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Buying on Craigslist

Image by jcolman via Flickr

On Friday, I talked about selling safely on Craigslist.  Today, I’m going to talk about buying safely and getting a good deal.

I love Craiglist.  It’s safe to say I’m a fan. We’ve refurnished most of our house for 10-15% of retail by being patient and persistent there.   We scored a $1200 oak entertainment center for $200, a beautiful oak headboard/storage thingy for $150, a nice china cabinet for $70 and much, much more.   There are a lot of deals to be had, but you have to be careful.

I never buy anything without either a picture or a model number. Stock photos do not count.  I want to see an actual picture of the actual item.   With electronics, I want the model number so I can tell exactly what features it has.    If I can’t positively identify the item, the seller gets an email.  If I don’t know what it is, I’m not interested.

Once I have the item identified, it’s time to hit Amazon and Google for a quick price check.   Acceptable prices vary, but I’m generally looking for 25% of retail for items that aren’t collectible or antique.

While it’s not a common occurrence for the things I buy, some sellers do lie. The technical term for this is “fraud”.   Fraudulent sellers needs to be kicked in the shins.   Before I go to actually see an item, I do enough research that I will hopefully be able to pick out a fraud or forgery.   The easiest way to tell if the backstory is a lie?  If you are given a backstory, it’s probably a lie.  Never assume that the seller is telling the truth about the little old lady who only drove her TiVo to church on Thursdays in the summer and never went above channel 10.  The story is always a lie. Check the condition yourself.  Check the value yourself.   If you can’t verify it, it isn’t true.

If you are buying tickets or documents, know what you are looking for to tell if it is a forgery.  If you can’t tell, ask the seller to meet with someone you trust who can verify it.   Ticketmaster tickets are laminated, so they glare slightly in the light. If you hold the tickets up to a strong light, the white parts will glow blue.    Finally, if the ticket looks like it was printed at home, don’t trust it.

[ad name=”inlineleft”]A few months ago, a local couple was trying to buy a car on Craigslist.   When they met the buyer, he took their cash and their car and left them on the sidewalk in an unfamiliar neighborhood.    The moral of the story?   Ride the bus. That, and always meet in a public, well-traveled spot.

If the seller suggest escrow, he’s probably actually the deposed ruler of Nigeria in need of someone to help him get his fortune safely out of the country.  You should immediately give him your name, address, social security number, PIN, place of business, all of your bank accounts, and the kidneys of your first-born.  He’ll hook you up. Really.

Don’t do that.   On the internet, escrow=fraud, almost every time.

Rental fraud is an issue I have absolutely no experience with, but it’s common in places with a competitive housing market.  The felonious candidates for extremely prejudiced termination will scan the real estate listings, and post some on Craigslist as a rental unit with a low-ball price.   People get excited for the extreme deal, shut off their critical thinking skills, and hand their nest-egg over to someone they’ve never met so they can keep the scam from being snatched up by some sucker who’s just a little bit slower at dumping his wallet into a crowded room on con-artists.   It’s a big decision, so take the time to research it and do it right. Find the ownership records and the owner.   If you’re buying, get an actual realtor to help you.  They are worth the money.

Tips for Buying Safely on Craigslist

Don’t wire money. Ever.   If someone suggests that for an internet sale, ask for their address and send a leg-breaker their way.  They are trying to steal from you.

Trust your gut.  If something smells fishy, it probably is.  Walk away.

Don’t ever give out personal information.  Nevernevernever.  Not your address, not your favorite flavor of chewing-cud, nothing.   Keep it private.[ad name=”inlineright”]

Meet in a public place.  Criminals tend to dislike witnesses, so go somewhere that has them by the score.

Bring a friend. I may be a bit of a chauvinist or over-protective, but my wife doesn’t bring money to go meet strangers on the internet without me.  If your local laws allow it, consider bringing some form of protection with you.

Craigslist can save you a ton of money, but it brings some risk with it.   Keep yourself safe.

Saturday Roundup – Side Hustles Rock

Image via Wikipedia

We’re busy cleaning for our party next weekend, followed by spending an evening lying in a coffin in my yard, scaring the crap out of kids and giving them candy.

