Why is it so hard to give things away???

[dreamshark]

 I've been using BuyNothing and FreeCycle to give away items we no longer want. Of the 15 items I have listed, about half were easily and successfully gifted, with recipient showing up and taking the item approximately when they said they would (give or take 24 hours). Two items attracted no interest. The rest of them have been a PITA. People express great enthusiasm, promise to show up at a specific time, then just disappear. No pickup, no response to further messages. Or they don't pick up but claim to still be really excited about the item when I message them and keep rescheduling their pickups but somehow just never manage to show up. Then I have to guess when they have finally lost interest and list the item on the other platform. Oddly enough, that has worked more often than not, but doubles the effort.  

One woman failed to pick up as promised on multiple items and then had the chutzpa to message me asking for a group picture of all the items I was giving away so she could browse through them and pick out what she wanted! This was interspersed with various messages from her explaining that she hadn't shown up because she had lent her car to her sister for the week or something about her husband bicycling to work (which was maybe an explanation why she didn't have a car that day???). That one was a piece of work. She never actually took anything.

And in the last two days I have had respondents who wanted the item, asked for my address, promised to pick up the next day, and then emailed something to the effect of "I'm sitting in front of your house but can't go up stairs so someone will have to bring it down to me."  Mind you, I would have been willing to do that if these ladies had let me know in advance when they were coming (something more specific than "maybe tomorrow."). In one case the woman in question managed to inveigle a handy passerby into going up the stairs and knocking on the door; Richard answered and brought her the garlic roaster. The other one just sent an email saying "On my way. BTW, I'm in a wheelchair and can't go up stairs." Maybe she showed up or maybe she  didn't. I don't know. When I saw the email I took her item down to the sidewalk and left it there all afternoon but she neither picked it up nor responded to my query afterwards. I'm offering it to someone else. Screw you, sweet old biddy in wheelchair. 

Comments

[bibliofile]

Such a pain! Do you have a decision point where you give up and give it all to St Vinny's?

(Do your posts mention that there are stairs involved in getting to your front door? It's not unusual, but [shrug] people.)

[quadong]

This is why I take everything to Goodwill. Unless the item is too big to fit in the car, or it's something Goodwill won't take, I definitely don't have time for what you describe.

I could believe that the probability an item actually gets used is higher with your approach. I assume that lots of what goes to Goodwill ends up in the landfill, or at least sits for a very long time before someone finds they want it (since it isn't listed anywhere and you have to bumble into the right store at the right time). So I applaud your effort.

[bibliofile]

The invasions of the relations, what fun. Glad that you've all survived, thus far.

[laramie]

Yes. I applaud your effort. Might help to state upfront that no-shows lose to the next taker.

[dreamshark]

In most cases there is no next taker. And it is not always obvious that someone is a no-show: sometimes they are just running late.

[dreamshark]

I haven't made a point of mentioning that there are stairs. Don't most houses have at least a few stairs leading up to the front door? And the majority of houses in this neighborhood are situated above street level, so there are also some stairs leading up from the street. I would think that people who can't handle that would mention it up front, not just assume that curbside delivery will just magically materialize when they show up. But since this has now happened twice, I guess I should add that to my pickup instructions. *sigh*

[dreamshark]

When it works smoothly (which seems to be about 60% of the time) this approach is both more satisfying and more convenient. I have a history of starting boxes of stuff "to take to Goodwill" and then never getting around to it. It's really handy to just list individual items as I'm cleaning the porch or whatever and have them magically disappear a few days later. So far the tradeoff is worth the annoyance of the failures.

I'm not so much complaining about my situation as expressing bewilderment that people who are looking for free things are so inept at carrying out their side of the transaction. I suspect that some of them are just playing games. They enjoy looking through the listings every day and getting a little thrill out of picking out free stuff that they don't need and never really intend to pick up. Or they are getting a little charge out of the ritual of contacting the giver and engaging them in a dialog that they stretch out as long as possible and then ghosting the other person in a show of control.

The ones that confused me the most were the ones with limited mobility who couldn't seem to understand the concept of setting a pickup time in advance so their special needs could be met.

[carbonel]

I've had pretty good luck with Freecycle, but I don't have issues with stairs, since I'd rather not have the people picking up stuff in the house. Usually in these COVID times, I just leave it on the porch with the name of the person picking up on the item(s).

The one I found most annoying was that I had a complete set of dishes to destash. I had one potential taker, who rescheduled twice, then ghosted me. So I took it to Goodwill (there's one conveniently close to me). The good thing was that scheduling a pickup got me to box up all the stuff, which made it easy to get it to Goodwill.

[dreamshark]

By "stairs" I mean stairs up to the front door, not inside the house!

Since most houses have at least a few stairs up to the porch or front stoop and a great many houses also have a few concrete stairs up from the sidewalk, I haven't considered this unusual enough to mention. I would think that folks with mobility issues would at least consider the possibility and bring it up on their own.

[carbonel]

Ah. I have a few stairs up to the door to the kitchen where I leave stuff, but it's easy to put things where they're reachable. I can see where that would be more of an issue with your front door.