Selling (giving away) on Facebook

[buzzbobbly]

What is it with these people?

I put up a post last Sunday along the lines of:
"Kitchen cupboards and freestanding butcher block available Wednesday 27th March. Free to collector" + a bunch of pictures and sizes.

I got inundated with people messaging me within about 30 seconds after posting saying:
"Is this still available?" ("Still"? They are still on the bloody walls!)
"Can I collect now?" (If by now you mean Wednesday 27th March...)
"What size is the block?" (The same size as is listed above)
etc

How can people decide they want the thing, and understand that it is free to collect, but not see the big date right in the middle?

Then when they were available THREE DAYS LATER, I tagged them all in the post and they weren't interested anymore!

Well I think it's odd to post it in advance of it being available. People are a bit thick.

Dates and stuff...they won't notice that.

Re the "still", Facebook does this annoying thing where it's very easy to message them a pre-asked question. When you click on "message seller", where the keyboard usually is about 5 questions you can choose to send automatically, I've clicked on them a few times by accident. Here are the questions. I think they're very curt at Facebook

I have given lots of things away free recently including a tumble dryer and a tall bookcase. I have only ever had one thank you.

Last weekend a woman sent someone to collect for her but sent him next door...the first I heard was when she messaged she had knocked but no one was in.

And dont get me started on the person whose only reply was 'next'

Well I think it's odd to post it in advance of it being available.

Well only because they were being left outside, so people would need to arrange transport same day; and that is a PITA if you only hear about them on that day.

very easy to message them a pre-asked question
I did get some of those, but also on the post itself too.

But if you have gone to the trouble of writing an actual reply post (not one of those standard wordings), why don't you want the same thing you wanted to collect NOW, 72hrs later?!

"Is this still available?" ("Still"? They are still on the bloody walls!)

or has this been promised to someone else?

I gave away an item a few days ago, one woman messaged in Russian! I used Google translate to work out that she was asking if it was available but I didn’t bother getting back to her - if you can’t be arsed to respond to an advert in the language it was written in then why should I give you my free items? It struck me as so odd.

Russian?!

Clearly she understood your ad in English so what possessed her to reply in a different language?

People asking if anybody is gifting items as they've just moved into a flat with nothing - then they ask for pictures and decline on looks not oh sorry thanks but it won't fit in the space etc

I gave up on our local freecycle pages. People message, never turn up. Never a thank you. Lots of people taking stuff and boasting elsewhere about selling it on. Final straw was the abusive reply, and separate post and messages from a disgruntled person who didn't get the free toy kitchen I posted. She had already had loads of stuff in the previous weeks. I left and deleted.

*Russian?!

Clearly she understood your ad in English so what possessed her to reply in a different language? grin*

Exactly my thought when I declined to reply! I can’t work out if she was being lazy, thoughtless or deliberately trolling but none of those options suggested it would be a smooth transaction.

I find charging, even just something nominal, means you get slightly less nonsense. Which is a shame as most stuff I'd rather give away.

Hate those standard questions FB suggests