Why is selling something on Craigslist or Marketplace such a pain in the ass?
I’m trying to sell a car. Nothing fancy or expensive, just an old Mercedes that’s been well cared for but that I just don’t need anymore. I was very detailed in the ad, covering all the good and bad that I could think of and giving a tiny bit of its history.
One guy messages me with a bunch of questions, all of which could be answered juat by reading the ad. Yes, I have a clean title (says so in the ad). No, its never been smoked in (says so in the ad). Yes, all the electronics work (says so in the ad). Miles? Read. The. Damn. Ad. I ignore him.
Another guy says he wants to come look at it. First he said it was going to be last night, but then that didn’t work. Then it was going to be this morning. Noon comes and goes and whoops, that didn’t work after all. He messages me: can I hold it so he can come later in the week to look at it?
No.
So now I’ve just messaged the third person who messaged me about the car to see if he wants to come look at it. So far, no response.
monitor pricing. I still haven’t bought a new monitor, but I have picked one out. The darn thing keeps fluctuating in price though. Yesterday, it dropped $59 from the list price, and I stupidly didn’t act on it. Now it’s back up to full price.
Sounds like they’ve changed something; I’m glad to know about this, since I was considering a Bravia as a replacement TV in the living room. I bought a Sony Bravia pre-pandemic; the remote that came with the TV works very clunkily with the DirecTV receiver, but it does work. (Have they eliminated the little infrared dome-shaped thing that plugs into the back of the TV and sits in front of the DirecTV receiver?) Sometimes I have to use the DirecTV remote for a specific task – skipping forward or backward a few seconds, or instantly recording whatever is on live TV – but I can mostly get by with just the TV remote.
How do appliances know when the worst time is to conk out? My AC went out late enough yesterday (Friday) afternoon that maintenance couldn’t fix it, and the office guy today very apologetically told me they can’t get here until Monday.
OK, it wasn’t the ABSOLUTE worst time. That probably would have been last weekend when temperatures were triple-digit. Still lousy timing, late Friday afternoon.
Bonus points for unusual humidity that has me reluctant to do much that involves hot water because I don’t want to make that part worse. Gotta do laundry sometime, though.
Good choice. Sony Bravia is my TV, too (two of them, actually). I’ve been a big Sony fan since I was a kid (Sony receiver, Sony cassette and reel-to-reel tape decks, the first Sony Trinitron to hit the market, and one of the first Sony Betamax VCRs.
The Bravia is such a popular TV that it’s very strange that the Harmony remote won’t work with it – that’s one of the most versatile universal remotes around. My universal remote works fine with my Bravia, but then, the universal remote is a Sony, too (what else?). Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful but it sounds like something really basic is wonky.
I don’t find it at all surprising that a “universal” remote from a few years ago won’t work with a brand new bleeding edge TV. I bet a brand new universal remote would fare better.
“Universal” whatevers can only be so much universal, and so much future-proofed. After that threshold is crossed they become “mostly-universal” whatevers. My bet is @romansperson is in that scenario.
Setting aside of course any interest by Sony (and many other name brand manufacturers) in stymying off-brand compatibility for greater lock-in for their customers and greater profit for themselves.
We have reached out to them, they have our contact info, so the ball’s in their court. The Mom seemed interested but we’ve been trying to get a playdate with them for a long time and she hasn’t followed up yet. I imagine right now she’s trying to figure out what to do about childcare. As the parent of a neurodiverse child, I feel deeply for that kid’s parents for having a kid the daycare is ill-equipped to manage, and I feel for the kid for losing a friend through no fault of his own.
There but for the grace of Og go we. My son is not particularly difficult to manage in daycare or at home. I’m almost positive at this point that Wee Weasel has ADHD in addition to being autistic, which has made things at home more challenging, but so far it has not resulted in behavioral problems in daycare. How he will do in a more structured environment like school I have no idea. He may be like me in that, while I have ADHD, I have always been so interested in learning that I did well in school. Or he might hate it.
But tonight, he pulled an exciting new toy** we bought from its bag and demanded that I open it, I said, “Not tonight, we can do it tomorrow” and he accepted that without complaint and moved on to something else, I was like, damn I’m lucky. As long as you give him rules to follow, he does pretty well.
Except that @romansperson emphasized that it won’t work at all.
In my experience (which may not necessarily apply here) Sony has been using the same basic modulation codes for decades. My Sony universal remote’s built-in codes for Sony TVs still work with my newest Bravia (which admittedly is a good few years old now, but the universal remote predates the dinosaurs). You do have a point that it won’t operate the newest fanciest features unless the codes are uploaded to it or it “learns” them from the TV remote, but the Harmony should at least be able to do basic stuff like power on the TV, change the channels, and control the volume. IIRC, they have a library of codes for a fantastic range of devices.
Hmm, I know nothing of this! The only parts in the box besides the TV itself were the feet, a cord and some wall mounting screws. This is the model my husband got. I’m toying with the idea of switching to Google TV from DirecTV but I’m not quite there yet.
