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View Full Version : Oh BROTHER~!!



Cliff Rohrabacher
10-25-2007, 2:06 PM
I Put an ad for a car for sale in the paper.

Get a call right off from this guy who is more interested in telling me all the woes of his life about mother in hospital, he's got kids, needs to get to FL on and on and on~ ~ ~.

Me: "Ya wanna see the car or not?"

More of his boring story.

Interrupting him again: I articulate the failings of the car ( there are a few it's a 1995 car).

Eventually he is aggressive and is on his way to see it and wants to pay CASH (Woo Hoo) but only wants to pay half the asking price.

I was somewhat flummoxed at why the offer of cash was such a big deal for him - - did he think I'd extend credit? Oh Well.


I tell him what I'd take (1/4 off the asking price) and advise him that unless he has that much on his person or can get it, not to trouble himself showing up.


He troubles himself and eventually arrives at the address I provide.

When he arrives (in a $60,000 truck) he is boisterous, trashy, loud, and - - dumb. He proceeds to address in the negative and expand upon every single aspect of this rather old and inexpensively priced car in great detail - as if I care. I guess he thinks he's negotiating.

Three times I stop him and tell him: "You either want or you don't, either way I don't care but the car is what it is."

After a few rounds of him repeating "IT'S ROUGH OHHH IT'S ROUGH ~~~" shaking his head yada yada. He suggests halving the half he offered on the phone. This would be 1/4 of the asking price.

I closed the car up locked it and walked away. I got nuthin to say at that point. The whole routine was just that: a routine with which this guy fishes for weak players low balling till he finds a sucker.

Now he is angry~!! How dare I .

What a galloping looser~!!

I'm glad I sleep with guns.

Matt Meiser
10-25-2007, 2:14 PM
You should have countered by raising the price.

Ken Werner
10-25-2007, 2:27 PM
I agree with Matt.

Richard Niemiec
10-25-2007, 2:42 PM
I had a similar experience when I had an estate sale to sell of the contents of my mother's house after she passed.

The sale was on saturday. Went well, long day, tired as hell. So on Sunday I grumpily dragged myself over to the house to basically throw everything that didn't sell into the dumpster. As soon as I got there and before I could take down the "sale" sign, people started stopping and buying stuff I would otherwise be throwing away, and I was dealing like Monty Hall; boxes of stuff for $4, $5, individual items for 50 cents, you know the deal.

So this lady starts coming to me with every little thing, ashtrays, bowls, towels, etc. asking price. I tell her to put what she wants in a box and I will give her an overall price she can be happy with.

So she comes to me with two boxes crammed with stuff; a set of pots, 7 wine glasses, several tablecloths, an unused knife set, set of stainless steel bowls, etc. and says how much, and I say $8 (this stuff is worth $20 easy, even by my now reduced standards). She says, "no, no, no, Fo Dollah" and I say again, $8, she becomes animated and insistant and says "Fi Dollah" and throws a fiver on the table and starts to leave with the stuff. At this point, since this stuff is already in boxes and really easy to throw in the dumpster, I take the boxes away and say no deal, now its $20. She says "no, no, I take for Aiah Dollah" and I said no, I said $8, you said $4, then $5, and then I said $20, we did not agree. I am not selling anything to you, get the hell off my property before I call the police. She couldn't believe it, pitched a fit and started yelling and carrying on until I pulled out my cell phone to call the cops, then she quickly left.

All the other people in the house had by this time stopped what they were doing and everyone watched with intense interest as this drama played out, and when she finally left everyone started clapping. Unbelievable what some people will do at these sales.

Jeff Yates
10-25-2007, 3:49 PM
It ain't just selling stuff...it's a PITA to give it away...

I've been cleaning out some closets, going through stuff I don't use and post to a couple of local friendly Yahoo groups that I"m giving stuff away. They vary from laptop hard drives, laptop bags, some fishing stuff..etc..etc...

I am for the next 24 hours innundated with questions about what size laptop will fit in those bags, or do you have any of these, cause if you do...I'll come right over (things ranging from Flat Panel monitors to 200+ gig hard drives), etc..etc...

I tell folks come by, look at the stuff, if you don't want it, no skin off my back...and then they pepper me with MORE questions.

Now I"m done...straight to the garbage it goes...

I'm not even going to bother with trying to give things away anymore...

The only one that went well was all the fishing gear...I had an immediate reply wanting to know when they could stop by. NO questions, just what I would expect were I on the other hand...

Sheesh...

Jim Mattheiss
10-25-2007, 10:19 PM
I've had good results with Freecycle. http://www.freecycle.org

I've sold some old electronics to people who were very grateful to get them.

If you hit a whacko you just move on to the next person who's interested.

None of my stuff is worth anything on EBAY, but it's worth free to someone.

Jim

Ted Calver
10-26-2007, 12:57 PM
Jim,
I second the Freecycle plug. If its got a little life left in it, before I throw it in the trash I offer it on freecycle and somebody always wants it. One man's trash is another mans treasure.

Jeff Yates
10-26-2007, 1:08 PM
I'll give it a try and see what comes of it...

I do hate throwing out stuff other people could use, but the reason I"m giving it away and not selling it, is the plain and simple fact that it's not worthy my time to wrangle $5 or $10 out of it and string it out over a few weeks...