What are your top tips for selling on local Facebook groups?

MSE_Jenny · 5 June 2015 at 5:01PM

Facebook's local buying and selling groups are fast rivaling eBay as a place to flog unwanted items. They work like classified sites - most are fees-free, you set the price and buyers collect.

We want to tap MoneySavers' expertise on what sells best, how to stay safe and find top groups. How much have you made? As well as local groups, have you found any fab national ones for specific types of goods?

If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply!

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jeffuk · 5 June 2015 at 5:17PM

I have been using my local Buy/Sell and Swap page for a year or so now. Its great for face to face cash on collection transactions.
Be wary of unscrupulous sellers of fake, stolen, and items not as described.
Lots of pages specialize in fishing or musical instruments and so forth.
One thing I would like to know is, is there a way to not spam your friends when you post something for sale on a Fore Sale group.

marcarm · 5 June 2015 at 7:15PM

I think, but not sure as not a massive FB user, but when you post you can select post to a,group, which only puts your post in that group. This is on the mobile app so not sure how it's done on a pc

soolin · 6 June 2015 at 10:03AM

My advice would be you need the patience of a saint.

I reckon as a rough guide the failure rate on 'collection' only sites is around 75%- 95%.you are expected to sit in and wait for hours, and you rarely get an apology when they just don't bother turning up. Selling by post sites are a bit better, for every 'sale' I make (and they are very few) only about 50% actually bother to pay, the rest just ignore you, so you send your paypal details and hold the item- and never hear anything again.

Another tip- get a cheap PAYG phone, don't use your regular number. A lot of people want a mobile number in case they get lost when collecting (it is rare anyone can use a map or a sat nav and expect full written directions)- I've had some very odd phone calls at very odd times including a 5.30 am one from someone who had failed to collect a week earlier and was passing on his way out to work and thought he would drop by...

I live in London, so have about 30+ 'local' sites I use some with as many as 20,000 users.

cbeeblebrox · 10 June 2015 at 10:26AM

Having recently sold a mobile phone using Facebook selling groups / Friday-Ad/ Gumtree etc, I thought I'd just raise awareness for this scam. It's probably been around for a while, but it was news to me....

Basically, within a week of advertising the phone for sale, I had responses from 3 different people. All three responses seemed pretty genuine, with emails received asking for further info, what my best price was etc etc. One of the responses in particular stood out, and I decided I would sell them the phone.

As this person was, in fact, some distance away from me (although still in the UK), they asked if I could send them a request for money via PayPal, and they would then pay for the phone and I'd be able to post it to them.
I did this, and, a few hours later, received an email back from the person stating they'd paid and the funds had shown as sent from both her bank account and PayPal, and that I should check both my inbox and junk mail for a receipt email from PayPal (the 'check your junk' part seemed a little suspicious).

I checked, and had nothing in my inbox at all. In my junk mail, there was an email, that seemed to be from PayPal. The email was very sophisticated - well worded, including the PayPal logo and looked to be from the PayPal email address. The contents of the email went along the lines of 'A payment has been received from xxxxxx for the value of £xxx. The amount will be held until a Tracking ID Number has been provided, at which point the funds will be released to your PayPal account'. It goes on to give a link to submit the tracking ID etc etc....

I've been in contact with PayPal and they've confirmed that they do not have any facility to 'hold' money - payments are always received immediately. The scam is working in one of two ways (or possibly both). Firstly, in order to get a tracking number, you'd need to post the item, so you basically sending the item without any payment for it. And secondly, when you click on the link and log-in to PayPal, you'll probably end up at a 'scam' site where they'll log your user ID / password for PayPal and could then feasibly clear out your bank account by 'Sending Money' etc....

I went back to the other two responses, and was appalled that these were also trying similar scams. I sent PayPal details of all three, but I guess these things are pretty difficult to crack down on.

Anyway, I went on to sell the phone locally - someone came and picked the phone up and paid cash after seeing the advert on Facebook, so all's well that ends well, but please be mindful of these kind of scams when selling.

Brooker_Dave · 10 June 2015 at 10:39AM

soolin wrote: »

I've had some very odd phone calls at very odd times including a 5.30 am one from someone who had failed to collect a week earlier and was passing on his way out to work and thought he would drop by...

Advertised some wheels on Gumtree, made mistake of showing a picture of them on the car.

Phone call at 11:45 last night.

I'm ringing about the car - What car?? - the one on Gumtree - that advert is for some wheels - but it shows a car as well, do I get the car? - no just some wheels - but there's a picture of the car, can I have the car as well.......

I hung up, matey had a few more goes at ringing but I put it on silent.

ballisticbrian · 10 June 2015 at 12:21PM

But you did say you have some "wheels" for sale , no?

baxy · 10 June 2015 at 8:35PM

I advertised a canvas print of a yacht on gumtree and had a phone call asking how many berths it had!!!!!!!

Kernow666 · 11 June 2015 at 10:12AM

have recently got into this to get rid of larger items didnt want to post , ideal for that got rid of a couple computer monitors/printers

i always put a price , short description and where i am located plus a few photos
still get people asking how much ? where are you ? can you deliver ?

as already mentioned beware of fakes and buying mobiles

Value4money · 11 June 2015 at 6:59PM

In cbeeblebrox' example: -

there was an email, that seemed to be from PayPal. The email was very sophisticated - well worded, including the PayPal logo and looked to be from the PayPal email address.

- One way to find out if the link in a suspicious e-mail would direct you to the site that it's wording suggests, is to hover your mouse pointer over the link [but don't click on it]; despite the wording in the link itself [which can be any wording at all], you should see some other wording appear [often in the bottom left of the screen] only while you're doing that, and that shows the actual 'target site' of the link. In your example cbeeblebrox, that would very likely have shown to be intending to direct you to the scammers site! Sometimes these dodgy links might even be worded to look similar to the genuine link - but the real target can't be identical, of course....and by this I mean that the actual 'target' of the link that only appears when you hover the mouse pointer over the 'always visible' link can't be identical to the'always visible' link in every respect, or it would take you to where the 'always visible' link indicates.
I hope the editing of my post has clarified the information, which 'ballisticbrian' had previously mis-understood. If anybody is still unsure what I've explained here, you're welcome to let me know.

Briezzee · 12 June 2015 at 9:26AM

My stolen bike changed hands several times on a selling group on Facebook and I only managed to track it down when someone spotted it as being the same as my post on https://stolen-bikes.co.uk - brilliant website by the way - and alerted me. The big problem I see is most of these groups are closed so unless you're a member you can't see anything posted. This makes it VERY easy to fence stolen goods as the adverts will never show up in Internet searches. It's difficult to find anything worth buying on my local group as there is so much Spam / fake and clearly stolen goods on there, but I've just joined a Worcester group and they seem to have got it right - quality second hand items at a decent price from honest people (ie they actually own the item they are selling!).

What are your top tips for selling on local Facebook groups?

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