Freecycle (Merged Thread)

oliver2008

hula-hoops wrote: »

And as for this latest craze of referring to everything that is dark brown as 'chocolate' - grrrr! It's p**p brown, deal with it.

:rotfl:p**p brown, although I call it chocolate

cally6008

There is also a group called Freeshare - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/England-Freeshare/

Georgecarol

hula-hoops wrote: »

That sums it up nicely, Georgecarol.

I have just realised the logic in allowing people to post 'wanted' after 'wanted' - for even the most excessive things. If these weren't posted, how would I know what kind of people I am dealing with when I wade through the dozens of replies to an offered?

But a recent post on our group made me seethe:

Hi all, does anyone have a chocolate brown/tan bed throw or quilt? Now
the nights are getting colder i would like a bit of extra warmth at
night, without having to put the heating on during the night!! What
with the way the world is going, i am trying to reduce the bills. I
would be very gratefull of a bed throw or quilted throw, if anyone has
a spare one? Double or kingsize if possible.

If all she needs is something to keep her warm at night, what does it matter what colour it is? And as for this latest craze of referring to everything that is dark brown as 'chocolate' - grrrr! It's p**p brown, deal with it.

As in when people refer to things as shabby chic. Come one, call a spade a spade, it's old re-painted crap

Georgecarol

cally6008 wrote: »

There is also a group called Freeshare - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/England-Freeshare/

Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be taking off too well as they started a year and a half ago, have 17 members and have had 1 message in the past year

cally6008

It depends what area you are in, the two groups Im in have well over 1600 members.

Georgecarol

Aaah....that sounds better, I was just going off the link you gave

cally6008

Thats just the link to the main group, if you click on Links it shows a list of all the UK groups.

Georgecarol

Oh dear, unfortunately no better. My local group has been going 18 months, has 4 members and has no activity as all. That's a real shame

frugalpam

I lost heart with Freecycle for a long time due to all the 'greedy grabbers' but it's good to see that the Mods in this group (my local group) are keeping a very close eye on what goes on and listen to/act upon comments from members :T

Georgecarol wrote: »

I just wanted to say that this was my admin that went out to my group. I have read quite a few of the complaints on here and they are very reasonable complaints.
We had a new owner that placed the rule that you had to place an offer before a wanted and that was changed right after he was removed as that is a breach of freecycle rules and can affect the charity status. We put a cap on the amount of wanteds and allow 4 a month, which we feel is reasonable as we had members joining after reading one-sided newspaper reports all about how they can rake in all kinds of free stuff. We did actually reject anything we considered a luxury item and then changed our minds for a couple of reasons. The first being, who are we to deem what is a luxury? What I consider a luxury, some others consider to be everday disposable items. The second being, why should we be the only ones that get to see how greedy some people can be? the way we look at it now, if you want to ask for a laptop that has an 80 gig harddrive, runs Vista and has a good enough graphics card to play games on.....go ahead. then everyone can see what a Greedy Gerta you are and all this will do is to offend the decent members and get a name for yourself. We feel that the members are smart enough to decide for themselves who are greedy and who are needy, so why should we do this for them.
This isn't to say that wants are not a necessary part of freecycle. They remind us maybe of what we have stuck under the stairs or at the back of the cupboard that we don't have any intention of using anymore because Great Aunt Hildy gives the worst presents. They have become even more important these days with people losing their jobs and their houses. We all have to realise though, at the end of the day, this is a group that was started to save items from the landfill, so we do actually reject items that fail the landfill test. We are a busy group and deal with over 4,000 posts a month and though sad to say, it seems that has gone out of the window and is now a place to get cool free stuff, but we do our best to keep it running smoothly.
I have read that many people have complaints about their groups. The first place to deal with that would be the group owner. If it is a complaint about the group itself, then go to freecycle.org and lodge a complaint there. If you have had prior communication in regards to the issue, please keep it as you will need to provide that to your local GOA when it is dealt with.
Don't write the groups off though as I find ours runs pretty well problem free, we deal with complaints quickly, our admins always contain humour to deal with any issues because no one wants a preachy no-face sending you posts and we get good feedback. Hang in and see if things improve, maybe there are new people behind the scenes and things are being worked out. if not, then try the suggestions above. Sorry for the long post

BrandNewDay

This just posted on our local group:

Wanted: Car in Good Condition.
Small to medium sized car, in any colour. Would prefer if it was made
in 2005 or later.

At least they're not picky about the color!