, Melissa and I revisited our frustrations from 48 hours ago. All of our lives are so fast-paced and unpredictable. Who books reservations weeks and months in advance anymore? There must have been somebody having the opposite problem as us. Surely somebody with a reservation in the Berkshires had a last-minute change of plans. Why wasn't there a way for us to find that person? Most of all, wasn't this a lose/lose/lose situation for everyone involved? We were unhappy about not finding a reservation in the Berkshires. The guy with the reservation was unhappy about having to pay his cancellation fee, and the hotel was upset because the cost of the cancellation fee wouldn't cover the cost of the room. Surely, it was better for the hotel to have butts in the beds.
It wasn't just hotel reservations, either. The conversation kept coming back to the idea of a destination on the web where people could exchange last-minute reservations. We hadn't heard of such a site, so during our 70-mile 3-and-a-half hour car ride, we resolved to make one, and the idea for UnBuyThat was born.
The original idea was to focus solely on hotel reservations, but the more we dug, the more we realized there was a whole world of prepaid services and reservations that were going unused. Very quickly our ambition grew, and we decided to try being a totally comprehensive marketplace.
At our launch, UnBuyThat has nine different categories of experiences and reservations from which a buyer can choose. They range from hotel and restaurant reservations to Daily Deal coupons and gift cards. Users can even list their own personal skills on the site for hire.
All of our listings are curated and all transactions are backed by the UBT Guarantee. We're trying to take the unknown out of peer-to-peer transactions to make you feel a little safer when you use our site. We'll do whatever we can to make the transaction a little easier. We'll even take care of the transfer after the deal is done through our Concierge Transfer Service option.
All of our listings are curated and all transactions are backed by the UBT Guarantee. We're trying to take the unknown out of peer-to-peer transactions to make you feel a little safer when you use our site. We'll do whatever we can to make the transaction a little easier. We'll even take care of the transfer after the deal is done through our Concierge Transfer Service option.
As we grow, we hope to become a comprehensive repository for all of life’s experiences. Our ambitions are high but so are your expectations. In the weeks, months and years ahead, we aim to grow to meet and excel those expectations.
We are incredibly excited to announce our launch and to be adding another foothold in the space known as 'collaborative consumption'. We truly believe that sharing, trading and transactions taking place among neighbors and friends is the new way forward. We’re very happy to be a part of it.
If you have any questions about our site, you can contact me directly at Neil@unbuythat.com. I'll usually respond within a few minutes, unless it's the dead of night. Then, a response may take a few hours.
Looking forward to seeing you on UnBuyThat,
Neil St. Clair, CEO & Founder
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