Craigslist: The Good, The Bad, and The Makes Me Want to Curse

Back in this post about driving 8-hours round-trip to buy a mower, I suggested that we keep our drive-time for Craigslist purchases to under two hours each way. After today I think we should heed that advice...

In general, Craigslist has been very good to us. We have managed to get some smoking deals {thanks to Daniel's patience and ongoing research} and we have also been able to sell a lot of stuff we don't need anymore {it sure beats having a garage sale}.

But this week our good luck ran out. It started on Wednesday when Daniel contacted someone in Birmingham about something he was interested in and said that we could be in B'ham by 6PM. The guy said, "sounds good" or something to that effect and we made plans to head south. Late in the day, the guy emailed Daniel to say he had already sold the item. This is just bad Craigslist etiquette, but I guess no one informed the guy. Thankfully we hadn't left town yet...

Scenario #2:

For some time we have been considering selling our Altima and getting a slightly newer, more gas-efficient car. Our criteria for this vehicle is fairly specific, so we have patiently waited for the right opportunity and then when the right opportunity arises, we need to be prepared to jump on it.

Our criteria is as follows:

2002-2005 Honda Civic with a 5-speed manual transmission. 
We are looking for a four-door vehicle that has never been smoked in. It must have power locks and windows and a running air conditioner. Daniel has a list of specifics about the engine and my main concern is color: it CANNOT be white and the preferred colors are Black, Charcoal Gray, Silver, Red or Dark Blue {in that order}.

Today, a seemingly perfect car came up. But it was in Greensville, SC. Daniel contacted the owner to see if he would hold the car until 4:15PM and the owner said that he would. We quickly got ready to hit the road to drive the 5-hours {one way} to Greenville. Once we reached the other side of Atlanta {a 3-hour drive from where we live}, Daniel called the guy to confirm our arrival time. The guy informed Daniel that he already sold the car. Seriously? He knew we were driving from Alabama. He agreed to hold the car. And he sold it anyways. If he was open to other options he should have just said that he couldn't hold the car and we wouldn't have driven all that way. That would have been understandable, but don't lie and say that you will hold the car if you aren't going to.

Daniel lectured the guy about not lying to people and the guy offered to sell us a 2002 Honda Accord {not the car we are looking for}. Daniel flat out told him that we had no way of knowing if the car would still be there when we arrived and he wouldn't buy a car from someone who was dishonest. Harsh, maybe, but we did end up wasting an entire day. We knew there was a possibility we would have decided to back out of the deal, it just stung that the guy just sold it out from under us.

Since we were in Atlanta, we decided to salvage the day by hitting up IKEA and then stopping at Kennessaw Mountain National Battlefield to let Sophie get some exercise. We treated ourselves to On The Border {not super creative, but we miss it}

The day could have been better and we could have come home with a car. But that didn't happen. Sometimes life is just like that. We will keep our eyes peeled, but I don't think we will be rushing off on any more wild goose chases that are very far away...