A small rant about Freecycle...

[youthere]

I belong to three different Freecycle groups and I get email updates everytime someone posts a message and I am so SICK of seeing "WANTED" on every frickin' one of them. Page after page of people looking to get something...and it's postings like "Wanted: Piano or Wanted: Color television with remote or Wanted: Blue or Green Sofa" and each person posts six or seven "wants". That is NOT what freecycle was created for.
Now I understand there are those people who have genuine needs but I just get the feeling there are too many folks out there with the Gimmees.
I have never taken one single thing off of freecycle, and I love the fact that someone else might be able to use something I might otherwise throw away, or something that would just sit here and collect dust, but it irks me that some people see it as a private shopping service. I know for the most part freecycle is great but I just got done wading through 46 "WANTED" messages...(and I live in rural Iowa)
Okay...I'm done.:rant:

[DrDan]

1. doesn't bother me

I have helped out some of the "wanted" posters - the latest a girl who needed a high-chair . . .

The little-kid would probably not need a high chair had she simply waited for someone to post one as available . . . and I never would have thought of it as it was stuck away in the attic . . .

So a "wanted" is fine on my mail list.

[youthere]

2. I'm not talking about those kind of "wanteds"

Some recent ones:

Laptop Computer

DVR

Washer and Dryer (with a stipulation they should be frontloading only)-I've seen plenty of wanteds asking for washers and dryers, but if you need a washer and dryer so bad why does it matter if they are frontloaders?

Under the counter dishwasher (preferably no more than 5 years old)


THESE are the kind of WANTEDS I'm talking about. There was one a couple days ago wanting a 32 color flatscreen television. I finally emailed the moderators to ask if these were joke postings.

[Horse with no Name]

4. Someone on our Freecycle wanted a Harley

Can you absolutely believe that ONE?
I know exactly what you mean.
I give tons of stuff away, and TWICE I asked for something someone offered, but I didn't have a sob story to get the stuff.

[youthere]

6. A freaking HARLEY?

doesn't EVERYONE have one of those just lying around the house?

[xmas74]

13. Someone wanted a Wii on one

of my lists. I thought it had to be a joke.

[Le Taz Hot]

14. You're not going to believe this

but someone actually offered up a Wii on my Freecyle. I can't believe some of the things that have gone up for Offer -- TV's, dishwashers, washers, dryers. I guess I'm hooked into a really good one because you can't put up a Wanted without putting up an Offer. I just scored a child's car seat for a foster child that I know of. In return, I Offered Bergenias that I had thinned out of my yard.

[xmas74]

15. We are supposed to offer something before

we can claim anything but that doesn't always work.

[semillama]

3. Yeah, there's some real idiots on there

I went to digest and finally went to no mail with my group, but mainly because I was using freecycle to get rid of stuff before I moved, not to acquire stuff.

One thing I noticed with the people who picked up my stuff - all of them were "rednecks" - sorry to use the stereotype but these people were spitting images of the stereotype - crappy pickup trucks, horribly done tattoos, missing teeth, mixture of chubby people with gaunt skeletal types. It was sort of creepy.

[youthere]

5. I have had the same experience.

kind of weird, huh?

[zalinda]

7. Maybe not "rednecks" but poor people

"crappy pickup truck", can't afford a newer one
"horribly done tattoos" either do it yourself or cheap tattoo parlors
"missing teeth" no money for dentist
"mixture of chubby people with gaunt skeletal types" poor nutrition

I've gotten and given away things through freecycle, but the ones that got me are the ones who are making money off of the lists.

I was giving away a bunch of aluminum storm windows, which could be used on an older home that had no storm windows. I got 5 emails right away, 4 were from people who deal in scrap metal. I checked out each person who emailed me and looked to see what their wanteds were, 4 had posted scrap metal wanted. What pissed me off, is that not one of them said they were scrap dealers.

