I swear, I think I would rather throw something away then sell it.
 

WTF is it with buyers? This time around I put up for sale a couple of brand new motorcycle tires that I got with a motorcycle I bought. Guy contacts me and wants to buy them. We agree on a price, but he asked for me to hold them until he gets back in town in a couple of weeks. So I say OK. I figured if he no-shows I can just put them back up for sale again. So today he contacts me to come get the tires. OK, says I, what time? He will be here at 1 o’clock he says. So at 1 o’clock I get a message from him saying he’ll be here at 2 o’clock. I’m starting to get to the point where the aggravation of dealing with buyers just makes me want to give up selling.

That's only the beginning. I gave up selling awhile back.

Even giving things away free is like that..... then they ask if you can deliver the item. :)

He'll show up at 5 with half the amount and say "I've got x amount, cash in hand".

I'm with you. I have a motorcycle and a ski rack I want to dispose of, and I wasn't looking forward to the process. Luckily, my daughter loves selling stuff, and she'll do it for me. I told her she could keep the money, but she wouldn't hear of it.

I think she has some sort of an app that she uses.

The last motorcycle I sold I wasted half a day picking the guy up from the airport, helping him arrange for insurance, and getting an in transit permit.

My favorite comeback to that one is, you don't have enough cash in hand. Go home.


BTW, the problem is that most people have no respect for another person's time.

I have a section of one of my barns I stage all my items to sell at the Mennonite Auction held every November in Loveville.

I auction off everything from old farm equipment, tools, power tools, the whole gamut.

Thousands of people attend. In the photo below, the big stuff is happening to the right. I make good, not great money but I deal with only the Mennonites I have known for decades.

The check arrives two weeks after the auction and everything is itemized in longhand:cool:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1615490908.jpg

Unless the item is worth more than $100 I usually take it to goodwill or similar. Usually 3-4 car loads a year.

Sellers can be flaky too, I have emails out to sellers of two bikes on Cycle Trader, have not heard anything for almost a week.

It's dealing with people. If you could get around that you'd be in high cotton!

Same thing. Last guy arrives and says he has this much in hand "cold cash". Well you are a bit short pal.

I asked him point blank how much do you still have in your pocket? Talked about the items for a moment then ask him "aren't you Cals kid, didn't you have a dog named spot when you were young? Replies no Dad named Cal.

The ones that bug me are the guys that you go back and forth with over and over to set up a time, then they show up late tell you "oh just wanted to check it out and wasn't interested in actually buying".

I have no problem negotiating or others that do. Its part of the marketplace. I have purchased and sold items very fairly priced with no room for price adjustments. The smart ones know what they are buying and selling.

I found that to be true. I email a couple people, about their 993 radio, nothing. You think they want it sold? I often wonder if people are like that back in the 50s-80s (I sold a couple things through the Recycler back then and they always showed up with 30 min)? I am sure, its just people, but I have lost faith in the general public about respect. As much as young people talk of demanding equality or respect, it seems that they are the ones that ruin it?

Same here. There’s a hassle threshold for me. We donate a lot of stuff.

I honestly take $5 dollar items, a lot of them, to the auction. If I make $2 I win. I have made hundreds just putting them in a box and taking them to the auction.

One year I took an absolutely mashed small Craftsman garden trailer to the auction. Even the Amish and Mennonites were like, eww.

I got $65 large my fiends.

Hold onto them for a few weeks?!?

Thats your problem. I'll give someone an hour, maybe 2 if it's a bigger priced item. Otherwise it's first come first serve, no holds.

I'm in the ">hundred bucks? take it to charity" club. Save the receipt and write it off at the end of the year

To follow up my original post, the buyer showed up at about 1:45, apologized for running late and bought the tires.

May that karma find you again at another point in life. Good man. We've all been there.

