http://toronto.craigslist.org/bar/
Here's one... someone is looking to trade their jigsaw puzzles. And another looking for sheets of drywall. Amazing.
So I naturally figure, I need me a piece of this sweet sweet bazar action. I won a Blackberry as a student conference prize recently, and since the service is way too expensive, I figured I would pawn it and possibly buy a Nintendo Wii instead. (On a side note, who gives a BB as a prize to a student...) Immediately after posting up my ad, some guy posts up an ad for the same item for much cheaper. I pay him no heed, figuring that he's looking for a quick sell. But I quickly figure out he's a Craigslist pro, resorting to age-old tactics such as the CAPITAL LETTERS WITH EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!! AND ****.
After a while you really start to hate these kinds of ads, since they really work. I'm getting nothing from people. Nothing. The problem is that there is no way to channel your anger. They are a bunch of faceless ads, and no one puts there real name on the ad. All you have is an anonymous email address like "sale-247866880@craigslist.org" that you send emails to.
"WTF 24766880!!! Isn't that just like him to do that! Honest people like 373452411, 723465718 or even 9301646683 would never do that. Curse those capital letters!"
There are tons of scammers too. Oh the scammers. They make a point of including spelling mistakes and giving uncommon names just to seem more believable. Every email sent through Craigslist warns people to beware of scams like buyers using money transfers and money grams... and what tactics do they use? Money transfers and money grams. Try a little bit, people... sheesh.
Deals are constantly falling through. Unlike eBay, nothing is settled until the money is in your hand... it's chaos. One guy was going to buy it, but sent me this:
Thanks for excepting my offer, but I just came back from the car dealer with a hole in my bank account. Not a very good Christmas start. My loss some one else gain.
WTH guy...
Finally, after a couple of months later, I had a deal all worked out. This woman was all ready to meet me downtown to take the BB, and every conceivable obstacle came up. She lived far, her baby was sick, she had class, and so on.
As I was riding the streetcar to meet up, my mind kept filling up with a bunch of scenarios about how this could go wrong. I came up:
- Counterfeit bills
- She would reneg
- Her husband is a 300lb man named Biff
- She is a 300lb man named Biff
- Biff is very very lonely
6 comments:
Why didn't you just ebay it? This process took months, you say?
Argh, I meant to say one month. But yah, it took a while. I didn't use eBay since I didn't want to set up all those eBay and PayPal accounts (I've never bought anything off eBay, believe it or not). I don't think I would have gotten as much for it either.
Hope this woman doesn't want to return her BB.
Buyer beware, that's what I say. What IS strange is that I had posted an ad with the same content at a lower price a few days after the original (since I wasn't getting any replies). But she contacted quoting the original price....! Dah well.
Weird.
I'm up to 71 user feedbacks on ebay! Hooray! My march towards 100 continues, unabated.
That means you've sold or bought 71 items?
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