Freecycle Nusiance

biscuit81_2

There seems to be a chap on my freecycle group who has responded to every offer post I have ever made.

I have offered quite a mix of items so I wondered if he was a professional car booter or ebayer - guess what, when I looked up the username of his email address he was a power seller on ebay selling various items I had seen offered on freecycle- cheeky or what!

Cardew

biscuit81 wrote: »

There seems to be a chap on my freecycle group who has responded to every offer post I have ever made.

I have offered quite a mix of items so I wondered if he was a professional car booter or ebayer - guess what, when I looked up the username of his email address he was a power seller on ebay selling various items I had seen offered on freecycle- cheeky or what!

I think that is very common, as I posted above.

Some people don't have a problem with that(like Justie above); and I can understand their logic.
They are a modern electronic age equivalent of the 'rag and bone' man.(Steptoe)

However personally it 'bugs' me. Especially as their tactics make it difficult for more deserving cases to get Freecycle goods.

Unless you dispose of loads of items, and carefully monitor who responds, it is not possible to discover who these people are. People using the newspaper small adverts for selling cars must by law declare they are a trader, I rather wish it was possible to have the same principle applied to these 'traders' who will never declare their profits for tax purposes.

biscuit81_2

Cardew wrote: »

I think that is very common, as I posted above.

Some people don't have a problem with that(like Justie above); and I can understand their logic.
They are a modern electronic age equivalent of the 'rag and bone' man.(Steptoe)

However personally it 'bugs' me. Especially as their tactics make it difficult for more deserving cases to get Freecycle goods.

Unless you dispose of loads of items, and carefully monitor who responds, it is not possible to discover who these people are. People using the newspaper small adverts for selling cars must by law declare they are a trader, I rather wish it was possible to have the same principle applied to these 'traders' who will never declare their profits for tax purposes.

I agree, especially as this guy seems to be on his computer 24/7 so is always the first to respond leaving little chance for others. The worst thing is that he makes up little sob stories of why he needs its - so far, he claims to have a disabled mother and daughter, five foster children and suffers from MS and ME as well as being involved with a local playgroup, the scouts and the St John's ambulance:rolleyes: - I don't think he keeps track of who he emails...:rotfl:

morg_monster

biscuit - you should report it to your group mods. There is someone who posts wanted ads in various local freecycle groups in S London looking for Sky boxes - again, a guy with a very similar username was selling them on Ebay. He got banned - though not for selling them on, but rather for not saying in his wanted ad that that was what he was going to do.

Again with this guy - he should be saying he is going to sell them, as can be seen from these threads there are different opinions on this, some think it is OK and some don't. But he should at least tell the people that is what he's planning. In this case since there's pretty firm evidence that this is what he is doing the mods should do something about it.

Ianna

Regarding his false claims about working for charities, the mods should stop that. I'm doing collections for charities and my mods have insisted on proof which is completely right of them. I really think you should ask the mods if they're going to do anything about it and if that doesn't get anywhere contact St Johns and out him as a fraudster. :mad:

He sounds absolutely AWFUL. He's exactly why freecycle needs monitoring!

jordylass

We used to have someone saying they were collecting for St John's and we got in touch with them. They were very concerned about it, as we weren't the only people to ask them about him and he was banned from our group.

500yearvision

I would like it if the Freecycle format was changed, so that instead of having to trawl through so many wanted emails, retractions, thanks etc items would be removed from a list once they were gone.

I have a yahoo account which is now unusable because of the massive backlog of Freecycle email. It's irksome that Freecycle is so abused.

It's important for Freecycle to be as user friendly as possible to encourage uptake and divert stuff from landfill.

morg_monster

Why not just look at the posts online or get a digest - i definitely couldn't hack getting all the emails into my account!!! much easier to look online.

chocolatechipcookies

I have a love/hate relationship with Freecycle. I love the fact that someone can get use out of something I would normally throw away. Then again, it's too much hassle. It's not the listing, but the chasing, the emailing the finding a time to be home so they can pick it up.

I've just packed things in bin bags and taken them to charity shops. I have 3 bags of clothes I need to take. :money:

chocolatechipcookies

grayme-m wrote: »

For us it does appear that there are the greedy people that just want something for nothing, someone once asked for a car that was a 'BMW or if not [they] would take a Mercedes'! :rolleyes2

It is like they are doing you a favour in taking away your stuff, not coming or delaying their arrival.

My wife got a reply to an email two months after something went asking when they could come to collect (it was their first contact, it was not as if they had ever been offered).

Still, it is handy to get rid of things rather than take to the tip and if you can find those polite people that seem genuinely needy that is an added bonus.

How anyone can think that 'yep, Ill av it' is going to get a positive response is beyond me! :eek:

I always see people wanting PS2 or PS2 games. :rotfl: