Freecycle

I don't know this site. Do you mean I can ask for anything I want and someone will just give it to me - free?

In that case I want a 4 bedroom bungalow in this area, with half an acre of land, on a country lane. I'm even willing to swap for a 3 bedroom semi (with new, very posh bathroom) on a semi-rural road. Now, I can't say fairer than that, can I? :)
 
you can become a member of every freecycle site in the country, but you can only advertise for 'things wanted' on your local site....
you can pick up from ANY of the posts on any of the groups though


so a mod on freecycle told me anyway


oh he also happens to be a member of accyweb too :D
 
Hi folks someone I know thats in Freecycle told me that there are some little misconceptions need correcting:

I seem to recall that if you have email run by some obscure provider (whose name I cannot remember) you cannot use it on freecycle - have to use a recognised email provider to register
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AFAIK Not quite right, you can use Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, BTinternet or any other ISP.
Although some ISP's have had problems blocking Yahoo mails, NTL & AOL were 2 that spring to mind.
The thing that is not allowed is to be using Grouply.com as they have some serious security issues that Freecycle groups (and others) do not agree with.

In that case I want a 4 bedroom bungalow in this area, with half an acre of land, on a country lane. I'm even willing to swap for a 3 bedroom semi (with new, very posh bathroom) on a semi-rural road. Now, I can't say fairer than that, can I?
Click to expand...

Might have been a fun post but:
AFAIK Freecycle is about saving stuff from landfill, I have never heard of a Bungalow being thrown into landfill :D

Also AFAIK swapping is not allowed, all exchanges are meant to be free & without conditions, a swap contains a condition (I'll give you mine on the condition that you give me yours).

you can become a member of every freecycle site in the country, but you can only advertise for 'things wanted' on your local site....
you can pick up from ANY of the posts on any of the groups though
Click to expand...

ISTR If you join a lot of groups you will likely end up on a spammers list & be queried about it, but there is nothing to prevent you doing so.
99.999% of the time anyone that joins all the groups is a national spammer and soon gets noticed and removed.
I'm personally in about 20+ Freecycle groups internationally.

You can usually post both OFFER & WANTED posts on any group that accepts you as a member, but you are asked to post them all on your own "local" group first,as Freecycle is all about "local gifting".
The basis of that is to also respect the environment & not emit loads of nasty emissions into the air :D

oh he also happens to be a member of accyweb too
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Who's that then, I'm sure it wasn't me. ;)

Lancslad, did you reply to the email that was sent to you asking your local area location & partial postal code? ISTR not replying to that is the biggest reason for non approval. It's usually because someone joins up & signs up for a Yahoo email which gets set as default & then they do not check the Yahoo email account.

Other problems are when they join with 1 email address and then reply from another, which means that Freecycle cannot be completely sure that they are the same person, so the same email address needs to be used.
It also needs to be the same email address as the reply will often be searched for to find the members location because they often forget it :D


Try joining again, email the group owners email address & mention this thread on AW then the dozy sod who's overstretched trying to keep 3 groups in the area running might take more notice :D :D

Now if I had some spare time & knew anything about how to use Freecycle well I'd help out as I know they could do with some lol
 
mattylad said:
Hello, just wanted to drop in another perspective about peoples wants on Freecycle etc.

The groups usually have limits on how many wanted posts they can make, if someone wastes a wanted post with something really stupid then it is thier loss, the rest of the group just laugh at them & ignore them and they now have less opputunities to ask for sensible stuff.

However, nothing is too good to give away, cars, caravans, plasma tv, conservatories, expensive hifi systems etc all get given away (I have seen them). So what do we call an extravagant item & say "thats too much to ask for" ?

If you dont ask you dont get, and if its something small that people are likely to have kicking around in the shed etc then your likely to get it.
If you do ask for something that's extravagant then not only do you not get it, but when you do ask for something more basic you dont get that either as people will look up your previous posting history.

At the moment the BwD group is run by some US based international moderators who set it up after its previous owner went awol, they are of the mind not to limit anyones posts, hopefully things will get better when the current moderator gets to take over.

