Is this normal Freecycle behavior?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Having heard lots of good things about it, here and elsewhere, I recently joined freecycle.org. There’s not a chapter in Cumberland, but hubby works several days a week in the Baltimore area, so we joined a couple of those. I’ve put in bids on a couple of things, but someone else got there first. Got a nice pair of gerbils for my youngest daughter.

A few days ago, someone advertised a dishwasher. I don’t have a dishwasher, and would like one. The ad gave the zip code, said the machine is already sitting out, come and get it. Well, I emailed the lady with my hubby’s cell phone number, asking her to call him with the address. A day and a half later, I got a responding email saying she “doesn’t have time to call someone who may or may not take it”, restating the zip code, and saying she’s near a certain intersection, look it up on Mapquest! Well, hubby looked up the scant information she gave on Mapquest, and said it could be any one of thousands of houses. She may not think she has time for a two-minute phone call (and his cell phone is local to Baltimore, so we weren’t even asking her to make a long distance call), but hubby damn well knows he can’t take time out from a work day to drive all over the place looking for a house with a dishwasher out front!

I emailed her again, telling her we definitely plan on taking it if we can find it, and asking if she has time to email me an exact address. I haven’t heard from her yet, and nothing has been posted saying the dishwasher has been taken.

Is it normal for freecyclers to be so reticent about giving out the address where the stuff is available? Is there anything official that I can or should do?

Help.

2

SF Freecycler here.

No, that is NOT normal behavior, and chances are this person is either jerking your chain or something very strange is going on. Alas, your best bet is to let the moderator of your freecycle list know what’s going on, and forget about the dishwasher unless this person, pardon the pun, comes clean.

3

That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of something like that. I’d avoid the dishwasher just because the person giving it away is acting so odd.

By the way, it’s considered rude on freecycle to take stuff but not give stuff. If you are taking stuff out of the baltimore area you should be posting stuff to give away in that area too. I live in PA and used to work in Columbia, so we were on both freecycle lists. Whenever we would give stuff away in Columbia I would put it in my truck and either drop it off at someone’s house or have them meet me at work. I’m not saying you are or aren’t doing this, just making sure you’re aware of it.

Maybe one of the Baltimore dopers can drive by and see if it is there and maybe grab it for you. If it was on the NW side I’d offer to look for you, but I won’t be in the Balto area until next monday and I’m sure it will be gone by then.

4

Oh, and there is one in Cumberland.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cumberlandmdfreecycle/

5

engineer_comp_geek, because hubby stays with his parents when he’s working down there, it’s not any trouble for me to send stuff down with him for us to give away. Also, when we first signed up, we typed in our zip code and got nothing. Thanks for the link.

6

The behavior of the dishwasher person sounds rather odd to me. I gave away a number of things via Freecycle, and I don’t think my method was out of the norm. I always put the nearest major intersection in my offer posts, and provided the exact street address via e-mail to whomever arranged to take the item. After a bad experience that drove me from the group very quickly, I would never provide my phone number ever again, but OMMV.

7

Selkie, could you tell your story?

8

Just as in any other place, you will find assholes and loons on Freecycle, so if someone is acting odd or being a jerk, just make a note to avoid them. I’ve also had a few people who would email wanting the stuff I’d posted and then never come to pick it up. I’ve got their email addresses blocked - if you can’t be arsed to come and pick up a perfectly good free item I’ve said you could have, then the heck with ya.

9

I offered some office equipment on the Freecycle list, a week or so after (unsuccessfully) offering a complete working computer system. Got a bunch of replies, but I went with someone who claimed to live “very near me.” Gave her my phone number, and while we were making arrangements for pick-up she gave me quite a sob story. Mind you, I didn’t want or need to know this information, but she offered it and I gently shut down that line of discussion as soon as I felt I politely could. I wasn’t looking for a “worthy” person to give the stuff to, I just wanted it gone within my timetable. I noticed that her area code was different than mine, but attributed that to being a cell phone or something provided through work. When she mentioned needing a home computer - she was using the one at work - I offered her the untaken computer from the week before, which she accepted eagerly.

I explained that everything had to be gone by a certain time on the evening in question, or else we would have to wait until another day. I also explained that I absolutely couldn’t accept phone calls due to the presence of other people in the house. (Without going in details, suffice it to say that I’m living with and taking care of two rather ill people, my schedule is not flexible, and there are often people sleeping during what others consider normal waking hours.) Of course, she called several times after the cut-off, from yet another area code, and for someone who claimed to live nearby she didn’t know any of the major streets in my town. She arrived late - of course - and her appearance didn’t make any sense in light of the story that she told. Again, it’s not like I wanted to know her personal details, but something didn’t quite click with what she had offered.

