I never learn- waiting on a facebook collection -again

soolin

Having vowed never to try and give anything away again on facebook - i relented and offered up a small item of furniture that's far too good to throw away, it's also on freegle and similar places. Listing showed lots of photos , full measurements (inches and cms) , a part post code - plus the usual no delivery available. The item was free.

I'm on day 4 having wasted hours of my time on people who have failed to turn up, or turn up in a small car to collect a piece of furniture that obviously needs a large car or small van. My Oh was actually slightly ruder yesterday to someone than I would have liked, having waited in on 3 failed definite collections someone turned up in an Aygo - my Oh came to the door whilst I was telling the person it wouldn't fit - and they insisted that my OH helped her try - and he just said no as the furniture was considerably  bigger than her available loading area  and closed the door in her face. 

I'm also some sort of disaster magnet as so far when I message people when it is way past their definite collect by time, they have all had disasters which means they couldn't even struggle to the phone to apologise for not coming. 

I'm sitting here now waiting for someone who was definitely coming by 10 , I have emailed to see if they have changed their mind but have no reply. 

Am I just unlucky with trying to get rid of things or does this happen to others as well?

Mark_d

Hopefully your 10am person does show up soon.

I've tried freecycle in the past.  You have to wait around for people to collect items and then they're downright ungrateful.

I do longer donate/give away items any more.  If I want to get rid of something I just dump it at a time that's convenient to me.

soolin

Apparently the 10am collector is definitely on their way and hope to be here by 12......if they don't come then I'm taking a hammer to it and will drag the bits to the local refuse site this afternoon. Such a shame as it's a good useful piece of well built furniture- I had over 40 interested people but cannot spend another wasted day waiting on people that don't turn up. 

Cairnpapple

Oh I've done this so often. I never learn. l I'll stop for a few months and forget how bad it is. The only saving grace of my local free Facebook group is that the mods have a rule of iron and will happily boot people off for non collection.

My sister has a policy of only listing things that can be left outside (in porch or storage box) so that the collection is less disruptive. I think that's a helpful technique but obviously no good for furniture.

Thankfully a friend's daughter moved to the UK for postgraduate studies and has taken all of our old tired kitchenware and some bedlinen, lamps etc.  I'm hoping that with more people's children leaving home I might manage to offload more in time. 

Dark_Star

We get this a lot but with freegle & freecycle. I now state that it's left outside for contactless collection only. If not taken then , if good enough, it goes to charity otherwise landfill. Very annoying.
Many years ago tried to donate a spare working fridge. No takers. Put it in local free-ads paper. Someone paid £10 PLUS £5 for us to deliver (5 miles away) as it was December & snowing ;we had a 4x4 which could cope with the roads (not much gritting here...).  So £15 for something we tried to give away free.   
Perhaps offer for £5 on Ebay? Someone may pay you to remove it?

jackieblack

Some charities collect furniture to sell in their shops - I've had several things collected by British Heart Foundation
They won't take everything, but details are on their website - you can book online and the local shop will contact you to confirm

soolin

I gave up at 12.15 and as I left the house about 15 minutes after that I got a message from the person asking where the house was as they were in the road, and couldn’t see any houses. I told her she couldn’t be in my road as I was actually outside the house, so she sent me a map of where she was. Not only was it the wrong road  and the wrong area she was in the wrong county, she wa about 40 minutes away. This despite her apparently using a sat nav and having my post code and full address.

i suspect she was playing some sort of trolling game on me as no one can go to the completely wrong area like that. 

I’m giving up now, if it was better weather I would just out it outside with a note to help yourself, but I’d rather break it now and get the bits into the car dry, rather than try and move a water damaged item later. 

The last few bits I got rid of I did as others have said above and wrapped things well and put them behind my car with a photo for the collectee. Even then one item was out there a couple of days before someone bothered to come, but those items were small and could be wrapped against weather. 

martindow

I think part of the problem relates to being able to send message or phone from anywhere.  Before mobiles, when arrangements were made people generally kept them or were hugely apologetic if they were late or forgot to turn up.

It is now a frequent occurrence that I get contacted to say that someone held up or running late and will be arriving sometimes very late, often with minimal or no apology.  Social norms have changed and the stigma of missing agreed arrangements is no longer seen as a problem by many people. 

Cairnpapple

martindow said:

I think part of the problem relates to being able to send message or phone from anywhere.  Before mobiles, when arrangements were made people generally kept them or were hugely apologetic if they were late or forgot to turn up.

It is now a frequent occurrence that I get contacted to say that someone held up or running late and will be arriving sometimes very late, often with minimal or no apology.  Social norms have changed and the stigma of missing agreed arrangements is no longer seen as a problem by many people. 

Oh this is an interesting theory.  I was just thinking that this didn't seem to be as much of an issue when I was a freecycle mod on Yahoo groups in the mid 2000s. Of course we had mobile phones but not smartphones, it wasn't expected that people would be instantly available. 

RedImp_2

I have to say I’ve never had any similar issues with MP, daft messages yes, but once I’ve got to agree with someone has been fine.

soolin

Good news. One of the people who contacted me was from a college , they had asked to collect this afternoon. So I went back to just them and asked if they were still interested . They turned up on time about an hour ago, sent 2 people and an estate car already lined with blankets and took it away without fuss.  Apparently it was just what the college was looking for and getting something free freed up some of their budget to spend on other things.