I gave my former Californian LL a lift from Detroit DTW. Old Lebanese couple who rented her brother's decent studio apt to me for many years. My rent checks were always 100% on the first of the month and replacing a failed dishwasher was her only cost. I didn't even complain much about the water leak from upstairs and repainting the subsequent nasty moldy bathroom which should have been a complete tear-out. It was pretty bad. Would have been a serious legal fiasco for them if some other Californian had dealt with it, and she probably found that out after I moved out. She still kept me entire security deposit even though I left it clean. Could have said something but didn't. They were very nice people and rent was well below the soaring average. No bs on either side just a bit of ignorance from theirs. Chalk it up to even over the years.

We are remodeling right now and rather than sell it, we took 9 truckloads to Goodwill and gave away a very nice complete bedroom set to a deserving young couple starting out. I have given up on C'list.

Mine is "thats a sufficient deposit fro me to hold it until you have the rest."

I despise yard sales and refuse to list things of minor value and deal with the jerks.
I used to take everything to Goodwill. Now everything goes to Habitat For Humanity. Better organization because they give needy folks an opportunity to earn the help to get themselves a home. Hand up not a handout.

I can't stand selling stuff we don't need. I'm happy to donate or take to the dumpster at the shop.

The wife on the other hand seems to have a gift. She posts the same stuff I wanted to toss on FB Marketplace and some other local forum, and everything sells. Its a win/win for me. I think in the last 6 months she has put 2500 in the vacation/tip fund stash account and I haven't taken a single thing to good will or the dumpster. lol

Cheers

I'm not seeing the problem other than your impatience. I always show up up 5 minutes earlier than I said I would be there, but I never expect other people to follow that creed.

Life happens, distractions, delays, interruptions, you can't rigidly expect perfection form the unwashed masses.

I sell a lot of stuff online. You reap what you sow there. Don't let people take advantage of you, don't hold anything without a deposit, and don't deal with chatty people.

I would rather take $5 for a furniture item than drive to Goodwill or take it to the dump.

Last resort is 'free', which means it is on the curb, come get it (BAZ). Still saves me driving somewhere.

Agree selling can be a pain.
It's much easier to buy that sell things.
I've had a car sold 3 times to 3 different people and the deal fell apart for 3 different reasons.
First Buyer went BK, 2nd I countered $3k higher and buyer disappeared...
Sold another car in a week on BAT, that was a quick and rewarding sale.
The happiest day of owning a car can still be, the day you buy it and the day you sell it.

I put stuff out on my street (no curb) and it's gone in less than 24 hours. Easy-peasy and it is now someone else's problem to realize it broken and can't be fixed.

I've had good luck with Craig's List, both buying and selling. Occasionally I'll encounter some jerk and every time I post an ad I get someone saying, "I need your item. The price is fair and I am willing to pay full price. I don't check my email, so text me at __ __ _____." It's easy enough to hit delete.

I don't see a big problem with that as I do with "I don't check my CL email so would you send a reply to [xxxxx@gmail.com]?

If you're gonna do business on CL you need to use the phone. So what if they sell your phone no.? I don't answer it anyway until a message is left. In addition, random number dialers are used for spam calls. You're gonna get a spam call even if you change your number every week.

this^^^.

could not agree more with what's been included above. i live in a rural area that can take quite a trip to get to and that helps & hurts. sold a jeep hard top that can be hard to find recently and after wading through all of the CL low ballers i finally found my guy. he was coming 2.5 hours and in our first conversation on the plan to collect it i said "im not budging off my ask so don't waste our time by coming all this way with a lower offer". he was a stand up guy, made the trip up, paid w/o any BS.

i agree that anything less than a couple hundred bucks is not worth the effort in most cases.

If I know someone has come two hours to buy what I'm selling, why would I drop my price once he's there??

You know he really wants it.

I had a TON of Porsche 911 parts in my garage taking up space. I mean.....enough to fill a pickup. I kept a few things I might need and took the rest to John Walker. He can use them. I could probably have made some good money selling those parts one at a time, but I just didn't want to do it. Money is not unimportant to me, but I have enough of that. Time and peace of mind are now more important.