The Craigslist Client.

OK, After many experiences on Craigslist, I can definitely say that the majority of them are.. well.. **Special**. These people seem to think wasting your time is entertaining. They have no sense of appreciation, nor do they believe in common courtesy. While I can say that there are a few people that aren’t that way, the majority are just.. well.. **Special**.

There was a time I had lots of extra things that had no intrinsic value to me and rather than throw them out, I decided to give them away with the thought that someone might need it. Many of the things I bought, I used once *literally* and I really didn’t want to bother with selling them. Most of the items were in new or like new condition. Well.. I put them up on craigslist thinking people who were interested would just call, arrange to pickup, and actually show up when they said they would.

This is where it gets interesting. I get dozens of emails for the items and everybody has the “Just hold it for me” line. There were many people (20+ people per item) and everybody was available to pick up immediately. Case in point.. Most people are just messing with you. They don’t show up, they don’t call, or if they do call, they say they’re “on the way”.. They’ll be on the way for 2 days most of the time. They don’t call to tell you they’re not coming so I basically sit around waiting like an idiot for someone that doesn’t bother to show up.

Then there’s the **Extra Special Craigslister** who will call you and tell you they’re coming, tell you they’re on the way, even call you from the “road”. They’ll never show up either! Or my personal favorite.. The ones that call and ask if the item is under warranty. Ahh yes, I’m going to warranty the item I’m giving you for free. What are these people thinking!?!! I was giving away a bed and some idiot actually called me and said, “Is it a pillowtop?” I replied, “no” and their response was, “Oh nevermind.. I’m looking for a pillowtop.” Then she proceeded to grill me on the warranty I was supposed to supply.. F&&king idiot. You also get the ones that ask for additional pictures, ask me to take measurements, ask me if I’ll pay for shipping or haul it out to them.. uhm.. it’s free. Which part of “You move it” in the listing did you not get!?!!

I know I’m not the only one that deals with this pain.

Conclusion: If you’re ever thinking about giving something away on Craigslist, consider throwing it out. It’s a helluva lot easier and much less painful. Selling things on craigslist is even more fun as you can imagine, but if I blogged about those people, I’d probably have to use lots of profanity and that’s not what this blog is about.. for now.

Oh wait.. I almost forgot. I decided to rent a house on craigslist once.. All I’m going to say is.. “Don’t do it”.. They’re the worst kind of tenant. Ungrateful . We had a house up for sale and we weren’t looking for tenants. The person calls up asking to look at the house. We met them and they expressed the desire to purchase the house. They asked very kindly whether we would let them “rent” it to them while we went through the closing process. Begrudgingly, We agreed. I even went so far as to add an extra baseboard heater in one of the rooms for them so that it would be warmer. Rather than a simple Thank You, the tenant then proceeded to complain about how it wasn’t zoned separately.

We also provided the following concessions (to be nice):

• We offered to credit the rent they paid towards the final sale price.
• We lowered the rent from $2500 to $1800 per month, because that’s all they could afford.
• We offered to give them a credit for the roof that needed repair / replacement.
• We offered to give them a credit towards a new heater, because it was old. The heater works perfectly by the way. These are things we did not have to do.

Let’s see how the chain of events unfolded…

Tenant calls me up screaming on Sunday Morning at 6:00am and is incredibly hostile. Their heat isn’t working. We call them back at 6:04am. Tenant has massive drama attack and starts freaking out about how we could rent them a house where the heat doesn’t work. Turns out the idiot had someone come over the day prior and turned off the pilot to the heater. I go to the tenant’s house by 7:30am and relight the pilot. No thank you, no apology.

Tenant calls up wanting a credit for a roof leak. (A credit for a roof that we already credited them for in the sale price)

Tenant screws around for 3 months for the closing. Promises that they will close and go into contract with no more requested concessions (after 3 major discounts) [from 415k to 395k]

Tenant then calls up lawyer and lowballs the offer to 375k, citing structural damage. (Bullshit. A small roof leak that I repaired doesn’t constitute structural damage. If they were so worried about “structural damage”, then why are they living there and why would they still want to buy the house?) It’s clear they just wanted the price to be lower, because they couldn’t afford it. I’m a General Contractor and I can tell you there was NO structural damage.

Tenant then calls up screaming about a defective stove. I immediately order a new stove and have it scheduled for delivery and installation. The day of installation, the tenant is not home. Costing me the price of the service call.

We finally decide not to sell the tenant the house and as per the lease we drew up, they must vacate the premises. Tenant refuses to vacate. We’re now evicting them.

Rather than be courteous and honest about the fact that they were having trouble getting funding, they could have been honest and nice. We would have worked with them. We’re not bad people. We’ve been very good landlords (addressing issues within 24 hours when possible), giving them concessions, providing heating in a room that possibly needed it (I installed a radiator for them out of kindness) and rather than appreciation, we’ve gotten nothing but grief.

Every call from the tenant has been hostile. They’ve been proven wrong on every occasion and rather than an apology or a thank you, we’ve gotten nasty snide remarks.

We’ve done nothing but be helpful and this has cost us money and grief. People just aren’t appreciative. I personally don’t know of a landlord or seller that would have provided as many concessions as we have to them. The nastiness and drama hasn’t stopped. We finally told them, “Talk to our Attorney on all issues”, because we couldn’t deal with them. They’re disingenuous and miserable people who are neurotic and seek to draw people into their drama.

Once we evict them, we’ll be selling the house again, but this time we’re not going to be nice. It seems that if you’re nice to people, they feel it’s owed to them. I’ve only listed the “highlights” of my dealings with this tenant as there are so many more wonderful stories I can tell, but then this rant would be many more pages longer.

If you’re wondering why I have no more compassion for people from craigslist, go through the hell I’ve gone through and you will see why. When you lose thousands of dollars of your own money just to be nice to someone, you remember it.

For those of you that are here because you thought I was being nasty with my Ads for free stuff, why don’t you consider how many times you’ve done this to people. The world doesn’t owe you anything and the fact that I choose to give things away even after all this pain speaks volumes in my opinion. I work and have things to do with my time and my world doesn’t revolve around you. I’ve never done anything to harm you and personally, if you find it insulting, it makes me wonder whether you’re the type of person I speak of in this post. If you think about it, the only people that would be offended by my ad are the people who probably do these things to people on Craigslist. So before you start sending me nasty emails, think about how many times you’ve done this to people.. and get over it.

Also, here’s my response to the people that took the time to send me nastymail.