Craigslist Shenanigans

[natausch]

Sold the jointer last night. Guy called at 5:15pm and was at my house with cash in hand at 6:00pm. I did feel a little twinge of regret since the Delta has been extremely reliable.

On the very bright side my net expense for upgrading to new Ridgid DP, BS, and Jointer is $125, not bad in my opinion.

Now if I can just get enough time to pull my garage back together after insulating, drywalling and adding a heater I can actually get back to turning good wood into firewood in the month of February.

Next big step, workbench. Time to find the remaining 50bf of maple for the top.

[Tom Slick]

I recently listed an exercise machine on CL for free. It was something my wife bought 8 years ago for $120, I figured that maybe someone would haul it off instead of me cutting it up and putting it in the trash.
10 hours later I had over 30 emails, about 10 of which were obviously spam/junk. I figured the first to repond gets first "dibs" so I send him an email.

I tell him if it's not raining in my town it will be sitting in my driveway, just haul it off. I also told him I'd be gone for most of the day. He says he'll stop by mid day. No rain so I set it outside in the morning and go about my business.

I get home in the evening and its still there with an email from 12:30 "it looks a little wet outside, is your exercise machine sitting in the rain?" my response "It was sunny all day HERE, come get it ASAP or it's going to someone else, you are 1 of 30 who were interested." Their response "oh I live 1.5 hours away and it rained a little here, I guess you should give it to someone else."

I then scanned all of the emails for someone in my town, send him my address, he responded immediately and picked it up in 10 mins.

The other interesting thing was the amount of info people put in their emails. I'm not interviewing them, I don't need a cause or reason to pick you.
(I'm not kidding on these)
"That machine looks like just the thing for my elderly mom, she just had hip surgery and needs something low impact to exercise with"

"I'd like to have you machine because I'm trying to loose weight and the price is right"

"My wife just had a baby and needs to exercise to loose her "baby fat""

[woodturner]

The other interesting thing was the amount of info people put in their emails. I'm not interviewing them, I don't need a cause or reason to pick you.

On the freecycle lists, people are encouraged to provide information to assist the giver in deciding who to give it to. In addition, sellers are encouraged to not give the item to the first responder, but to evaluate needs and other factors in deciding which person to give it to.

There have been several cases of "freecycle scams" where people set up autoresponders with keywords, etc. so that they are the first response. It's not really fair to others, so this practice is discouraged and sellers are discouraged from "first come first serve".

[Tom Slick]

Thanks for the info woodturner. I've never heard of freecycle. AFAIK, current craigslist etiquette is just to include your ph#.

I still think the emails I got were TMI. What I really wanted to do is respond to all the ones that look legitimate at the same time with a "first one to pick up this pile of !@#$ gets it" but didn't want to give out my address indiscriminately.

[woodturner]

I've never heard of freecycle. AFAIK, current craigslist etiquette is just to include your ph#.

www.freecycle.org

I think a lot of people on the Craigs list free section follow the freecycle "rules", to a degree, since it is sort of like freecycling.