Wow...someone stole our Goodwill donation. :(

[pbenjamin]

We have alleys in our neighborhood and bulk pickup goes there, but there is a whole industry of folks who regularly go through the alleys looking for stuff. It works out OK as any time you want to get rid of anything you just set it out there and if it has any value it will be gone.

[AZgarden]

And just think of the pleasure and excitement they are having when they find something for free !!!!

[R_Cowgirl]

Originally Posted by LBTRS

I guess my problem with it is a result of the incident I described earlier with a patio table I carried from the back yard to the front sidewalk. When I went to the backyard to get the chairs and came back less than a minute later the table was gone.

I could have been getting ready to load it into my pickup to take to my in-laws house or I could have been getting ready to hose it off, etc. Had they asked me for it I would have happily helped them load it and gave them the chairs also. I was pissed when I walked back out to the front yard a minute later and the table had already been taken, I felt like I had been stolen from.

I work from home and my office faces the street. Every day more than a dozen yard guys go by in their pickups with trailers on the back. Ostensibly those are for hauling yard trash, but more often than not, I also see other "yard debris" like furniture and other things people leave out. There seems to be a tacit understanding in Phoenix that if you leave something on the sidewalk it's for all takers. It's a symbiotic system: If I don't have a truck to take my aging lawnmower to the dump, I leave it out and those guys take it. It works to an extent. But if you are going to leave something for the Goodwill truck, you need to watch for it and take it to the curb as they are driving up. NEVER leave something sitting on the sidewalk "just for a sec" while you back your car out of the garage! LOL - it will be gone!! And FAST!

I left something out by my mailbox one day and went in the house. I walked straight into my office and looked out the window. It was GONE! I went back outside to see WTH?! And it had been put back with some of the items missing. Maybe it's like that movie Demolition Man where some people live under the city and come up out of the drainpipes???

OTOH - I once thought, "Oh, if someone needs these things more than me, I'm glad they got to use them." I was also willing to negotiate at my garage sales for far less than I wanted due to this misconception..... Then a Mexican friend who is a pastor and does a lot of charity work back and forth across the border told me, "Nah, don't give these guys too much credit. They are taking it and making it look just a little newer. Then they drive over the border with it and sell it for way more than they paid for it to the poor b@$tards who don't know any better." That was after I had been talked down from $80 to $20 for a brand new mini-fridge that didn't fit where I needed it, but was past return date. He told me the "poor guy" was just a good negotiator who saw me comin' and who probably turned around and sold it for $100 in Mexico. Guess that shows initiative and good business sense on his part!!!