I have recently had the joys of being introduced to Facebook Marketplace, and some of the ads I’ve seen on there are nothing short of spectacular in their misplaced optimism.

Recent ones include a shrub for collection (due to installing raised beds – collector to dig it up!), conservatory (that one wanted £250 if the ‘buyer’ would dismantle and take away) and someone shifting a patio – if the the collector could take up all the slabs and take away on one specific date only.

The amount of sheer tat people think they can get away with either selling or putting up for collection is staggering – a recent one was used kids’ felt tip pens! That’s before we even consider the used shoes or even underwear (but, in fairness, that could be a specialist market…)

Do people really come and collect this stuff? Have you ever done it (offered or collected) and if so what?

I sold a sink basin on Facebook marketplace recently (not tat, actually quite nice), very cheaply as I needed it out of the way asap (ha!), for £15 with a retail price of a couple of hundred. Three separate people “bought” it, I took the listing down etc., before one actually managed to turn up and collect it.

And people moan about eBay 😮

Offering stuff free for collection can be a whole world of pain if you aren’t prepared. I’ve got rid of a few billy book cases over the past few months and despite being explicit about not delivering, folk always ask. I now just tell them where it is – outside and say its first come first served.

13 off 6 foot tree stumps. On e-bay before FB marketplace was a thing, the bloke even insisted on giving me the 1p Buy it Now value!

There’s a sofa near me up for £200 but must be collected by tomorrow, seems to me that if you’re that desperate to get rid of it then you should just give it away.

Try Freecycle if you want to be astounded by the brass neck of some people.

Then there’s the optimistic people putting ‘Wanted’ ads on Freegle for things like ‘Dyson, must be in good working order’, ‘Apple MacBook (seriously)’ and my favourite ‘Motorised go kart and trailer’. All posted on the Harrogate group.

It also pisses me off when I get responses to some of my ‘Offers’ saying things like ‘Hi yes’ and ‘Hi, can I come and collect this.’ – I recently gave away a Flymo mower and strimmer and they had lot sof interest but only one person actually took the time to ask nicely so guess who got them…

Any adverts I put on marketplace say COLLECTION ONLY to make it (I thought) fairly clear they are for collection only. Sure enough every response is “will you post?” Having said that I have sold a few things to some decent people who have turned up on time and paid without fuss. It’s just a shame the wollopers stick in my memory more.

Free shed. Shed free since 1987.

We’ve just got rid of a shed on marketplace. It was nice enough but a bit rotten on one corner. The guy came with a recovery truck and literally pulled it onto the bed using the chain!
Everyone was happy.
(We had 50 responses saying they wanted it but first to respond took it)

Is the shed behind that skip ?

I thought I was being optimistic when I offered an ancient oil tank with a busted lid up for free if collected.

Could have sold it 10 times over

Apparently there’s a market for that sort of thing.

Fella was army house in the house with a flat bed trailer and it was gone.

We gave away an old shopping bike of my wifes on Freecycle as we were about to move house. The potential new owner came round and asked if he could have my 6 month old Bandshee Spitfire for free instead, he really thought it was a possibility that I’d give him a £4k bike.

If I had a 4K bike lurking about I wouldn’t be leaving it on display when people came round. That would have been well hidden.

Facebook Marketplace is a bit mad. I recently put a kid’s garden playhouse on there for free, to save me taking it to the tip. I thought listing it as free would minimise the hassle but the opposite was true – I got 170 messages about it, including a bit of abuse when I didn’t immediately reply to some of them. It would have been less hassle to have marked it up as £20.

We gave away an old shopping bike of my wifes on Freecycle as we were about to move house. The potential new owner came round and asked if he could have my 6 month old Bandshee Spitfire for free instead, he really thought it was a possibility that I’d give him a £4k bike.

WTF did you let some internet random catch a glimpse of your main MTB…..

NOOOOO

I think you would be surprised how many people are happy to take up and collect a patio etc.

My brother and a neighbour both moved house in Sheffield recently. Both houses paid for skips and filled them with rubbish, both skips were emptied and the contents taken in the night. They should have just put everything on the road and saved the skip hire cost. It used to be the case that you had to fill your skip before someone else did

Marketplace seems to have taken Gumtree’s target audience and really ran with it.

Mad shit, and quite a bit of dubious and downright illegal.