Our freecycle list has changed into a reuse it list, something to do with freecycle changing and becoming corporate.........I'm not sure. I'm hoping that things will change, but yeah people asking for really specific things do kind of turn me off.

zalinda

[Kolesar]

8. I only occasionally scan the local freecycle board and I had the same impression!

[Le Taz Hot]

9. I joined the one on Yahoo Groups

and I've had exactly the opposite experience. They have certain rules that deter people from asking for color Tv's, DVD's etc. In this one, you have to Offer up an item or fulfill someone's Wanted item in order to put up a Wanted item of your own. Consequently, the board is pretty evenly split between Wanted and Offers. So far I've given away an old transcriber I had sitting around collecting dust and have gotten canning lids and vegetable and fruit seeds -- all free. Not only that, the lady with the canning lids has a lemon tree in her back yard and she said I'm free to pick all that I can haul off in my pick up.

I guess you just have to find the right freecycle but so far, I've hit the jack pot.

[Horse with no Name]

10. We have that on ours

Our Freecycle has a BuySellTrade sister site and what pisses me off are the ones on Freecycle who are ALWAYS asking for very specific things...post to sell the stuff they don't need on the sister site yet never offer it on Freecycle.
They ask for unreasonable things...boats, Harleys, etc...things of that nature.
Ours very rarely has anything to be given away except pets and old clothes.
Hardly worth the trouble except when I am cleaning out my garage and have exhausted all other means of giving things away.

[Katherine Brengle]

11. I've seen some bad ones...

Playstation 2 and XBox...

I have responded to a couple of wants though - but they were very basic (one was for a microwave and one for a high chair). I did post one once, asking for old raggedy t-shirts because I wanted to make a quilt out of them (still collecting lol) but try to avoid it.

I've only ever dealt with really nice people through Freecycle - maybe it depends a lot on the area in which one lives.

[napi21]

12. The 2 Freecycle lists I subscribe to also have restrictions that

you must OFFER at least 1 free item before you can list a WANTED item. There have been a few outrageous requests, but very few. I just laugh when I read them, and wonder if that poster reall believes they're going to get that valuable of an item FREE?

[Stevenmarc]

16. Why wade

I simply set my email up to sent the Wanted into their own folder

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

17. I don't care when people ask for kid stuff or stuff for the elderly

But on my freecycle list, we've had people asking for ATVs, dirt bikes, pick up trucks (all must be in good working condition), and an ice boat.

Meanwhile, we posted a $900 oak entertainment center on Freecycle (just too big for our living room in the new house) with precise dimensions and we had three people show up and waste our time, because they discovered it was too big to fit in their car. We flat out posted that anyone taking it would need a pick up truck or a trailer. We ended up donating it to Habitat for Humanity. Seriously, if we say it's 6' long, 5' high and 2' deep, why the hell would you think it would fit in your back seat?

Or the worst was "wanted dog." There are a bunch of pounds around here. Go get a dog there. I'm highly suspicious of anyone posting on the internet looking for free dogs. Sounds like someone looking for bait dogs for pit fighting or a buncher for an animal lab. I brought it up to the freecycle mod, and she got really nasty with me, then posted a message saying, despite complaints, it was perfectly fine to request free animals.

[catgirl]

20. I think animals should be banned from the listings

Both offered and wanted.

[RebelOne]

22. Definitely. When I see someone giving away a dog or cat,

I send them a link to a Web site, which explains the perils of advertising "free, to good home."

[NMDemDist2]

23. is Cat Killer Frist's pic on the main page? n/t

[Le Taz Hot]

18. The Yahoo Freecycle I was on

has a rule that you HAVE to do at least a 1:1 Offer/Wanted ratio but they'd prefer a 2:1. The only reason I'm not on it any longer is that I got tired of getting 200+e-mails a day.

[Warpy]

19. Right, they need to delete those messages

Even if I have something, there's no way I'm going to give it to a grabber.

My own group was mostly questions about local services from veterinarians to movers. Advice was solicited and rarely was anything listed to freecycle. I deleted it about a year ago.

I've had much better luck with Craigslist. It doesn't clog my in box and I've been able to give and get things at nominal prices.

[catgirl]

21. I use Freecycle to give things away

I gave up on trying to get anything (too many vultures).