I've been an avid follower of Freecycle for quite a few years now but for some unknown reason, have never actually got round to either posting something or collecting something. I get the emails, scan the offers, think "ooh we could have that" and then do absolutely nothing.
So at the weekend we posted our very first ever item on our local Freecycle (a curved towel rail which was going spare after changing our bathroom around) but the end result left me feeling a little cold to be honest.
We described it, measured it and even photographed it, and had a reply fairly quickly. The guy came round to collect it this evening but rather than saying "thanks" or "oh, great", the first thing he said was "oh, I thought it electric".
Now this is the advert - and nowhere in it have we mentioned that that the item is heated or electric so I don't really know how he managed to think it was a heated towel rail.
Surely even if the item isn't what you expected, you just say "great thanks"?
I'm hoping that not all people on Freecycle are like that and that our bad experience was just an unfortunate one off - but it doesn't really fill you with confidence for listing other things!
Do you use Freecycle? Are people mostly nice or are there some awkward characters out there?
(and apologies for having a bit of a rant, sorry about that)
Urgh some people are never happy are they! It's like the time on ebay when someone left me a feedback saying I had charged too much - I mean like, you didn't have to pay it!
ReplyDeleteAgh, people!
You're completely right - sometimes I think there's no pleasing some people! :-) x
DeleteWe've had lots of great freecycling experiences, though we've tended to be on the receiving end not the giving away end (we furnished our first flat from Freecycle when we didn't have two pennies to rub together). I'd stick with it - most people are really nice, I'd guess you just got a dud.
ReplyDeleteAhh, thanks, glad to hear that it's not all bad! I think I'll wait a while and then give it another go; think I'm going to assume that most people are okay and the guy I got was in the minority. :-) x
DeleteI always see people complaining about greedy requests on Freecycle lists or people not turning up to collect items. I've only used Freecycle a couple of times and was very chuffed to shift a massive bag of miscellaneous socks of varying sizes that I couldn't be arsed to pair up for a charity shop!
ReplyDeleteWe've got a few things we could do with shifting (a shower pump, an door and several other random items) - I'll definitely give Freecycle another go at some point. I think I was just a bit miffed how some people can be when getting something for free! Oh well, better luck next time as they say :-) x
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