The only person that has made the seller endure lots of phone calls is the seller because he is advertising something for sale!
What has that got to do with someone wanting to buy his bike?

JunkYardBike,

I understand where you're coming from. I have no problem with using your time, knowledge, and tools to earn something. I respect that since it recycles bikes and encourages alternative modes of transportation.

"These are used bikes. Relatively inexpensive used bikes. We're not toying with the market to make profits on essential services such as health insurance, food, or utililities. There's a big difference."

This I have to disagree with at least a little. Bikes are relatively inexpensive, but not to people who can't afford cars. In these cases, a bike means transportation to work, and it is a necessity. An occasional flipper/restorer (wherever one may fall on this gradient) isn't going to drive prices up alone. But there are some people who litter CL with 15 bikes/week (before the listings expire) that are all overpriced. Needless to say, they don't sell very fast, but if a buyer were researching and saw the market saturated with this particular flipper's bikes, they might get the wrong impression.

I've seen the for sale ads on this forum, and everything is really reasonably priced, so I'm not targeting anyone. Maybe it's just my area where sellers try to push $125 Varsities onto buyers that don't have the time to thoroughly research.

People are so damn sensitive.

Boo hoo, not every agrees with your actions. Cry me a river.

I don't even agree with my own actions all the time.

So can "honnorable actions "still be "tacky "? A local filpper here, was plagued by people removing his ads from Craigslist. The other "bike guy" here in my home town would tell me how upset he would get with the other guys actions.. Then one week , a Univega set up like my old one but with brifters was on Craigslist, the seller kept dropping the price, untill it got to $100. Any of us knows that the bike is worth more that $100 in parts, so it did not supprize me that it was bought up by someone. The tacky part is he strips the bike of the shifters, derailers leves the triple crankset and puts it back on Craigslist as a single speed, with in a few hours for about $230.
This gave my heart some grief, because by definition I fix and resale bikes also, therefore is this the crowd I am associated with?
I gave it some more thought because I had to define why his actions seemed so repugnat.
This is the story line that helps me make understand why it seems so seedy.

Husband dies, widow meets new man, they have relations, because She is a widow and nolonger married. Seems ok ?
Then add details:
Man is murdered, man who kills him "Takes" his bride( hey she is not married anymore, his body is cooling in the corner), Still ok?
It is still the same story..

I never flagged the guy, but I don't think I will recomend, or deal with him

you're right.. "made" was the wrong word. However, simply ASKING a seller to hold something for you so that you can profit at their expense -- asking them to not accept higher offers, simply so you can go and sell it for more money, is not something I consider honorable.

There is no right to a bicycle that these poor souls are being deprived of. They have the right to work and buy one. They have the right to check in front of homes on trash day...or dumpsters. They have the right to take advantage of social and Government programs that assist them. I've lived in an impovershed neighborhood while making little money...most of the folks there had cash for TVs, cheap cars, etc. There are enough bicycles in this country that no one is being denied transportation. If they can't get a great bike at a cheap price because folks like us fund our hobbies, they are welcome to join us and use bikes to do the same.

I suggest you find something more important to worry about than the used bike market.
I am not responsible for a buyer's impressions, lack of knowledge or unwillingness to do research.

Where did you see that he asked that? He offered to buy it...the guy said yes and offered to hold it. How is the profit at his expense? He had every opportunity to research value.

So, last week a guy posts on our local CL four old 3/5 speeds and two Motobecanes for $200.00 for the lot.

I e-mail him right away and tell him I'll give him $100.00 for the Motobecanes alone.

I get a call from him the next day saying he "might" take $125.00 for the Motos, both Nomades, one 27" and one 26" wheel bike. :rolleyes:

I make the trek across town to look at them and they're near junk, horribly faded paint, tons of rust and to top it all off the 27" bike has a pitted rusty replacement fork on it.

I offer him $80.00 for the pair in the condition they're in and he says no, he'd need at least $100. So I say I'll give him $50.00 for the bigger one by itself and he says no, he'd need at least $100.00 for it. :eek:

So I told him to keep my number in case he changes his mind and I leave.

He calls me back the next day and says he'd take $100.00 plus a Schwinn Breeze I had mentioned in conversation. :twitchy:

I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure he's not going to hear from me again. :notamused:

Where did you see that the seller offered to hold it? Actually the OP doesn't make it clear if the seller offered to hold it, or if the OP asked him to hold it... however, simply calling and saying you can't pay for 3 days is an implied request to hold the bike...

These guys actually make it easier for me to sell what I have to offer, so I don't mind them. I'm not sure why they agitate others so badly. They're people. People have quirks. So be it. And if they never sell those bikes (as is the case with several of the spammers in this area as well), how is their hoarding of bikes any different than those of us with large bike collections? :)

And I wish I could flip this thread, because I'm expending way too much time and effort responding to it. But this one is hopeless. No amount of work or investment will make this a viable thread. :D

Just as you worry about the opinion of others?

um, how is it profit at the sellers expense? the seller had offers for more money, but due to some sense of 'honor', did not sell to higher bidders. therefore, the seller has lost money. the OP then selling the bike for a profit means that the OP will profit at the sellers expense.

whatever, what the OP did is "par for the course" and i don't really care... he just foolishly decide to mention "honor" in the same thread, when what he's doing isn't "honorable" imo..

I don't get really agitated with these sellers, but it's understandable if someone else does. These sellers are misusing CL by overposting, which is kind of tacky since CL is free to begin with. When they sell, they're ripping people off.

I got into biking partly for health reasons (both for me and the environment). I would imagine that someone more passionate about the environment would be disappointed that bikes are being stored when they can just as easily be ridden on the road. This pertains mostly to commuters and low end bikes since an average Joe who decides to switch from car to bike isn't going to be reaching for a Paramount.

He was lampooning a previous thread where someone was bemoaning the fact he lost a CL deal. To be fair, I don't recall the OP being particularly whiny, but the thread moved in the same direction this thread has. nikkorod hasn't owned up to it, but I'm fairly certain the last sentence in his initial post was a punchline, intended to goad the very responses he's gotten in this thread.

What's the point of having a forum then? :D

Exactly.

Didn't someone suggest there be an icon for "flew over my head"? I could use that right now.

I care about the opinions of others that I care about.

well if he's trolling, this thread should simply be locked

As far as I can tell, they aren't ripping anyone off, because the bikes never sell. And I've done enough refurbishing to know I have little to no interest to enter into indentured servitude to provide bikes to the average Joe's of the world. They have several options: educate themselves about bicycles and take some time searching for a quality bicycle, locate a cheap bicycling and rehab it themselves, or suck it up and buy an entry level bicycle from the LBS. I won't touch half of those bikes the spammers market, because I know the work and money I put into it won't be rewarded. That's fine if someone does this very thing for charity work, and I admire it, but I'm not going to do it. And I don't blame these CL spammers for not doing it either. I steer clear of them. It's not that hard for others to do that as well.

Because he made a conscious decision to hold the bike. He had a serious seller and you have no idea what other motivations he had...whether he didn't care (many don't) or didn't want to deal with auctioning it. That's why it wasn't at his expense.

Well, I got the joke, so he wasn't trolling me. To me it was good humor. I have less sympathy for the self-righteous.

I hope you see the irony in this ;)

I'm not calling anyone immoral or dishonorable.