Freecycling and Online Selling Horror Stories

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

We have a wardrobe we need rid of so advertised it on a freecycle site. A guy says he will take it so we manhandle it out the front of the house so he can collect it. The twat turns up in a normal car expecting to fit a wardrobe in it. When it doesn't fit he just shrugs and drives off.

Sorry Pawwed but this made me laugh The fact he just shrugged and drove off!

My sister lives in Germany and recently had a sofa delivered. The guy rings her buzzer to say he's there and when she comes down he's gone and there's a huge sofa in the courtyard. She lives on the top floor of an old building with no lift. She calls him and he says i delivered it didn't it...i never said id carry it inside.
The sofa now lives in the courtyard. Be nice in the summertime:)
TA lazy incompetent people who half ass a job.

Porklife wrote: »

Sorry Pawwed but this made me laugh The fact he just shrugged and drove off!

My sister lives in Germany and recently had a sofa delivered. The guy rings her buzzer to say he's there and when she comes down he's gone and there's a huge sofa in the courtyard. She lives on the top floor of an old building with no lift. She calls him and he says i delivered it didn't it...i never said id carry it inside.
The sofa now lives in the courtyard. Be nice in the summertime:)
TA lazy incompetent people who half ass a job.

I sent some queries to my guru, his responses were;
1. Did you read the instructions? (duh, of freaking course)
2. You've been using it well enough up to now(yes but I need to do something else with it now)
3. Did you ask your supervisor? (see the response to 1, but also, supervisor speaks gibberish)

They are on three times my money for this crap!

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

We have a wardrobe we need rid of so advertised it on a freecycle site. A guy says he will take it so we manhandle it out the front of the house so he can collect it. The twat turns up in a normal car expecting to fit a wardrobe in it. When it doesn't fit he just shrugs and drives off.

Reminds me of the time I put a couch up on Adverts.ie.
Couch was never really used but as I would have needed a van to shift it I put it up for free but stated taker must have their own way of transporting it.

First person to respond to ad says they'll definitely take it.
Then asks will I drop it off at their house 45 miles away. :rolleyes:

blade1 wrote: »

Reminds me of the time I put a couch up on Adverts.ie.
Couch was never really used but as I would have needed a van to shift it I put it up for free but stated taker must have their own way of transporting it.

First person to respond to ad says they'll definitely take it.
Then asks will I drop it off at their house 45 miles away. :rolleyes:

Same. Put a lovely corner sofa up for free before, just had to be collected. The amount of chancers who asked would we deliver it, would we meet them halfway, etc. One guy even asked would we pay for the diesel he'd use coming to collect it.

Necro wrote: »

Mod:


After discussion with the AH Mod team, I'm splitting these posts off from the TA thread as we think it could be a fun thread in its own right.

where’s it gone so!!!??
Link??? (please!)

Had a premium brand pram/buggy up on Done Deal a few years ago. Prefect condition, all the bits and bobs, and priced to sell. A woman from the county beside us phoned my wife asking about it, my wife agreed to knock a few quid off it, and the woman said she’d come out the next day.

Next day she arrives, very heavily pregnant, with her husband and a toddler in tow. My wife shows her the buggy in the house while my kids played with the toddler in the front garden, and I chatted with the husband outside. 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour pass. I head in to check what’s going on. Pregnant woman is examining every single centimetre of the buggy in fine detail. She calls in the husband, who she asked to turn it over. She spins all the wheels and listens closely to them. They’re all fine, but one wheel makes a slightly different pitch sound to the others. Not a squeak or a grinding sound or anything - just a bare different tone.

So this was it. The buggy clearly was not in the state it was described, and she clearly deserved a hefty discount for the trouble of having to drive a whole county away and discovering this hidden defect herself. My wife just burst out laughing. I looked at the husband, and he stared back at me with a look that said “Help me! I’m trapped! She’s insane!”.

After the laughter subsided, my wife said “Right, you’ve taken up enough of my time. Price we agreed or get out.” The woman literally threw the money at my wife, barked at her husband to gather up the buggy, and stormed out of our house raging. Husband sheepishly followed with the buggy and the toddler, apologising quietly.

After they went, we discovered that in the drama of it all, they had forgotten to take a bag of attachments they’d need to fit a car seat on it. Wife tried to phone her to tell her, and offer to post it to her free of charge, but she wouldn’t answer the phone.