After searching the 'net, a Reddit post addressing this problem has gotten me to the point that the Harmony sorta works - it won’t turn the TV off, and I have to try twice to get it to turn on, but once it’s on I can get to the DirecTV DVR functions at least. I’ve also got the Blu-Ray player working, which is nice.
Part of what is supposed to be so good about the Harmony is that any “training” you do with it using the device remote is supposed to be very minimal. With this TV it looks like I will have to do that for just about everything and there’s no guarantee even that will work (training it to turn the TV off didn’t work, as an example).
Another mystery is why the Bose TV speaker only works when both the optical and the HMDI cable are connected. It should work with only the HDMI - it IS connected to the right HDMI port - but if I disconnect the optical cable I get no sound output.
Might have to look into that and see if any of them would work with DirecTV. I really hate that this TV remote has no number pad. Who thought that was a good idea?
Some monitoring device just chirped. One chirp. I couldn’t tell where it came from. Now I have to wait for the inevitable low-battery assault, which will more than likely be right after I fall asleep tonight. I did get out the step-stool and put it in the hallway. If it’s one of the two devices there, at least I can shut it up quickly. Of course, that still won’t stop the feeling of heart-stopping panic when it happens. Oh joy.
I spent last evening serenely watching TV with the family, then BIP!!! (loud chirp). Annnd… silence.
A half hour later we’re BIP!!! Now I’ve jumped up from the recliner, and I’m prowling the house… nothing.
Silence.
For the next hour. So let’s watch somethBIP!!!
Ah, the joy of ARC HDMI. Yes, the HDMI cable should work for both sound and video, that’s the selling point of ARC. What I found out is that although a device (probably your TV), while it has an ARC HDMI port, has the ARC disabled by default. Why the hell they do this is beyond me. In my case, I had to drill down deep in the TV settings menu in order to enable the ARC. Only after I did that did the thing work as advertised. Maybe that’s the issue you have.
I had similar experiences trying to sell surplus furniture when I sold the previous house. I don’t know which types are more annoying, the ones who ask stupid questions, or the ones who express great interest and then you never hear from them again. I eventually got so frustrated I gave up. The furniture is currently in my basement, having been moved at great cost, only to probably eventually end up in a dumpster, also at great cost.
One good thing that came out of this experience was that I had renewed respect for my real estate agent, who has expertly guided me through several transactions. The world is so full of assholes, and regularly dealing with them is her full-time job at which she’s been spectacularly successful! I’d probably last about ten seconds as a real estate agent – or in anything at all to do with sales. It’s like the nerdy guy someone once told me about who went into real estate even though he was so sadly ill-suited for it. His memorable sales pitch to potential house-buyers – which rumour had it that he had thought up all by himself – was “if you like it, buy it”.
Facebook is doing their utmost to make more people despise it. And, as I just discovered tonight, they are not all that familiar with the concept of twentyfirst century travel. They’re suddently shocked that in the space of two days, I was checking my account from two different countries, China and South Korea. Maybe in Zuckerburg’s mind it takes weeks or months to make what is in reality just over a two-hour flight. And all the options to get the thing unlocked require the use of a VPN, which right now, for some unknown reason, aren’t working all that well.
Guess I’ll get up at 3 a.m. to deal with it. Fun. Fun? Fun!
No, really… it’s a thing. A lot of people do it to cut back on the smell and some of the bitterness. This is nothing more than a Google search link, but soaking overnight in milk comes up a lot:
I don’t use FB, but I’ve certainly had that issue before. When the vast majority of attacks come from a short list of foreign countries, accessing website X from those countries is always a challenge. Regardless of whether X is FB, your bank, or …
For the few percent of people who travel all the time it’s a PITA. For the vast majority of especially Americans who never leave the USA, that filtering is all gain, no pain.
Credit cards used to have the same problem. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner in 3 different countries isn’t impossible; in fact it’s routine. For a very few of us.
Big Data and some degree of learning your personal routine is nice. FB doesn’t seem to have bothered. Bastards.
To the designer of the sucky “if we show them stuff that’s kinda sorta vaguely related to the stuff they’re looking for, maybe they’ll impulsively buy that too” search engine: I am not going to impulsively buy a 15 amp indoor-only extension cord for a job that calls for a 20 amp outdoor extension cord. You are welcome to die in a fire, I’d rather not.
monitor pricing. I still haven’t bought a new monitor, but I have picked one out. The darn thing keeps fluctuating in price though. Yesterday, it dropped $59 from the list price, and I stupidly didn’t act on it. Now it’s back up to full price.
Sounds like they’ve changed something; I’m glad to know about this, since I was considering a Bravia as a replacement TV in the living room. I bought a Sony Bravia pre-pandemic; the remote that came with the TV works very clunkily with the DirecTV receiver, but it does work. (Have they eliminated the little infrared dome-shaped thing that plugs into the back of the TV and sits in front of the DirecTV receiver?) Sometimes I have to use the DirecTV remote for a specific task – skipping forward or backward a few seconds, or instantly recording whatever is on live TV – but I can mostly get by with just the TV remote.