In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 4 Oct 2015 15:31:57 -0700, "Bob F"
wrote:

micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Thu, 1 Oct 2015 08:50:43 -0700 (PDT),
DerbyDad03 wrote:

On Thursday, October 1, 2015 at 11:26:44 AM UTC-4, Oren wrote:
On Thu, 01 Oct 2015 07:39:41 -0400, micky
wrote:

And why do they say, "If not gone by tomorrow, goes to the dump."
They've had this stuff for years, maybe decades, and all of a
sudden it has to be gone immediately.

Maybe because the item is on the street the day before the trash
runs?

Yep!

I check the "Free Stuff" section on CL every now and them.

Quite often there are posts entitled "Curb Alert!" usually followed
by a brief description and a picture of what was put out.

This translates to "I just put this stuff out for the trash. If you
want it, come and get it - quick!"

That's what I'm saying. If they were really interested in someone
else benefitting from their used stuff, they wouldn't put it out in
the trash for another week, or even two, to give people time to pick
it up.

I see this a lot in a Freecycle newsletter, and since postings there
have to be approved, and approval can take a day or two, sometimes
these announcements come in the middle of the night before the trash
is to be picked up.

They've had the stuff for years. They can wait two more weeks.
They could also plan ahead.

It's just people being nice...

A little nice but not very nice.

You are too picky. Maybe they're having a party and need it gone before the

There are just too many people like this for them all to be having
parties or any other deadline.

party. At least they offered it,

I agreed that they are being a little nice. Or regular nice. Just not
very nice.

I'm not trying to dump on them. I'm mostly just saying it's strange.

and frequently it will be gone as they want.
Maybe they posted it 3 times already and it's time to go.

No, I read my email every day (several times a day) and this is always
or almost always the first time the things have appeared. There are
a few people who will post something twice if it's not taken the first
time, and they are to the best of my memory the ones who don't put any
time pressure on responders.

IF you want it, ask
for it and pick it up as they desired. You're getting it free.

98% of things I don't want. I'm just commenting on how strange it is
that they've had these things for month or years and all of a sudden
they can only wait until the day after tomorrow or they will send it to
the dump.

The things I really want, I ask for immediately and go over there almost
immediately if that suits them.**

Actually you bring up a similar phenomenon. There are other things
that I could use, or sort of want, that I think someone will want more
or will likely make better use of than I will, and I want them to have
priority. So I used to answer and say, "If no one else contacts
you, I'd like this" I always got an immediate answer saying "It's
yours". I'm pretty sure that's because they didnt' want to wait another
day to see if anyone else wanted it.

So now I wait, 2, 3, maybe 4 days, depending on how much I want it,
(unless they've threatened to send it to the dump. Not everyone makes
that threat) and then, if no email has shown up saying "TAKEN", I reply.
Once it was taken but they didn't post that, and a couple other times it
was something no one would want but me.

**I would more often go immediately, but most people insist on doing
everything via email. With an hour, 5 hours, overnight intervening.
It's taken up to 5 emails from me and 5 emails back to arrange things by
email, spanning days. I always give my phone number when I reply or
in my first email after I've offered something, but only ONE person in
several years has ever called me. In that case, we handled all the
arrangements in one phone call. So much easier.

(I reply what is immediately from my POV, but I think it might be
possible to read the webpage and see the offers hours before they arrive
in my email. And if it is possible, I think there are people who do
that, but I haven't checked if it will work that way. )