Gumtree covers 6 countries - Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, Ireland and Poland, and various cities in each country. The ads are free unless you want to showcase the items by highlighting or having an urgent sale and you can put some photos to help sell your item.
One of the items I was selling was a white bookcase.
It wasn´t in mint condition but was still usable, so I put a price of $15dlrs on it.
After about 1 week I started getting sms´s or emails about the bookshelf. I got about 5 or 6 people who were interested but only one of those showed up with a car whose seats would not fold, so that we could not fit the shelves inside, so she declined to take them. The measurements were on the advert so I don´t know why she didn´t check them before she decided to have a look...
Another funny episode was an sms I received saying they were interested in the shelves, and would pay $50 for them if I delivered. I replied that they wouldn´t fit in my car, (my seats didn´t fold either) so I could not deliver.
The following day another sms comes and this time, the same person offers $60 if I delivered!!
I laughed so much!! Even if I could deliver I would feel as if I was cheating them by accepting $60 for those shelves. They could probably buy a brand new bookshelf for almost that price (delivery excluded of course).
Eventually another one said she would pop around to collect it if still available, and because I was away in Adelaide, I said she could come and see it the following weekend, but half expecting she wouldn´t come at all.
This past Saturday a couple came with a van and we helped them pack the bookshelf on top of a white desk they had just picked up from another advert and these items would be used as a prop in a children´s school play.
So after over 250 views on the Gumtree pages, and a month later, the bookshelf was finally sold.
Because I still have another 4 items for sale, I wonder what other funny things will happen?
How srange that people were prepared to pay so much more than you advertised it for! Unfortunately, I can't pick up second hand items that easily in Portugal as my grasp of the language is not good enough. I dread to think what I might buy if ther was not a picture! LOL
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I don´t know if I would buy anything without a picture either, I´m more of a visual person, ads without pics don´t really do it for me.
ReplyDeleteGumtree is new to me since I moved to SA, and I like some of the features (like the search options) but I like Craigslist better. I guess I knew it first!
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