SE optomisation ~ reciprocal links?

[Egg Bramhill]

In this THREAD the member has created a site with a links page from his electronics products shop. The links are completely unassociated with his sites products and his wares. The only purpose of such obscure links can be to optimise's search engine ranking.

Firstly I wouldn't want to create a site that uses such scattergun meaningless links nor would I want to offer visitors such a confusing and meaningless chance to leave a site I'd created and struggled hard to optimise for SEO.

I'm well aware that SE's now weigh reciprocal links quite heavily but how do other members view these reciprocal link services.

Should SE's weigh these links so heavily? I view them in the same way as searching for a "taxi" in "Boston" and being flooded with further directories (sub search engines) of meaningless taxi directories. Of course you can change Taxi for Hotel and Boston for Glasgow.

I'd be interested in other folks opinions.