The best posts of the week:

Right now, I am actively pursuing 4 separate side hustles, 3 of which are generating actual cash.  It’s about $500 a month at the moment, but each of them are growing.  My goal is to hit $1500 a month by spring and have full replacement income within 2 years.  Everybody should have some kind of side income, just as a safety net.

One of my side hustles involves training in a niche with 200 companies competing for about 10,000 one-day students each year.    I could try to compete on price, but that’s an arms race to bargain-basement pricing.  Instead, we compete on value, and as such, we’re on track to bring in several multiples of our share of students this year, with growth projected to go well beyond that next year.

Knowing how much more I enjoy my side projects over my straight job, I want to encourage my kids to develop their own lines of income that will allow them to live the lives they want to live, without being a leech on society.

If they can start to get some of their own income, they can learn the value of the things they own, instead of assuming that everything is free.  I will not spoil my kids.

Finally, a list of the carnivals I’ve participated in:

Actions Have Consequences has been included in the Festival of Frugality.

If I missed anyone, please let me know.   Thanks for including me!

Do 1 Thing

I’m lazy.

Really, I am.  When I get home from work, I want nothing more than to plop down on the couch, dial up a movie and ignore the world for a few hours.  I need some downtime to relax.

While I am keeping the couch from flying away, my wife gets home, makes dinner, does the dishes, changes the cat litter and  maybe vacuums the floor.  Once dinner is cooking, she usually throws in a load of laundry.  Three kids is a great way to guarantee a lot of laundry needs to get washed.

I have just two things to say about that:

  1. It makes me feel really lazy.
  2. I love you, honey!

I’ve never considered it a problem because I work my butt off on the weekend.  My wife isn’t happy with the arrangement because I tend to do next to nothing during the week.   I think it’s a good balance.  I’m productive on the weekend, she’s productive during the week.  Unfortunately, my habitual laziness has caused a bit of tension.  We’ve had a few “discussions” about that balance.  It’s obviously not working.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying something new.   When I get home from work I’ve been doing just 1 thing.  I do one thing per day.  One day, I fold laundry, another day I do the dishes.  Some days, I pick a room to organize.  It’s never very much, but it’s always something that needs to be done and, possibly most important, it looks like I’m doing more so my wife feels less abandoned to the housework.   I’m not actually doing more, but it gets spread out over the week, so it looks like more.  Slowly, surely, all of the work is getting done.

It’s not a perfect solution, but it seems to be working.  More is getting done, my wife feels like I’m helping out more and I get more time on the weekends to pursue whatever I feel like pursuing.   It’s a win for each of us.

How do you balance relaxation and a shared workload?

Book Review: Social Nation

I recently had an opportunity to read Social Nation: How to harness the power of Social Media to attract customers, motivate employees & grow your business by Barry Libert.  Heckuva title.

Libert is the the CEO at Mzinga, which is a company that connects other companies–and their customers–using social media to collaborate and communicate.  Social media is, quite simply, using the internet to drive interactive communication.  This includes Twitter, Facebook, and forums.  Sometimes, it’s just discussion, sometimes, it’s sharing user-generated content.

Social Nation “will show you, as an employee, customer or partner, how to use new social technologies, make yourself heard, and produce better products and services.”   It bills itself as a “complete toolbox” for social media.   Does it match the hype? Let’s see.

The book is broken into three sections.

Part 1: The Future of Business is Social

Libert asserts that the future of business is social.   That is obviously true, to a degree. A solid viral marketing campaign can drive more eyeball to a product than a full-page spread in the New York Time or a 30-second spot during Super Bowl halftime.  However, there are a lot–possibly a majority–of business-to-business companies that will gain no value from a social media campaign.   Would a regional supplier with an exclusive distributorship for a top-name line of faucets benefit from being on Twitter?  No.  On the other hand, 17% of our time online is spent on social applications and the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is 35 years old or older.  There is certainly some value to be gained by have a social media presence in some markets.

This section(all of chapter 3!) also contains a link to a test to determine your social media skills.   I haven’t taken the test, mainly because I don’t feel like registering for another site.  This struck me as nothing more than lead generation, which is a shame.  It could be a useful tool.

Part 2: Seven Principles for Building Your Social Nation

This section has seven chapters, containing 7 case studies that detail the 7 principle of social media, as defined by Libert and Mzinga.

