So I need some cash and to clear some space as the "landlady" is complaining about why I need 3 bicycles when I only ride one at a time.
Fair, I suppose. One hasnt been ridden in years. It was the result of another bike's frame snapping after some pillock rear-ended me at slow speed, pinning the frame down and popping the guy's bumper right off. Kona refused to honour their lifetime warranty over it, so I bought a rival firms frame and had the other parts transferred over.
The other bike was a gazelle-like superfast racing bike. Arse in the air, head down affair. Used to ride the 5 miles from work in about 20 minutes on that. The constant battering from the roads like moon craters and bastards who'd throw glass in the cycle lanes took their toll on the "shred proof" tyres and splitting the wheels at the rims. I had that repaired with cheaper rims but rarely rode it like before.
Then the past 2 years I've had health issues and cant get out as much. I went from 3-4000 miles a year down to a couple of hundred at most. I may be a little depressed at that, but that is life.
So. I put listings on Gumtree (a UK freeads site) and Facebook marketplace. Both bikes were about £1000 to have made up, probably a lot more now I think. I listed each for a fair £200 given their age.
"Can't I give you £50?"
"I dont have cash right now, can I pay you later?"
Or the worst "Do you still have the bike?" I reply yes within minutes, and then I'm ghosted.
20 messages of each. Infuriating. Tempted to send the bikes to a local charity instead. They'll be the most blinged out charity bikes you've seen. Charity would probably get their money's worth. I now love the thought of someone who couldn't afford a racer with open pros and hope hubs riding it about.
Want your item. My wife will pick up later today but I'll pay via scammy method. What is your scammy method ID?
I loved messing with these people.
“Oh that 3 year old car for $2,200? I’d love to buy it! What’s that? You have to ship it from Michigan? What a coincidence! My brother lives in Michigan! He can go pick it up and save us both the time and costs of shipping :) What’s that? It’s locked up in a storage lot? Oh that’s no trouble at all. I’ll have my brother go down there and pressure them to let it go :)”
Just one excuse after another until they’d eventually stop replying. About the only way I could get some fun out of the frustration when just trying to browse for a decent car.
Western Union used to be the scammers choice down here …I know of one old dear, now sadly passed, who lost a lot of money through that.
I can't get this through my wife's head. She works in the nearest city, and now and then, something decent will turn up on Facebook marketplace. I ask her to message the seller and pick it up, and she always asks me to get in touch with them instead.
She can't accept that people will think it's a scam.
Its not the other party as much as the other party and also they are wanting to pay electronically in with a method they can refund on.
You know you can just not tell them that someone else will pick it up right?
I constantly grab expensive art supplies for my wife and i rarely even get a weird look. I only had one person even ask who i was.
Facebook marketplace gets a ton of these "are they still available" posts. It's a combination of idiots who accidentally click the button (which automatically posts this) and mostly bots that are inquiring about ads because it's an easy way to appear like the account is "active"and a real person
I did wonder at the time if they were bots, but some seemed engaged in posts about local subjects so I assumed they were real people.
I had a thing thing on with a bookcase and told them I was sick of haggling; they could have it for free, it's at the end of the driveway.
My buddy picked me up to do something right after and helped me take it down to the end of the driveway. He said if it's there when we get back I'll take it (he drives a van for his business).
He dropped me off hours later, 3 hours after the guys said they would come and the bookcase was still there, it was going to rain, so we loaded it into his van.
As we're doing this the brodogs show up in a car way too small to handle this item and acting like they would fight us over this transgression. Lol.
Had a workmate with a situation like that. Tried to get rid of the child's bed as it was too small. Stated no car but still had people with "cant you deliver??!"
Try raising the price. It's counterintuitive but most people perceive quality with price. If these are very nice bikes for very little people may think something is wrong with them or it's a scam. Find a like model for sale and knock your price down like 10% or so as to seem like a deal.
Also, the price point determines the sort of people looking at your add
"price firm, must have cash in hand"
Then just ignore anyone else and don't bother replying.
Those were literally all the replies I got.
That means no one was interested. I get the same on dating sites.
It's really infuriating, I hate so much.
"I can only offer €25 for that Ryzen 5600x, is that ok?"
"It's just a toy, can I get it for €5?" (=That collectible that is out of print, can I get it for 1/10th of the average sale price on eBay so I can make some buck?)
And the worst offender is when I put on sale a consumable for an industrial machine. 100 euro new and i put on sale for €30, brand new in box, because the machine broke before I could use it. You need to buy it every six month and if you didn't buy it from me "used", you would be forced to buy it al full price anyway: "Can I get it for 5 euro?" Fuck that!
Yeah the collectables and comics thing is a bit cruel. As you say these people are only going to sell it on ebay and try and make profit.
I'm on the opposite end of this. Seems every time I reach out about an item I'm either ghosted, or the person sold it ten weeks ago and couldn't be fucked to take it down. I think people are just inept in general, as several years in Customer Service revealed to me long ago. I watch people whip left turns onto busy streets without so much as looking nearly every single day. The general populace is pretty low-functioning, and they're out there raising kids and making important decisions.
Yeah thats fucked too. I always deleted my listings. I certainly deleted the last one. Laptop still has the bruises, LOL!
I had a wooden one car garage I wanted gone. Posted it on marketplace, 81 people contacted me about it. About 10 showed up to look at it, said they'd take it, then ghosted me. One woman, a meth head, actually came back to start working on it, and all she had was a hammer, small pry bar, and a small hatchback. She would come late at night and work by cell phone flash light. I told her to stop coming.
One afternoon, the wife and I went to a movie. As we were leaving, I checked my phone and a guy named Jay inquired and made an additional comment. So, my best friend's name is Jay, and the profile photo was of two boys in baseball uniforms. And my best friend had two boys in baseball at the time, also my best friend would also find my posted items and ask if they were available and have some additional funny comment. Before my brain had time to analyze the situation, I fired off a quick "yeah it is, come and get it daddy." and quickly put my phone away. Then I freaked out because the boys in his photo looked nothing like my buddy's kids, and I looked at the profile and sure as fuck it wasn't him.
I panicked. I was going to delete the message, but then realized it probably wouldn't delete on their end. So I just fessed up and told him how I had made the mistake and I apologized. Guy was very understanding and said he'd be there tomorrow to get the garage.
He "got into an accident" and couldnt come get it. Never heard from him again.
My personal favourite: "What's your cheapest price for cash?". Like I'm a a department store taking credit card or something.
Yeah, what else were they going to pay with? Theme park tokens?
When I use Gumtree, I'm always on best behavior, as I know what absolute shits people can be on it.
I check it's still available, if I want to knock anything off (within reason) I do it nice and early, then I schedule a time to collect (or even offer a deposit if it's a good deal).
I picked up some garden furniture recently, and it was a very good price. By the time I got there, the lady told me she'd had 10 people trying to haggle an already giving-it-away price down.
Too many people like the "hustle" and reselling, when really Gumtree is for transferring items from someone who doesn't want it, to someone who does.Depending on where you are, there are a lot of charity bike places.
Mine came from there, I got a very solid ridgeback meteor for just over £100.There are 2 main charities near me, both train people to fix bikes, one trains local school kids how to ride. I've just filled a shoe box with lights and spare parts, and sorted out a bin bags worth of clothes I no longer need. I've yet to find time but will look over the 2 bikes and make a decision soon. I'll be a bit sad to see them go, one of them I did up to 10,000 miles on over the years I used it.
Selling anything online via Craigslist or FB marketplace, or any similar thing is just an awful experience all around.
I sold a car a couple years ago on FB marketplace and it was the same deal. Everyone thinks that somehow, low balling will work. As if I'm going to sell a $3000 car for $100. Like, bruh.
I ended up just replying "lol" to any low ballers and blocking them.
A fun alternative though is to agree to their low ball price, give them address to the local clown school, and then ghost em when they ask where you are. If they are gonna slide into your DMs to tell jokes, they should at least learn how to do it properly.
I did something similar with a troll on a popular forum. He kept saying he was going to find me and stab me. Knowing he had no way of actually locating me I gave him a Police HQ and said "pop in any time!"
I don't think it's fair of your landlady to give you grief about your bikes. You pay the rent, you get to keep your possessions there. If you have 3 bikes I don't see why it's her business, unless it's a shared rent space or something.
LOL, not a real landlady. Hence the quotation marks 😉 😇
Ah, I understand now. Apologies
No need to apologise. She aint that bad 😉 🤣
I've been the guy to send the do you still have this and then ghost before. I thought the button to instantly send the seller a message without confirming was the send this to a buddy button. Whoops sorry guys.
I know its got its fair share of problems, but I always had a much better experience selling basically anything on ebay than FB marketplace or gumtree. There's just something about these free classified ads that seems to attract people that take the piss.
Now that I'm out of the UK, I miss even having those, though. In some European countries the idea of buying/selling uesd things just doesnt seem to have caught on at all.
