Some general Freecycle advice from a long time list owner

[ChadTower]

If you're going to send out email that says "please help i need baby clothes crib some shoes a mattress and a car if u got 1"...

... don't send it from an email address of phattybabylicious, lyteupda420, or bbw334hotfun.

Just a thought.

[shardian]

I'm to the point I just delete the freecycle emails without reading them. They need to rename it "begcycle".

[ChadTower]

It helps to set up a filter that separates the OFFERs from the WANTEDs.  If you want you can even chuck the WANTEDs right into the trash can.  Sadly, I can't, as I have to keep an eye on them as list admin.

[shardian]

The offer stuff is worthless too. I guess it doesn't help that I live in WV. The backwoods people apparently love freecycle.

[zaphod]

Tried FreeCycle a few times to get rid of perfectly functional printers and a few other tech items.  Ran into too many no shows.  That and the fact that near the end of the year 95% of the messages were "give me, give me, give me".  Sad to say, but it was completely not worth my effort.

[ChadTower]

I always advise people to put an item outside on a porch to be picked up rather than setting up a meeting time.  The number of noshows is mostly solved that way.  Plus, more importantly, it's a major safety issue.  The majority of Freecyclers in my area are women and inviting a random net stranger to your home is a bad idea. 

Noshows are definitely an issue... a bigger one for Craigslist, I think, as I get a way higher noshow rate there.

[HaRuMaN]

I've scored some nice stuff off freecycle...  A dreamcast, complete with about 20 games, steering wheel, etc.  Also got an NES with zapper, controller, SMB1, 2, & 3.

[ChadTower]

I've gotten a LOT of great stuff off Freecycle... many game consoles... I got a Laser Cue (pin)... I got to clear out someone's 1985 era pro electronics repair workshop ('scopes, transistor/cap checkers, tube testers, DMMs, variable power supplies, etc)... a 27" RGB presentation monitor... recently snagged like 3 whole years of Nintendo Power. 

[shardian]

I've gotten a LOT of great stuff off Freecycle... many game consoles... I got a Laser Cue (pin)... I got to clear out someone's 1985 era pro electronics repair workshop ('scopes, transistor/cap checkers, tube testers, DMMs, variable power supplies, etc)... a 27" RGB presentation monitor... recently snagged like 3 whole years of Nintendo Power. 

I figure that in one of those emails I am deleting now, that some pinball or something else awesome for a gameroom will show up. That happened when I gave up reading the local trading journal. The week after I quit, Wade told me he scored a working DK Jr. with a spare board set for $50.

[ChadTower]

I got the pin from a WANTED... I used to put them out every couple of months saying that I'd haul off any old arcade machines regardless of condition.  Took a while but I finally scored one after months of having people respond asking me to get machines for them or this one priest who kept trying to get me to donate games to his church for their youth center and implying I am a bad person for not doing so.

[shardian]

I got the pin from a WANTED... I used to put them out every couple of months saying that I'd haul off any old arcade machines regardless of condition.  Took a while but I finally scored one after months of having people respond asking me to get machines for them or this one priest who kept trying to get me to donate games to his church for their youth center and implying I am a bad person for not doing so.

Funny, I donated a game to a church and the priest was kind of annoyed. 

Even funnier, my church offered me a Space invaders...only to find it was trashed a week earlier. Oh wait, that isn't funny.

[ChadTower]

Funny, I donated a game to a church and the priest was kind of annoyed. 

Asking for the donation would have been fine... except that he called every week for three months with messages of doom and "not being a good community member" until I had donated a game or five.  I told him several times that I wanted nothing to do with his church but that wasn't an issue for him and his attempted guilt trips.  I have no issues donating games to youth centers but sure as hell not in Boston churches.

[Dartful Dodger]

Here's a Craig's list tip.

I was looking through the job adds and found one that looked to good to be true, so I figured I'd send a resume to it.  I wasn't thinking straight though. As soon as I hit send I realized I messed up.  It had a BLAHBLAHBLAH@craigslist.com address.  I sent the email from my personal account, I was really good about not using this email address for anything other than personal/business emails.

I'm now getting about 20 spam emails a day on it.  This is a small number compared to my work or yahoo emails, but from 2 to 20 over night it's a big number.  Besides this is just the begining, I’m afraid the number is just going to keep going up.

Either the bogus employer or craigslist collected my email address, either way I should have known better.