last thursday evening, the coming weekend quickly turned into a three day one with news of an impending snowstorm. said storm was expected to produce one to two feet of snow in the city, and indeed we received 14-18" of the white stuff. when you've been traveling a lot and haven't had time to work on projects around the house, a three day weekend is most welcomed. actually, when isn't it?
anyway, my lovely wife and i decided it was time to upgrade our dresser situation. one average size dresser with four drawers wasn't enough to hold even one person's clothes, much less two. also, it didn't coordinate well with some vintage nightstands we had. well our first thought was to turn to craigslist. we searched through a few ads, and found the one: two identical dressers in black, like-new. bam! we called the number in the ad and set a time for sunday morning. in ten minutes, it was on.
what about the old one? well since we had already planned on driving to the financial district -the opposite end of the city from us- to pick up the newer ones, why not offer delivery within manhattan? so we did. the responses poured in, and we went through them in order of receipt. the first person didn't reply back, so onto the second, Cindy, who sounded excited when she called. we set a time sunday morning, about an hour before we were scheduled to pick up the newer dressers. in 20 minutes, we were well on our way to organized clothes heaven!
or so we thought... all was going well. on sunday morning we got up very early, having been out late the night before, and carefully schlepped the old dresser downstairs to the car. there was still a foot of snow between the service entrance and the curb, so we had to lift the dresser over it to get it in. not fun. we added the drawers, ourselves, and we were off for our east village destination. at the first red light, i sent a text to let Cindy know we were on our way. 30 or so minutes -and 200 odd blocks- later, i called to let her know we were in the neighborhood. no answer. well, not a big deal. we thought perhaps she was in the shower or hadn't rolled out of bed yet. we get to the address she had provided and rang the buzzer, waited a few seconds, and tried again. nothing. tried calling again, voicemail again. uh oh.
in the meantime, i had sent numerous messages to the seller of the newer dressers without any response. some of these were late the previous night when we arrived home, some early in the morning before leaving. we checked email from our phones to see if there was any answer, but no.
back in the east village, we found a parking spot on the Cindy's block. one of our favorite restaurants was a few blocks away, so why not go (shop a little while we wait for them to open) and grab lunch? that should give her some time to wake up or come home from church, or perhaps return a call. we stroll back to Cindy's apartment after being gone almost two hours and still nothing. now we have a car full of dresser but no buyer. hmm, all dresser-ed up with no place to go? (sorry, i just had to go there!)
since we hadn't heard back from the seller of the other dressers, we thought maybe it made more sense to shoot over the brooklyn bridge to the ikea in red hook after selling the old one. there, we could buy the dressers new and not worry about two fitting in my car. however, with a dresser and drawers already in the car, we knew better than to try and fit the 4' long boxes in too. forget about a 45 minute (minimum) drive back uptown in heavy traffic and snow-induced potholes with all of this stuff. not going to happen.
so we decided to head back home with the dresser in tow, and head to ikea in jersey later that afternoon. on the way home, we had a brief moment of revelation, remembering our second car option. we could take her car to nj and leave mine parked with the dresser in it. then we didn't have to schlep it back up to the apartment today, and back down again when a legit buyer comes to pick it up. eureka! that's exactly what we did: went to ikea, bought two new dressers, two sets of drawer dividers and a shelf we've needed. oh and we filled up the tank while we were there. the savings of 50-60 cents per gallon helped subsidize the cost of buying the dressers new, plus the toll back over the gwb into nyc...
in the meantime, we never did hear back from Cindy. however, we did find an email from the seller of the two dressers later that afternoon. she had been sick in bed, in and out of sleep for days. she offered to have us come by during the week but at that point we were over it.
the beauty that craigslist once held, has diminished greatly. for many years i had mostly good luck, most often buying things, but selling too. i've sold countless pieces of furniture and given things away particularly during moves, even selling two motorcycles on cl. of course, i've had people flake out on me before, but never in a delivery situation. that is a new low for me! to do it all again, i would've asked for prior payment, or a deposit. better yet, forget about delivering it!
do you have a special craigslist flaker story to share?
No comments:
Post a Comment