Edit: Actually, an odd follow up to this story that I just remembered. A few weeks later my wife did get on to the woman, and got her address. Whatever happened then, there was a delay of a couple of months in sending the bits. The woman never got back in to us about it. Anyway, one day my wife posts it off, in a padded bag she’d got a Brown Thomas makeup delivery in. She had peeled off the old address label, and stuck a new one on with the woman’s address.

A few weeks later, she gets an unexpected delivery from BT. Opens it up, and it’s the buggy bits with a letter on BT headed paper. Turns out, during the delay in posting, the woman had moved house. New residents got the package, but didn’t have a forwarding address. My wife had no return address on the package. So they sent it to Brown Thomas, with a note. BT get it and don’t know what to do with it. But when my wife peeled off the original label, she left behind a barcode that represented her BT account. BT scanned it, got her address and sent it back to her.

We had an old baby toy - a star shaped projector that shone a rotating scene of cartoon bears, and played a lullaby. It broke - it didn’t rotate any more. I popped it in the local WEEE recycling in the Council depot.

A few months later, my wife returns all excited from dropping some stuff of at a charity shop, with a star shaped projector. “This is just like the one that broke on us! It was only €2!”

I pointed out that it had the exact same stickers on it that one of our kids had decorated ours with. Turned it on, and sure enough, it doesn’t rotate.

€2 to buy our own broken recycling back.

Gregor Samsa wrote: »

We had an old baby toy - a star shaped projector that shone a rotating scene of cartoon bears, and played a lullaby. It broke - it didn’t rotate any more. I popped it in the local WEEE recycling in the Council depot.

A few months later, my wife returns all excited from dropping some stuff of at a charity shop, with a star shaped projector. “This is just like the one that broke on us! It was only €2!”

I pointed out that it had the exact same stickers on it that one of our kids had decorated ours with. Turned it on, and sure enough, it doesn’t rotate.

€2 to buy our own broken recycling back.

:pac:

I grew up in a house and you'd tie stuff to the roof or leave the boot open and item hanging out and tie it onto the car some how and sometimes with I'd be crouched in the back holding it down.

Another time, my wife decided to plant an oak tree in a pot. My Dad had done it years before. So I said I knew where there was a big oak tree in a neighbouring village, and I’d look for some acorns on my way home from work. “No need”, my wife says, and shows me a listing on our local “free to a good home” website (this was before they were popular on FB) for a guy very specifically giving away eight acorns.

She phones him and within an hour, he’s knocking at the door with an envelope with eight acorns in it - like some kind of nut dealer doing a “the first hit is free” deal.

We planted a few of the acorns, one of them took, and we still have a miniature oak tree in a pot in the back garden.

Was giving away 2 x 2 seater sofas before on Adverts, I wanted both of them gone together and stated that in the ad and that a van would be needed to fit them both. Up turns a couple in an old battered red van and they said they only wanted one of them. Wasnt having it at all and the wife is complaining that they came from 20 miles away. Had to run the pair of messers in the end.

Thats the last time Ive ever put anything up for free. Even now if I had a sofa or similar to get rid of Id be putting it up for a tenner rather than for free. Once things are free you're a lot more likely to meet some idiot who will mess you about, these people only scan the free ads so by putting a nominal amount you get to avoid them.

This story is about something bought in a shop but I feel it's worth sharing.

Long long ago when my brother was around 7 or 8 my mother would taking him with her shopping.
It was leading up to Christmas and every day they would walk past the toy shop.
In the window there was a box with a picture of a train on it and each day my brother would point at it and beg my mother could he please get that for Christmas.

So Christmas day arrives and my brother runs to the Christmas tree and rips the paper off the parcel with his name on it.
A train! he yells as the box from the shop window is revealed.
Pulls the top off the box and next his jaw nearly hits the ground.
No train.
All it was was a junction box thingy for switching the tracks.

I had some fcuking ape on adverts asking me about a free item

Wouldnt bother coming out to collect it. Suggest I drop it to his house in a nearby town "when Im passing". I ignored him, obviously didn't want it badly enough

Deleted User wrote: »

About 20 years ago, I had a spare ticket to a sold out gig which I was selling for twice market value (80e).

In fairness, there are two d1ckheads in that story.

BalboBiggins wrote: »

In fairness, there are two d1ckheads in that story.

No there's not. You can sell almost anything for what ever you want and it's up to the buyer to buy it or not.