FOR SALE, CAN OF PEPSI MAX £5 and you wonder, why £5 for a can of Pepsi Max, is this some ‘rare’ collectors item? No, the pic is surrounded by packets of probably counterfeit Drum tobacco.

USED UNDERWEAR, not illegal, but yuk…

Lots of those dodgy garden trampolines that used to be popular, £100 (buyer to dismantle and collect) yeah right, I ‘dismantled’ one once… they aren’t made to be taken apart and reassembled.

What brasses me off is when people press the button that’s says ‘is this available?’ You say yes it is & you never hear another thing.
I put a sea fishing rod on a while back & got that message, when I looked it was from some woman with a Russian sounding name in London, even though I’d said ‘pick up only, North Yorkshire’.
Having said that, I’ve sold a fair bit on there without the fees of Fleabay.

Can’t really see much issue. Ive had plenty of free stuff that I’m sure some people think is rubbish. No problems lifting a patio to get free slabs (assuming it isn’t overly stuck down), or digging up a shrub. A lot of the materials from my workshop came from Freecycle, and a lot of the waste was given away to collectors including quite a bit of the clay soil from the foundations. I’ve also had a fully working Dyson vacuum so why not ask for one? It’s good recycling and very little effort to offer or ask.

I just leave stuff out the front of the house if I need it gone. In the last month an old dishwasher and desk chair have been taken.

Had experience yes. My little brother bought some tatty old fibreglass kayaks about 30 years ago. They were old even then. And battered. He used them a couple of times before they ended up on the beams in one of the sheds here. I have recently cleared out that shed so stuck an advert on FB market place. 2 old kayaks, free to collector. Loads of pics and honest description of the state of them. For 2 days my in box was full of people wanting them, probably 100 enquiries. one of the first to ask turned up with a saloon car and no roofrack and was happy to take them stuck on his roof tied on with string through the open windows of the car! I was happy to see them gone. He seemed happy with his free kayaks. I have no idea if they survived the journey home 🙂

Facebook Marketplace, well FB in general, is downright maddening. If not occasionally funny. Recently saw a listing for what appeared to be a sofa, but on one of the cushions were stacks of strips of Viagra. Blatant 🙂

Yeah Freecycle, next level audacity. But I used to use it years ago and had some cracking stuff from it. Including a great little car that I wrote off on the same weekend ;(  It was also awesome when I was moving out of a large rented house that was chock full of stuff accumulated by me and various housemates and girlfriends over the years.  All of it got put on Freecycle and the first guy that came along literally took everything. I remember him starting the standard spiel about “starting a community centre…” before I cut him off. Heard that one many, many times.

@Jakester wasn’t this one was it? Popped up on a local buy/sell group yesterday https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/464381691331944/

Frankly he’ll be lucky if he gets £15 never mind £150

you wonder, why £5 for a can of Pepsi Max, is this some ‘rare’ collectors item? No, the pic is surrounded by packets of probably counterfeit Drum tobacco.

Recently saw a listing for what appeared to be a sofa, but on one of the cushions were stacks of strips of Viagra. Blatant

I hadn’t twigged any of this! Clearly not the target market…😑

My recently experience was equally maddening – agreed to buy a bit of studio recording gear, agreed the price and then started to discuss collection. All good, then a couple of hours later, I get a message saying actually he wanted £50 more for it. I said jog on – I’d agreed to pay the advertised price, no more – he said “its brand new, excellent condition” etc etc.

I agreed to go up a tenner, and when I got there he reiterated it was brand new. Just looking at it – evidence of liquid stains, the grime and filth on it was far from brand new. Thankfully it all worked and at that price a bargain, but it took a really deep clean to make it look respectable again, and it still smells of weed. If that was what he though brand new was, I dread to think what used might be!

wasn’t this one was it? Popped up on a local buy/sell group yesterday

Lol no – but that’s exactly the sort of thing I mean. Stuff you’d think people would pay to have taken away in fact they want paying for someone else to get rid of it!

doomanic
Full Member
Try Freecycle if you want to be astounded by the brass neck of some people.

I stopped using Freecycle after we had a bloke turn up & not utter a word.
He knocked on the door, I opened it & said something like ‘Hi, have you come about the freecycle item?’
Grunt….
“OK, it’s just round here – the gates open. Did you want to come & have a look?”
Grunt….follows me round, picks it up & walks away without a word. Literally just picks it up, turns around & walks back to the car.
I said something like “Thanks for coming. Hope it is OK & suits what you were after” while he was loading it into the car.
Grunt…

It crossed my mind that he might be deaf or have some kind of illness affecting his speech, but when he got back in the car I heard him immediately start talking to his family.