Then the phone calls started. She wanted me to teach her how to use the computer. (As in, “How do I get a floppy disk out of the drive?”) I explained that I couldn’t accept phone calls, and asked her to please e-mail rather than call in the future. After I resoted to using the answering machine rather than pick up the phone, she started blocking her phone number when she called subsequently.

I offered other items on the list, completely unrelated to anything she had claimed to want or need, and she started replying to every single one of them with the same boilerplate she had used in the original message, without any indication she recognized that I was the same person she had gotten items from before. She started posting suspcious want lists (too identifying to recount here, but they looked like she was soliciting for items to re-sell).

Then she left a voicemail demanding - and that’s not too strong a word - that I fax documents relating to the equipment transfer to a third party. The “facts” of the situation as she then related it to me completely contradicted everything she had told me initially, and that she had told the group in her public posts. When I e-mailed her asking for more details about the government official I was supposedly sending the information too, she up and disappeared.

I contacted the moderators, explained what had happened, and acknowledged that I didn’t have a smoking gun but that her behavior was odd. I made it explicit that my message was purely an FYI, and that I thought they might want to know in case this was part of a pattern experienced by other members. Two of the moderators were very supportive. The next day the head mod sent out a rather strongly worded special announcement to the group that said, among other things, that under no circumstances were the moderators to be contacted in the event of problems. The message stopped just short of blaming the victim for any difficulties. I wrote a private thank you to the two co-mods who had been so nice, and unsubbed. The next day, one of them wrote me saying I had done exactly the right thing by contacting her, that this individual was known as a scam artist for her activities outside Freecycle, and had even more phone numbers than I had experienced. She offered to help in any way she could if I needed to go to the police, but so far I haven’t had to take her up on that.

My other Freecycle problems were much more mundane - items not picked up and such. As the person who was always giving rather than receiving, I found that it was usually not worth the amount of time involved in each transaction. I did meet a couple of very nice people who I contact privately when I have something I think they might be interested in, and the rest goes to Salvation Army or the garbage pile (where it’s usually picked up within hours anyway).

I still think Freecycle is a great concept, but I don’t think I’d do it again.

10

I don’t do any freecycle arranging by phone. It’s all by email.

Your experience was unfortunate. That person is unreasonable. For one thing, the “it’s on the street, whoever wants it can get it” is a terrible way to freecycle and is discouraged in my community. There is nothing wrong with leaving something out for a specific person based on a previous arrangement, but to make it a free-for-all without anyone knowing if it will be there when they get there? Bad form. The coyness about the address is also ridiculous.

To address another comment…in my freecycle community, it’s not rude to “take without giving.” I guess it varies. My community embraces freecycle as a way to get an unused or unwanted item out of one person’s hair–while keeping the item out of the landfill. People with a use for these unwanted things should not feel compelled to add unwanted items of their own to the community.

What is frowned upon is being greedy and just taking things because they are free. Reselling an item isn’t verboten, but it’s seen as hostile if you’re regularly shutting out other people to snap things up for yourself or for resale. There always seem to be a few people like that and regular freecyclers learn to avoid them.

11

Interesting. I wouldn’t have guessed the rules and standards would vary as greatly as they apparently do. In the Freecycle group I was part of, one’s first posting was *required * to be an offer.

12

That’s a good rule for keeping down loads of “WANTED” posts, but a lot of people who get things get them off of “OFFER” posts. Those are handled off-list.

I think my community may have the same rule about making posts–you can’t come in asking for free things without being someone who has offered. However, you can take something that someone has offered (without creating list traffic) even if you have never offered anything.

13

I have given away several items through Freecycle, and there is one woman who must live on her computer because she is always the first person to ask for any item I list. The first time I offered an item, she responded first and ended up getting a free dryer from me. The second time I figured it might be a fluke that she was the first to respond, but I still gave it to the next person on the list since she had just gotten something from me. The third, fourth, and fifth times she was the first to respond made the picture very clear.

Our moderator encourages people to wait until they have a few responses and choose who we want the items to go to and I think it’s because of people like that woman. In fact, I recently responded in a very timely manner to someone giving away a bookcase and was told that I was the second person to respond, but that she would give it to me if the first person didn’t work out.

I bet I know who that first person was.

14

Wow. It’s interesting to hear all these stories!

I still haven’t heard anything from the psycho, so I’m guessing I’m not getting that dishwasher! Oh, well, I’ve been washing dishes by hand for four years; a little longer ain’t gonna kill me.

