Send some of them this way. The local Freecycle doesn’t seem to be moderated at all. Not that I care anymore, I don’t use it. If its small enough to fit in my trunk, it goes to charity on my way to work. If its bigger, it gets put out on the curb on Tuesday. If its still there on the following Monday, the trash guys will pick it up and charge me between $2 to 5 on my next bill.
When I first found Freecycle, I fell in love with the concept. What would be better than giving my unneeded stuff to people who need it? I’ll tell you…its the whiney bitches who expect that I would happily rent a truck to deliver a free sleeper sofa 60 miles away because their lives are sooooo hard. We dragged it to the curb and it was gone in less than an hour.
I’ve spent more time looking at car ads on craigslist than anything else.
The average craigslist car ad contains:
[ul][li]the make of the car[/li][li]the color of the car[/li][li]the phrase “low milage” or “low miles”[/li][li]several sentences about how great the car is, how much the owner hates to sell it, etc.[/li][/ul]
If they’re really on the ball, you’ll get one to two of the following
[ul][li]The model[/li][li]the year[/li][li]pictures[/li][li]the VIN[/li][li]the actual milage[/li][/ul]
I might be selling my old car on CL in the next 6-9 months. Won’t be including the VIN, for some reason sharing that seems like a bad idea. Can’t identify why, though.
I would (and have when I sold a CL car previously) include everything else.
Even if it is, surely they require more than just the VIN.
Many (most) makes of car these days have the VIN clearly visible to anyone who wants to look. If i can find your car’s VIN by walking past it in the supermarket car park, it can’t be a very security-sensitive piece of information.
When I was working for the prosecutor’s office in '09, we busted an auto-theft ring whose MO was along these lines. I won’t give the details because I don’t want to give anyone ideas, but if you’ve got the VIN and know where the car is parked, it’s a cinch to steal it. After figuring out how these guys operated, we were amazed that most cars these days have their VINs right out in the open.
Actually, they sort of can. I saw an American Greed episode where car thieves in Canada had runners in the U.S. who would look for the same make/model/color car as they had stolen to get a clean non-reported-as-stolen VIN# from. They would then use the new VIN# to make fake VIN# markings on the stolen car so that they could sell it on the open market as a legitimate vehicle.
Not that this would really affect you if they were to use your VIN# in this way. I know it’s fairly standard to include VIN#'s on cars being sold on Ebay. This allows the buyers to run the car through CarFax.
As others noted, most cars have the VIN right in the front window. The information in your ad gives a buyer a chance to look it up on Carfax to see if it’s been in an accident, etc.
I use and like Craigslist but geez, there are some people who want a lot of care cand feeding. I posted curb alerts because I was re-doing my yard and digging up lots of perfectly good plants. One person stopped to grab plants and asked me to notify her first when I had more plants to give away. Like I’m going to track who wants my giveaways? It’s just a curb alert.
Sure enough, on my next curb alert, I got an e-mail from this person (who’s address I never had), giving me grief for not contacting her first.
To be honest, i’m not sure why it worried you so much.
After all, if someone sent you an email saying simply, “I’d like to come around and look at your bike,” how would you know whether he was carrying a gun when he knocked on your front door?
I’m not a huge fan of guns, and i’m not sure i’d want a stranger with a gun in my house either, but it strikes me that someone who actually tells you that he’s interested in trading a gun is no more likely to be dangerous than any other stranger from Craigslist.