** The Following Is a Paid Article **
The cost of living in Canada is skyrocketing and one of the most prominent groups affected is students. Attending university is incredibly expensive, and course materials, textbooks, and housing are all rising in price as inflation occurs. Another commanding issue for many students is the climate crisis. Buying new textbooks is both expensive and wasteful for our environment. Tosmos is a site that aims to help the student community with this issue. It provides a secure marketplace for students to buy and sell materials they need online. In order to sell items on Tosmos, a member has to have a valid university email proving they are a part of the university community.
I was excited to use this site as I personally have had countless issues with third-party sites such as Kijji or Facebook Marketplace when trying to buy important textbook materials. Sites like those frankly do not do enough to fight against spam and scammers. Tomsos provides a secure verification system that is aimed at protecting the buyer first. When you purchase an item through the site, it holds the money until both the buyer and seller confirm that the buyer has received the item. Users are encouraged within the app to use safety and common sense when picking up an item, and doing so during the daytime and preferably on campus or around lots of people.
Using Tosmos is incredibly simple and straightforward. When logging onto the site, users can choose from a multitude of categories and see recommended textbooks. Students can make money selling pretty much anything on campus. There are separate categories for textbooks, electronics, and even furniture that provide an easy and clear way to recycle and reuse products in order to reduce overall waste. Furniture in particular is extremely expensive to buy new and myself and my partner will definitely be using this site as it grows to purchase some items for our apartment.
It is quickly becoming a necessity in schools to have a laptop or Chromebook with you during your lessons. Buying technology, however, is extremely hard for most students, being either extremely expensive if buying new or risky if from a private seller. Students already have so much on their plate that they deserve a safe and secure marketplace made by students, for students who have their back.
Selling is quick and easy. The site provides no fees, with funds being transferred directly into your bank account after dual confirmation. The site also prevents spam emails at the source by never publicly displaying your name or contact information. The platform has now rolled out to a number of universities across Canada, including Acadia University and other institutions in the Maritimes such as Mount Allison and Saint Mary’s University.
Housing has been a gigantic issue for students, especially in cities like Halifax. Between 2021 and 2022, rent for an average 2-bedroom apartment skyrocketed 9.3 percent. This has undoubtedly affected the student housing market as low-cost housing, which is usually the only thing that students can afford, has been fully taken advantage of. Halifax is also particularly problematic for people of color. Statistics Canada ranked Halifax as the worst in the country for adequate housing for people of color, notably placing it behind major cities such as Toronto and Vancouver. Tosmos sees this issue and aims to help students with this, as they are opening a housing section on their site allowing students to have a marketplace of their own to look for and rent out housing. This is a new feature that is being tested for Acadia University, allowing students in the Annapolis Valley to have a secure and fair marketplace for housing.
Tosmos’s user-friendly platform is a great aid to the student community, allowing students to access the products they need without any risk of spam or scam. For more information check out Tosmos.ca.
