Gumtree time wasters

kalsha

After a long break from Gumtree, I decided to give it another go since I all the initial work done anyway for ebay (photos done, description written etc).
All I have got in the last few weeks is "is it still available?" and then nothing! Of course, I reply with "yes it is available" and that is all I say at that stage. What exactly are these time wasters hoping for - me to give out my bank details in the first reply?

Can someone please explain what it is that they are after and what is in it for them to keep asking "is it still available". What is that they want from me, which I should not be telling them????

I do not give out the phone number or address in the first reply. I have never reached the second stage!

1DayAAT

From what I gather, these kind of "is it still available?" messages are sent out to millions of the adverts and then the follow up which might sometimes happen (happened a lot to me when selling cars on there) is the classic 'Can you ship the car to me (to some obscure international place), I will transfer you all of the money via Western Union, full asking price and full shipping price' - the money duly arrives, but then the money received is reclaimed after the car is shipped.
So you've lost the car and all the money. And have zero protection.
I am amazed that this still happens but it actually happened once to someone I know, ages ago.

Just keep sending out your generic reply that it is still for sale, as you never know when it may be a genuine buyer - but don't ever get further into agreeing to receive funds via a questionable method and remember if your heart is telling you it's something dodgy then it probably is!

adonis

I have noticed the same thing, I have had the "is it still available?" message within a couple of hours of posting the ad and like kalsha I don't give out my phone number or full address in the first reply.

I wondered if there was an app or something that listed new posts some people use.

kalsha

adonis wrote: »

I have noticed the same thing, I have had the "is it still available?" message within a couple of hours of posting the ad and like kalsha I don't give out my phone number or full address in the first reply.

I wondered if there was an app or something that listed new posts some people use.

Yes, you are right, it is always within the first few hours of posting and then nothing! I did wonder about that.

googler

kalsha wrote: »

Of course, I reply with "yes it is available" and that is all I say at that stage.

You're not including the 'call to action' as the sales force put it.

If you went into the car showroom and asked if the 325i in front of you was 'still available', the salesperson would of course reply with "yes it is available", but you can be sure that will be followed up very soon with

"Would you like to take a test drive?"
"Would you like to discuss finance options?"
"Do you have a vehicle to trade in?"
etc
etc

So your response should be

"Yes, it is still available. Would you like to make arrangements to come and buy it?"

or something similar. See if that gets you more positive responses.

kalsha

googler wrote: »

So your response should be

"Yes, it is still available. Would you like to make arrangements to come and buy it?"

or something similar. See if that gets you more positive responses.

Sounds good. I'll give that a go from now on, but something tells me that they still will not reply. No harm trying that out. Thanks.

adonis

googler wrote: »

You're not including the 'call to action' as the sales force put it.

If you went into the car showroom and asked if the 325i in front of you was 'still available', the salesperson would of course reply with "yes it is available", but you can be sure that will be followed up very soon with

"Would you like to take a test drive?"
"Would you like to discuss finance options?"
"Do you have a vehicle to trade in?"
etc
etc

So your response should be

"Yes, it is still available. Would you like to make arrangements to come and buy it?"

or something similar. See if that gets you more positive responses.

I usually put that anyway and it don't make any difference,
although sometimes when I relist the ad a month later I will get emails quickly and get a sale.

bxboards

I tried Gumtree recently, and I also got lots of 'is it still available?' messages - I replied that yes it was, and I'd be happy for them to come over and view. After 4 or 5 of these, I figured out it was just timewasters, but can't quite see what they hope to gain if they never reply back to the response to their initial inquiry.

eaglesrjh

There are a couple of issues with gumtree messages,

as above it can be scammers hoping to get some info or an idea that they might be able to scam someone.

It may well be someone who has replied to multiple adverts but only ends up buying one.

Or increasingly likely there is a spam/junk mail issues with gumtree.

When a message is sent from the gumtree site or the app in reply to an ad that seems to be fine, but when that message is replied to through a normal email client it seems to get marked as junk by a large number of email handlers.

I learned this with a few people replying later saying they had just found my reply in spam folders, i then experimented with a number of email addresses and clients and found that the reply to the message ended up in a lot of spam/junk folders, therefore dependent on how the person has their email set up they may well never see the reply or not see it till too late.