Mission Impossible: Buying Kid’s Stuff on Craigslist
By Glinda
I just wanted a swing set.
OK, so they don’t make that particular model anymore,, but people are always trying to get rid of the big plastic stuff like slides, sandboxes, and swing sets.
And sure enough, I found quite the few listings in my area.
Little did I know I was to embark upon an odyssey that would leave me enraged, frustrated, and disappointed in all mankind.
The first lady we contacted said sure, we could buy it, and for fifty bucks off the original price. Score!
We wanted to pick it up the next day, but she said she would not be home and we would have to pick it up next weekend. Fine. We told her we could come on Friday morning, we all agreed, and promised to call on Wednesday night to get her address.
Wednesday arrives, we call, and she breezily informs us that she has already sold it. After speaking to us, she had re-listed at the price she was willing to sell to us for, and someone else responded.
Uh, what?
Well, people, she said, are flaky. The people offered to come right away, yadda yadda yadda.
Hey lady, you know those flaky people you were talking about? Consider yourself one of them.
Then we had the man who was “firm” on his price, which was over by about a hundred and fifty compared to everyone else. Stay firm, man, stay firm. You’ll be firm for a very long time. If this was involving Viagra, you’d be golden. However, since it’s a swing set, you will wind up being very sad.
And the next one? Just sold, of course.
Finally we had the one who only replied to me once, didn’t reply for days after I offered to come and pick up the item ASAP, and then wrote me that someone had offered her more money.
This all in the course of a week.
I told my husband that if I wind up being screwed by ten people in a row, I’m buying a new one, dammit.
November 3rd, 2011 at 8:48 am
Yikes! This is a total nightmare- even worse is Freecycle. While it’s great for giving stuff away, trying to get anything is virtually impossible. People seem to be even flakier on Freecycle since NO money is involved. I think trying to get kids stuff is definitely the worst of the worst on these websites too. Sorry you’ve had such a struggle!
November 3rd, 2011 at 11:02 am
Yeah, we just bought a new one from CostCo. You can save your money, or you can save your time/effort, but it’s usually very hard to save both money AND time.
November 7th, 2011 at 9:49 am
I’ve found that selling on craigslist is a pain in the neck, too. People say they’ll come and then they don’t show up. I tell them I am firm on the (already low) price and then they still want me to drop it.
One guy, who kept insisting on bargaining over the phone, which I for sure do not do, for a reel lawnmower that was already only $40 (about half the price of a new one), showed up and wanted to give me $20 for it, then got mad at me because I refused to budge. Seriously – $20 for a lawnmower? There was nothing wrong with it – we were just selling the one that was in the garage when we bought the house. I told him I would rather give it to Goodwill for free than sell it to him for $20 and that I had told him the price was firm.
We had to sell my husband’s almost-new bed when we moved into our house. It was very clean and in excellent shape (and I had described it in great detail, along with including a few photos) and I had one buyer who wanted to come over now and another who emailed me this list of questions that just wouldn’t stop!
She wanted to know the size and location of any tears (there were no tears) and of any stains (ibid) and where it was manufactured, etc, etc. Forget it. If she wanted to know this stuff, she could come see it. I sold it to the buyer who wanted to see it now.