Upthewazzu

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Just curious, how do most of you sellers go about discerning the real inquiries from the spam/fake/serial killers? I'm trying to sell a kitchen table and so far I have no idea (except for one obvious scammer) who is for real and who isn't. I really don't want to give out my address to someone who's going to come to my house and rob it while I'm at work.

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BryanJ

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^ Don't send your money to Nigeria and meet somewhere besides your house. Poosibly your neighbor you don't likes driveway.

SpentGrains

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Only respond to emails that restate what the item is or that do not have a local phone number, or it is probably spam.
Don't take pictures of it in your house.
Don't show it to them in your house or in the garage.
Put the table outside before they come and meet them outside.

Also, emails with ghetto speak go right in the trash.

Big_Blue

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This is sound advice.

Oh... and give a fellow a reasonable window before selling to someone else.

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“Write drunk; edit sober.” - EH

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Carboy: OxyClean
Bucket 1: Base Blonde #1
Bucket 2: EdWort's Apfelwein
Keg 1: Bugbear Ale
Keg 2: waiting

mccumath

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Just sold a toddler bed. I loaded it up, took it to a highly populated place (Walmart). Would not show anything at my house unless I absolutely could not move it.

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Put it all in the primary, and let the BeerGods sort it out

broadbill

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I dont have anything in my house that millons of other americans dont have in theirs. I dont see how sombody seeing inside of it is going to give them an edge on robbing the place. All of the stuff is where everybody else keeps there their stuff.

Also, why would they go through the hassle of answering an ad, faking a meeting, etc? If they want to rob the place they could just break in.

Lastly, selling stuff on CL does exactly scream "moneybags" to a potential thief...

mccumath

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Depends on what kind of stuff you have... And people have done much more than "answering an ad" and "faking a meeting" to do some sort of terrible act.

I meet/work with members of society every day, 98% being complete strangers. There are a lot of strange human beings in the world, and the less they know about me the better. It is not my belongings that I worry about as much as the safety of my family. Just my 2 cents.

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Put it all in the primary, and let the BeerGods sort it out

broadbill

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The world must be a scary place for you.

Zuljin

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Lemme tell yall about my flaky experience with Free Cycle.

We had two queen size metal bed frames, boxes and mattresses to give away, for free. Everything on Free Cycle must be free. It's a cool idea. Goodwill wouldn't take them. Something about not having the resources to resell mattresses. The local church didn't want them either.

So I post on Free Cycle. It was no time before some sketchy sounding chic called. All strung out sounding and just generally weird. And kinda wired. But hey, if she can get these things outta my way, she can be as sketchy as she wants. She'll pick up tomorrow. Needs one for her and one for her kid. Great. Then the next day. Then no word. Then that Saturday. And her messages were like she was holding two conversations at once. I'm not sure if they were with actual different people. I called her back each time and got her voice mail. Now it's next Monday. I've told people it was taken all this time too.

Next woman who calls, I tell her come and get it. She and her husband and kid show up that evening. In a van. Loaded with stuff. I mean, sat down on the shocks, hardly room to sit in it loaded. Toys, pots, pans, boxes, clothes. I dunno. Were they Free Cycle hoarders? Their plan was to put the frames in the van and strap the two boxes and two mattresses to the top of the van. Now, imagine the height of these four items, on top a van. We had to use a ladder to stack them. They cinched them down with straps hooked to the bottom of the van's body. It was a road hazard if I ever saw one. They nearly lost it twice going down the road out the neighborhood. I told my wife we'd have to watch the news to see if anyone was wiped out on the highway by errant bedding. That almost happened to me once. I didn't hear about it, so i guess they made it okay.

Never did hear from sketchy chic again.

But this van. Seriously. It could have been an episode of Hoarders all by itself. They had to be getting gallons per mile loaded down like that.

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mccumath

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Not as much as it might sound. I just don't trust random strangers that want to buy stuff from me on Craigslist. Better safe than sorry.

You buy and sell on Craigslist the way you like, and I will do it the way I like. Most likely, it will work out fine for both of us, don't you think? Just figured I would offer up a little advice on how I prefer to do business on Craigslist.

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Put it all in the primary, and let the BeerGods sort it out