As a buyer, I approached a couple of posters on here who’d offered up their shares for sale. Had a private chat with the first for a couple of days, and we agreed a price. However, he then stopped communicating. My conclusion was that he’d found a buyer willing to offer a higher price.
On my attempt with the second seller, his sale had already been pre-approved. I PMd him. We agreed a price, and CrowdCube then performed some due diligence on me - not complicated since I was already a crowdfunding investor. CrowdCube also confirmed to me that the seller was genuine.
Since CrowdCube don’t get involved in the payment side of the sale, the seller and I decided to use an escrow service called Transpact. This takes away the risk of buying/selling something online from someone you don’t know. Essentially, for a fee of £3.99 each, the buyer and seller agree a formal contract on Transpact, using CrowdCube as the referee. Once the contract is agreed, the buyer pays the money to Transpact, who inform CrowdCube that the payment has been made. CrowdCube then transfer the share ownership to the buyer, and Transpact release the funds to the seller.
The whole process took less than a week (though the sale had been pre-approved) and much of this was the due diligence, and the time it took us to load an agreement onto Transpact. From my payment to receiving the shares, the process took around an hour.
Not as easy as transacting through a marketplace, but still pretty decent.