Buying things is generally a nightmare, and sell them too.
I find it pretty easy to sell appliances and electronic items, as long as it is priced right. I always play by the rule, whoever shows up first to take it gets it. If you hold items for people, I don't see how that pays off, as they rarely show up. So when people say an item is sold, I always say let me know if it becomes available again and more so than not, it does.
As a buyer, I typically look through the forums and save a couple phone numbers and shoot them a message. I find most of the people selling stuff have a bunch of stuff to sell, so I always kind of ask them what are you selling and how much, and if important the measurements and more photos. Merely to judge to quality/condition of an item. Then I try to put together a good bargain.
I ask about the price because sometimes they will say a cheaper price on whatsapp, and I think on average I save about $100 per item and that adds up, so why not.
Some pains as a buyer, people don't hold items for you after they said they would, people don't prepare the items for you when you arrive (i.e. bookshelves full of books), people ask your movers to move some of their own furniture around, people don't tell you it's ikea, people don't tell you its in a walkup, people don't tell you the furniture can't fit out of the door, people don't tell you it doesn't fit in the lift, after you pin point a time you are coming, you arrive in the time frame and they say they are at work or busy. But the seller is supposed to be selling stuff.
And if someone broke your lamp, then they need to pay for it. If someone left a deposit and wants to cancel an item, make them pay for everything or keep the deposit and put the stuff back for sale. I mean people need to follow what they say.
Originally Posted by Elegiaque:
I once gave away for free a broken kettle.... this one man called and had to ask 20 questions. 20 questions!!! To which my reply is something like "It's free, you don't get to ask questions...". Eventually, I arranged for him to come pick it up, but then I made some mistake and wasn't home at that time, which he was very upset about (understandably), but I tried to carry on the question of "when would you like to get it?"... instead he had to really berate me about how I didn't show up when we agreed on a time. I ended up hanging up on him, and so he proceeded to keep calling me back! About 20 times. Then he switched to a different number to get me to answer. The whole time I couldn't even tell if he was actually still interested in the broken kettle, or if he just wanted to go on a rant about how I had inconvenienced him.
In defense of buyers, though, while all of your points saminhongkong are good, to some degree you can't take it too seriously. Measurements and more pictures actually
are really helpful to save you 2+ hours to go in person to see something. (And it's so annoying that many people actually fail to include measurements, which leads me to just skip their ad because I can't be bothered to bug them...) But at the end of the day, you're selling used items, and they have lost value, and while you might think it worth $xx to you, it might not really be valuable. I once witnessed negotiation about some curtains a new tenant was buying from an old, and the guy really refused to go down on the price even though he was stuck in the "I'm relocating and don't need it" boat. After I had been traveling around in a developing country, this whole conversation seemed to petty to me -- that this guy who lives in a 6-digit-rent apartment would be so stubborn about a few hundred HK...
So when you buy new stuff, know you're going to lose when you try to resell it.
So buy used stuff!!!