The principles include:

  • Let the culture lead the way, as demonstrated by Zappos.com.
  • Involve your fans.  The big takeaway from chapter 8 is that, when you create a community, your job is to facilitate involvement, not to control it.  If you try to run it with an iron fist, it will choke and die.
  • Reward others and you will be rewarded. Apple lets developers keep 70% of the money they make in the app store.  That encourages developers to develop, making everyone more money.   Give.  Karma will take care of the rest.
  • There are 4 other principles, but some are just common sense, and I don’t want to give away the contents of the book.

Part 3: Start Today and Create Your Own Social Nation

aka

Chapter 11: How to Get Started and 10 Pitfalls to Avoid

Section 3 has just one chapter, but it’s a good one.    It explains the difference between followers and fans, the value of each and how to bond with each.   The difference?  Fans are actively involved.   Followers are far more passive.

This section/chapter also goes into some things to avoid, like abandoning a social media strategy too early, failing to market your business, underestimating the power(positive and negative) of a social network.

Is it worth getting the book?

Social Nation bills itself as a complete social media toolbox, but it falls a bit short.   The book tackles social media from a purely strategic point of view, ignoring the tactical concerns.   It’s clearly geared toward helping a company plan its social media strategy from a 10,000 foot perch.   For the people in the trenches, or anyone with a grasp of strategy that’s looking for the details on running a social media campaign, it’s not enough.  That said, if you are trying to plan a social media strategy, or you have no idea where to start, this is a great book for you.   It holds a lot of value, but stops some distance before “complete”.  Definitely worth a read if you are involved is social media planning.

Giveaway

I’m giving away Social Nation.   If you’d like to have a chance to get it, just leave a comment, telling me how you like to see companies use social media.  Fair warning, this is the book I read, so it’s “used”.   I take care of books, so you can’t tell that it’s used.

Publishers, Publicists, and Authors

If you have a book you’d like me to review, please contact me.

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Multiracial Skinhead Love Triangle

English: A goat
English: A goat (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Honey, here on national television, in front of a live studio audience, I’ve got a secret I’d like to share.   You’re not our child’s mother.  I’ve been sleeping with the milkman.  And the goat.  Your mom is the star of my new adult website.  With the goat.  And the milkman.  I’ve got three other families, in three other cities.  I lost the house to my gambling addiction.   Those sores?  Herpesyphiligonoritis.  I got it from the foreign exchange student we hosted before I moved her to Dubuque and married her.  The goat gave her away.  The milkman cried.   Oh, and I wore your panties to the Illinois Nazi reunion.   I know how much you hate Illinois Nazis.  But I still love you.  And your sister.  Especially your sister.  She does that thing with her tongue….”

Why would anyone go on national television to share things like that?

More interesting: why would anybody stay on stage after hearing that?

Stay tuned.

I have this friend.  He bought a couple of cars.  He’s got some issues with money, partially revolving around a need to keep his assets below a certain threshold.   So he put the cars in his girlfriend’s name.  I know, it’s slightly crooked, but that makes the story more fun.

They broke up.

Recently, she called him to say she was suing him for the cars.  She wanted them.  She wanted to hurt him.  She was mean.   Somehow that turned into them agreeing to settle the case on Judge Joe Brown, on national television.

My friend spoke with the show’s producer, then last week, he was flown to California and put up in a hotel for a couple of days.   When he arrived at the TV studio, he was informed that it wasn’t Judge Joe Brown, but a new show that will start airing in the fall called, The Test.   According to CBS, The Test “is a one-hour conflict resolution talk show that will use lie detector and DNA tests to settle relationship and paternity disputes among the guests.”   Coincidentally, CBS also owns Judge Joe Brown.

My friend got on stage with Dr. Phil’s son, Jay McGraw, and was accused of cheating on his girlfriend and stealing her identity.   Lie detectors.  Yelling.  Accusations.

Why did he stay?

He wasn’t given his return plane ticket until they were done filming.

When he was done, they handed him a voucher for cab fare and the itinerary for his return flight.  Until then, he had no other way to get home.

That’s why people stay on stage.  It’s probably also why none of those shows ever have people with money of their own; they can find their own way home in a pinch.

Interesting side note:  The show paid $200  and booked the cheapest possible return flight, with a 6 hour layover.

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