As for moderation of people, when someone joins - yes they are moderated to ensure that they can post correctly, but after they have shown that they can follow the simple subject line format (and its amazing how many cannot!) and have posted a few offers they can be taken off of moderation & are free to post. It doesn't always happen as the people running the groups are volenteers & just like the rest of us have a life to live & cant always commit the time to searching & identifying people.

And as the offers to help from people (other than those that just want to profit from it) are few far between there remains delays & moderation galore.
Luckily the mods have a Firefox plugin that really helps them or all hell would break loose.

Apologies for the spelling errors, for some reason my checker isnt working.

Matty.
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Funnily enough, absolutely nothing has changed.
BwD is still looked after by the Yanks because they got rid of a perfectly good moderator and people are still taking the pee when asking for stuff.

And despite having a message creation web page that creates the whole message & sends it for you, people still get the simple subject line wrong....

\bangsheadonwall :end:
 
Free stuff is one of the few highlights of someones death. People leave some pretty valuable stuff behind and not everyone's family has the time to find everything a good home. Some might just give away expensive books or paintings so that other people could appreciate them for example, so why not the same with laptops? And before anyone whinges about my first sentence, you only have to look at disputes over wills to see exactly what I mean. All of a sudden the death becomes highly irrelevant once there is property to be fought over.

Household appliances and electrics are the thing that people generally already have so when someone dies, its easier to just give it away on freecycle if you aren't bothered about the money. And some people don't really care about making profit.

I think ASKING for expensive items is somewhat cheeky but as someone said, if you don't ask then you don't get. Simple as that really. We shouldn't be so cynical about listed expensive things though, there are many reasons why a person might decide to just give away something of value.
 
I think thats a good idea, I lost my mother in law in November and we have yet to find homes for all her stuff, we're not going to rush to sort things out but thats one idea I hadn't thought of.
 
We have had people join just to clear out a recently deceased relatives house, we normally do not allow people from a long way away to join local groups but if they let us know the reason we are always open to helping out.

Last one I know of was from Oxford, clearing his mothers house which all went smoothly.
he then left straight afterwards.
 
Just in case anyone from Blackburn area is reading here.

The Blackburn With Darwen Yahoo group fro Freecycle is about to close.
Instead all members are asked to go to the Freecycle.org website and sign up for what is called "my freecycle" and the "new" site that the Freecycle Network are hoping to replace Yahoo with.

IMO the whole new site (which is a beta & still in development) as naff in comparison to the Yahoo groups. There is absolutely no help with it & the current moderator of BwD is no help whatsoever.
The whole of BwD appears to be going to the dogs & I can see a great many of the current 3000 members not bothering to sign up with it.

I can also see that they will instead try joining the neighbouring Hyndburn group.
(And we have decided that we will welcome them).

I have to say though, there has only been 1 admin email about this & the group closes on the 27th.
A pathetic way to organise a whole groups moving IMO.

Matty
 
Only when BwD officially closes it's Yahoo group.

From then I wont care as i won't entertain the new site in any way shape or form. :D
 
Can I ask why?
Please explain as best you can, so that I can provide feedback to those creating the site
on why members do not want to join it.
Your name will not be mentioned.

Matty
 
Well Flashy, it looks like your going to have to bite the bullet & join the BwD crappy site after all.

TFN are rutheless and dont give a toss about the thousands of members they will lose & are determined that the Hyndburn & B&P groups will close & more to the new site.

They are insisting that we appoint their prson as group owner so thatthey can then kick us off, delete all our hard work and then tell the members you have 2 weeks to join the new site before closing the group.

This is how Freecycle work, not like any other charity where you have transparancy at the top, but one where the founder is paid & he is slowly taking all the groups off of Yahoo so he can make more revenue from the advertising there.

There used to be moderators groups where we could discuss organisational issues but they have been stomped on & noone is allowed to show any form of dissent or say anything against how it is run.

I'm sick of it.
I have told them so.

So now they are making almost 4000 people pay for it, as Hyndburn then B&P will close very shortly.

Matty
 
Could always use the buy, sell and swap facility on here couldnt we? I wont be rejoining freecycle with the sound of things.
 
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