I saw a FB marketplace ad yesterday for a mattress that looked like it had been the scene of several murders & it was described as something like ‘well looked after with a little wear’. I assume it was a joke.

I’ve also had a fully working Dyson vacuum so why not ask for one?

There’s no issue in asking for a vacuum cleaner if you need one (I got a great little one for doing the cars) but it pisses me off when people don’t *need* a vacuum cleaner, they *want* a Dyson.

Ohh, and another one I saw recently – someone asking for a working petrol lawnmower ‘because there are none in the shops’. I told him I had just been to B&Q and they had loads on the shelves. He didn’t reply.

What fascinates me about that advert is what is going to happen to the slabs after 11th May? Why do they need to go today?

Ohh, and there is another guy who constantly reposts saying ‘Hiya, I collect comics: American Marvel and DC comics, the ones with a glossy cover and colour pages’ – obviously a collector who will sift through and bin 99.999% of them in the hope he’ll get the odd rare find.

What brasses me off is when people press the button that’s says ‘is this available?’ You say yes it is & you never hear another thing.

Usually because they never meant to press the sodding thing.

From FB market place, I took down and moved a 7m sandstone wall the 3 miles to my house, then rebuilt it at the end of our garden.

Was pleased as it’ll stop the neighbours using the old, now rotten fence as a retaining wall fence

It used to be the case that you had to fill your skip before someone else did

😀

Turn your back for two seconds and some swine would have dumped an old back boiler, used tyres and a mattress that looked like someone had died on it in your freshly hired skip.

My dad’s currently trying to sell (well he only wants £20, mostly for the time he spent building it up) a bitsa kids MTB.

Built from garage spares to make space. Gears works, brakes work, has air in the tyres, but it’s not aesthetically great.

Apparently he’s had about 60 ‘is it still available?’ messages, only about 4 replied to his answer of yes.

Some donger came to buy it last night and said, ‘oh it’s a bit old, I’ll give you £5 for it’. Then got shitty when he told them no it’s £20 or nothing.

He’s said if it doesn’t sell in the next couple of days he’ll give it to a local bike charity.

With the “Is this still available messages” Its often an automatically generated facebook type response….when I was on fb I both sent and received a load of them unwittingly.

I gave a greenhouse away from the house that I’m rennovating. Took about 5 minutes to get a response for someone to come and get it. He arrived at the agreed time and I was only half paying any attention as I was tiling a floor….when I went into the garden later I realised the **** had only taken the metal frame and left the glass ffs! I assume he took it for scrap! I think the glass may still be there, I somewhat lost motivation and direction with the project!

With the “Is this still available messages” Its often an automatically generated facebook type response….when I was on fb I both sent and received a load of them unwittingly.

This is true, it is easy to accidentally send when scrolling. Also it is a valid question.

Greenhouse glass goes pretty well on freecycle/facebook. I was after some and what there was of it seemed to go pretty quickly.

If you think those listings are bad, you should have seen the state of our old VW Touran that someone travelled 100 miles to pay me £1200 for…

I’ve picked up paving slabs and even a old garage off Facebook, but only for free. For the garage the guy was actually trying to sell it but just messaged and said I would take it down but I am not paying to take it down. Still a good deal for him as it is was about 6 van + trailer loads!

I think you would be surprised how many people are happy to take up and collect a patio etc.

I got half the bricks for my bike shed from someone who’s garden wall I demolished for her.
Just been given a washing machine by a chap on Freecylce, and I recently gave away some kitchen worktop. Someone somewhere can use most stuff

We’ve given quite a bit away recently on FB. Mainly use a local “bargains” group and cross post to marketplace.

Seem to get lots of (fast) replies from eastern European sounding names (always ladies) whose husband then turns up within a couple of hours in a battered old transit. I’m not sure whether I’m cross about them reselling it, or not. But at least it’s not going in a landfill.

Mind you, when we moved in here 11 years back, we had a single opener patio door taken out. Advertised it on eBay, someone won it for £80 ish. His wife hadn’t checked where we were so he came from Nottingham to wirral for it. In a rented van. Which had about 10mm of clearance in it for the door. Very lucky it went in at all. I did feel sorry for the poor bloke as he was so close to an epic fail.