Yard Sale Pet Peeves

[Mismatch]

There are very few things that unsettle me, but yard sales bloopers are one of them...

1.  People who leave up their signs so that you bike five km down a street only to discover and empty driveway 

2.  People who set up signs ALL over the city, without arrows... so that you go down a street assuming the yard sale is there, only to realize that it's 15 km away.  In the opposite direction.  Umm... you do realize people don't have googlemap implanted in their brains yet, yah?

3.  People who maliciously set up yard sale signs that lead to dead ends in the middle of corn fields.
  I grew up in the yard sale capital of Ontario    It happens.

What are your yard sale pet peeves?

[HawaiianRain]

I'll be on the opposite end here but one would be:

folks who have $13.00 worth of stuff and expect you to cash a $100.00 or a $50.00... with it being freshly just opened. Do I look like the first national bank?

This has been discussed in another thread on here but Outrageously overzealous early birds.

[kamakazee82]

... those ...

... and no prices ...

... and no one tending the sale (uh how do i pay, yet alone, who? lol)

.. when jerks try to pay for like a few dollars of stuff with a large bill ... it doesn't have to be my sale and i wanna smack those people and scream at the sale person for taking it and usually getting duped with a fake bill ...

... saying 'antiques' when EVERYTHING is new except the one broken floor lamp that they scavened out of the abandoned house next door ...

saying 'HUGE SALE" and it's one or two teeny tiny tables ...

[Thunderwing]

I agree with Mismatch!  I'm starting to think my solution to people leaving their signs up is going to be to walk up to the door and knock, and then proclaim "I'm here for your yard sale!"

[BlondePonyTail]

When sellers price their items WAY too high... it's a YARD SALE!

Sadly, Yardsales here are hit and miss... mostly miss for ponies. I have much better luck at FLEA MARKETS!

[melodys_angel]

Aww, soo sad to see soo much negativity, though I can defiantly relate with quite a few of these.

Yard sales can be fun too..try to turn a negative into a positive. And get to know your bartering skills xD

[BigHicks1977]

My biggest pet pev is when they post on Craigslist and say they have toys you drive to BFE!!!! and its ONE toy and not even a good toy like a dirty sock monkey or something AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH lol next

[kaoskat]

No prices. Bugs the heck out of me.

[Breyer600]

Most of these will be repeats of what others have said...

1. People who don't take their signs down or put them up days before their sale.  I've seen signs left up for months!  This is usually combined with #2. 

2. Signs you can't possibly read from a moving car (tons of small print).  Signs should not be up if the sale is closed; so all that really needs to be there is an arrow and maybe an address, but if for some reason a sign is up longer than that the date and time need to be readable.  (There's never a reason to put a list of everything in your sale on a tiny little sign, and ball point pen is generally not readable from a car.)

3. No prices.  If there's no price listed, I'll assume they want $20 for something I'm only willing to pay 50 cents for, and I won't bother asking unless I really want it (and then it's usually too much and I end up leaving it anyway).  When I do ask, I hate getting "Make me an offer" or similar since I have no idea whether they're reasonably priced on anything let alone what they're thinking for that particular item.

4. Pages printed out from Amazon or eBay (these are always starting prices with no bids or BIN - never, ever sold items) trying to justify their high prices.  A variation is when they just tell you they looked it up online and that was the price.

5. People who forget to put important information in their ads - like day and time but the grand prize goes to an ad I read last week that didn't give any indication as to where (not even what area of town let alone the street).

On the other side of things - pushy buyers trying to get people to lower their prices an unreasonable amount.  I've seen people trying to get a seller who already came down to half price on an already reasonably priced item to come down to half (or even less) of that.  (I've been seriously tempted to walk up and buy it out from under them in those cases.)

Thankfully, there are sellers who do it right - large easy to read signs to follow, all items clearly and reasonably priced, and ads that give all the pertinent information.  I love those sales even when I don't find anything I want to buy at them.

[Eviecorn]

I haven't had a yard sale since the last time where people just openly stole stuff.  I mean, most of it was useless crap, but I would have binned it if I didn't put it in the yard sale.  People.

[BrightIdea]

I hate when people put flyers up on stop signs. Pretty sure that is illegal (in my area of Southern Ontario, at least).

I know there are some pretty good multi-taskers out there, but there are enough people around who screw up stop signs even without these kinds of distractions.

[katieklassified]

As a seller...I can't STAND early birds and lowballers. My best friend and I used to do joint sales (my neighborhood banned them, hers didn't care), and we'd put NO EARLY BIRDS on the sign, and there'd still be people showing up while we were setting up...at 5:30 AM. The sign said it started at 7.

And we'd have the same people show up EVERYTIME and try to buy everything...like, "Oh how much for ALL the purses?" And we'd give a number, and they'd immediately lowball like crazy. Like we'd say $50 because there were a LOT of things and they'd go...$10. NOT KIDDING. They resell at the local swap meet on the weekends. They were really bad about the makeup I was selling (all new), and I finally said...its $20 for the whole box, I can make MORE selling the pieces individually...pay $20 OR LEAVE.



As a buyer...I hate overpriced items. I hate that they overprice things because they're "antiques". And I hate when a flier says toys and they have none.

[StoryDreamer]

There are people who have signs up for yard sales in my neighborhood that were in May. Really?

I will offer to buy a lot of something, but at a fair price. Usually I buy a lot of something like books because I might want half the things they have.

[Marigold]

How about people who put up signs right over the lost dog sign you just put up seconds before they got there.  So rude.  I tore down thier sign and didn't move it above, next to, or under the lost dog sign (where they should have put it).  I threw it in the recycling. 

Friend's lost dog > garage sale.

Also, so rude to cover anyone's sign, especially a lost pet one.

[invaderhorizongreen]

I hate false advertizing in general, nothing annoys me more. Or one time when I showed up when they were supposed to be open and they were just starting to set up.