15

I understand the concept of freecycle, but really, why go through the hassle when you can either donate it to charity or, as most of the folks by us, just put it at the curb with a FREE sign on it.

I don’t want to deal with loons or worry about someone casing my house.

<-----paranoid.

16

Where I live, it would take a long time for anyone to take anything off my curb (see = boonies) - hell, I don’t even HAVE a curb - and it’s much less of a hassle for me to have someone come to the house and take away what I’ve got on offer rather than schlep all the stuff to a charity (see = boonies again) . So that’s why I do it.

17

I live in said boonies. About 25 miles to nearest charity in a decent part of the burbs. REally, the time involved of loading said crap and driving it down there and unloading it probably equal to the time of taking a picture, writing a description and loading it on to freecycle and dealing with a buttload of phone calls.

Besides, then I can go into the salvation army and buy more shit. Wooooo!

Shit Goes In Cycles.

18

I haven’t had any bad experiences. I’ve had a few people claim things and never pick them up. We try and work with them if there is some sort of problem, like one person who had a family member die and forgot all about the item. We just saved it for about a month until they were through dealing with the funeral, etc. but even then they never picked it up so eventually we relisted it.

I had one person give me a hard time for living in PA but getting something from Columbia, until I told her that I had given away a lot more in Columbia than I had picked up (this is why I mentioned it earlier). I’ve had people drive up from DC to get stuff from us, and that didn’t bother me any.

We’ve had some folks around here get seriously pissed off when they found out that stuff from freecycle was being resold. YMMV.

19

The only bad experiences I’ve had involve people not showing up to pick up the stuff they agreed to pick up. It’s annoying and a big hassle, because I have this box of stuff sitting in my living room or on my front porch for days longer than I expected to, and I have to go to the trouble of re-offering it, but it’s nothing that would stop me from using Freecycle in the future. Stories like selkie’s, by the way, are why I never, ever, never give out my phone number over Freecycle.

Our group’s guidelines officially discourage listing items as “out on the curb, here’s my address, first come first served.” As other have said, this only encourages a huge free-for-all in the front of your house, not to mention the fact that you have just broadcast your address to every single person on the list. That having been said, I have no compunctions about giving my address to responders who claim items from me. I mean, what are they supposed to do, use psychic powers to figure out that I’m the house “near Main and Broad” (not my actual intersection) with the free kids’ clothes, or whatever?

I did stop automatically giving items to the first person who responded, mostly because of stuff like what Susie Derkins said. You get the distinct impression that there are people doing nothing but obsessively checking Freecycle all day so they can be the first ones to respond to posts. So I usually wait a couple of hours after posting and then read through the replies and pick one that looks good. I don’t really care for lengthy sob stories about how the person is totally destitute and has nothing and really really really NEEDS those framed pictures of sunflowers or whatever, but the biggest turn-off for me is the replies that are misspelled, barely punctuated, and consist of a curt demand for the item, e.g. “tell me ur adress ill pick up tomorow.” (This is a real response that I got once.) I’m usually giving away kids’ clothes, so I look for responses that actually mention that the person has kids. Of course there’s no guarantee that they’re telling the truth, but I figure I’m at least trying to avoid the re-sellers, who grab up everything they can on Freecycle in order to re-sell it at yard sales or consignment stores. I feel this kind of behavior subverts the purpose of Freecycle (although my mom sees nothing wrong with it… I suspect because she’s been guilty of it a few times herself :rolleyes: ). To be clear here, I don’t have a problem with someone claiming a box of, say, women’s clothing, going through it and picking out what they like, and then taking the rest to a yard sale or whatever. But the people who specifically score items from Freecycle just so they can re-sell them… that bothers me.

I have overall had very positive experiences with Freecycle, though. I’ve given a lot of clothing and household odds and ends away on it, usually to people who seem reasonably appreciative, and I’ve received a lot of useful clothes for the kids, a vacuum cleaner, an umbrella stroller, and some other nice stuff. My best Freecycle acquisition was definitely our two living room end tables, though. They’re these nice glass-topped wooden end tables, and one has a built-in magazine rack. They look perfect in our living room, and I got them totally free from a couple who just bought a new living room suite and was getting rid of their old (but perfectly good) stuff. Score!

20

I’ve received some great stuff from Freecycle, and given a lot of things which I just couldn’t keep around. I’ve also had to deal with my share of idiots and no-shows and snippy bitches (I believe I even started a pit thread about one of them). Keep at it, Norine.