Upside and Downside to the MetroList iBox Exchange at Cal Expo

When my team member Josh Amolsch and I walked into Cal Expo for the MetroList iBox Exchange, a vision of a Tiffany sterling silver flask flashed quickly through my brain. I had been joking around earlier about needing to find a bar that serves bourbon to get through the iBox exchange, but those jokes proved to be unnecessary. I did not need a sterling silver flask in my bag, not that I have ever owned such an item anyway but it is now on my extravagant holiday wish list. As an emergency backup for those Sacramento short sales that haven’t yet gone away.

A sea of tables were laid out before our eyes. If I had organized the event, I would have placed table stands with alphabet letters to direct traffic, but the event was very well set up. The people at each table understand their task and only their task and were able to easily direct us to the next table. We met Q at the first table, who was not named after the Star Trek character (because I asked). His eyes grew wide when he perused my lockbox inventory on his monitor and exclaimed: You have a lot of lockboxes!

I did not exchange them all. I kept roughly 40 of them because MetroList made a last-minute decision that we could keep our lockboxes if we didn’t want to exchange them 2 for 1 (thank you, MetroList). The reasoning from MetroList for the measly 2 for 1 exchange (when the rest of the country seemed to get 1 for 1) is because if it exchanged our lockboxes 1 for 1, our monthly dues would go up by $10. That would result in $120 extra a year, more than the cost of a new lockbox. Is that really true? MetroList says it is.

Also, my 40 other lockboxes have a lot of juice left in them. More than 50%. They will last at least another 7 years, I imagine, which is when the warranty runs out on the new lockboxes. Except we don’t own the lockboxes we picked up in the 2 for 1 exchange. They are leased to us, and if we lose a lockbox or some thief, heaven forbid, saws it off the gas meter or removes the door knob with a lockbox attached and runs off, a Sacramento REALTOR will have to pay MetroList $100 each.

That’s the downside. Because of that, I probably won’t use my new lockboxes unless I absolutely have to. But the exchange went very smoothly. We were in and out in 30 minutes, and I was able to blow up and capture 3 portals for my Ingress team. I own that California Bear on Exposition. The good thing is if I lose it, I don’t have to pay a hundred bucks like I would have to do if I lost my new lockbox.