Rob & Melissa Stephenson from Flea Market Flipper talk about whether Facebook Marketplace is safe to sell on in 2022.
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Reseller Hangout Podcast - Is Selling On Facebook Marketplace Safe In 2022?
Rob: What's up, guys? On today's episode, we are talking about is it safe to sell on Facebook Marketplace in 2022.
Rob: All right guys, so we are talking about selling on Facebook Marketplace. Is it totally safe to sell on Marketplace in 2022?
Melissa: So this topic came up last night.
We are doing this, our Flip It For Christmas challenge. And this came up because we're talking about Facebook marketplace to get started. And yes, we just wanna talk about it on here today.
Rob: Yeah.
Melissa: So we wanna dive in, and we wanna kind of kick it off. One of our, probably one of our craziest Facebook Marketplace stories.
I would, I would say that's probably our craziest.
Rob: Yeah.
Melissa: Of a time where we had somebody come to the house to pick up an item and he got a little bit angry and ended up outside of our house screaming at us. So you want to dive into that story?
Rob: Yeah.
Melissa: Cause it was, it was crazy.
Rob: Definitely. So this was a Pilates tower machine.
Killer, killer deal. We got a, a really good deal on this. I think it paid a hundred and some dollars for it. Had it listed for over $2,000. It was probably a $3,000 unit.
Melissa: It was nice. I used that thing all the time.
Rob: Yeah. It was a really nice unit. So, yeah, we had it listed, I believe it was $2,000, $2,500.
We had it listed for something like that. This was actually brand spanking new when I got it. So.
Melissa: You got it for that was when I was personal training. You got it for right? That was the same one?
Rob: No.
Melissa: I thought it was.
Rob: This was a Pilates tower.
Melissa: Okay.
Rob: You're talking about one of the total gym.
Melissa: The other one that we sold.
Sorry, I was thinking about that one.
Rob: Yeah. So this was a tower, It was a brand new tower and, and it was an addition for Pilates, a special type of Pilates. Whatever the Pilates machines that they had. So, like I said, super expensive. I think I had it listed for $2,000, $2,200, something like that. Somebody, messaged me and got me down to $1,750.
That's what I told them I would do. And I told them before they came, I wouldn't go a penny lower than $1,750 because I was asking $2,250. And so they knew that ahead of time they drove.
Melissa: And you, you were talking with the wife at the time, so you were communicating and negotiating with her.
Rob: So they drove an hour to get down to us from wherever they were.
And we did this in the house. Melissa was actually personal training at the time. She was personal training in the back room.
Melissa: We had our back office. Actually it was this room. This was my personal training room, back then. And so I had a client here and I had, I remember Lexi was in the room with me.
She was like eight months old cuz I mean, it was just craziness everywhere. Yeah. She's just sitting there in her little thing or whatever and I'm training a client and he's gonna go sell one of our, pieces of equipment.
Rob: So, and mind you, this is probably 25, no, 20 or 25 years into, no, yeah, around 20 years.
Melissa: 20, yeah.
Rob: Into my flipping career. I've had thousands of people meet at my house, to pick stuff up, to do transactions and stuff like that. So, nothing new about this.
Melissa: It was during the day. We have a lot of, like, we're here like, It's just hustle and bustle or whatnot. So.
Rob: So they came in, it was, a lady and her husband.
The husband looks at it and starts picking it apart, telling me that the strings are, the springs are stretched out. They're gonna have to order new springs, this and that, and this and that. And he goes, yeah so you're gonna take. $1,200 for this. And I said, yeah, no, I kind of explained to your wife before you guys came.
$1,750 was the lowest I was gonna go. And he's like, well, it needs this and this and this, so you're gonna take $1,200. And I said, no, I'm not, thank you for coming. But I told you what the price is. Here's the door, you guys can go ahead and leave. So they kind of walked out of the, the door, went and sat in their truck for about five minutes and very, very rude.
But they came back to the door. And at that time I was already disgusted with what happened. I said, no matter what, if they don't leave our driveway, I am not selling it to them. He comes back to the door and says, okay, we'll take it.
Melissa: And he banged on the door.
Rob: Well, he come back to the door and I was inside and we have a window in our door.
And he, I was inside and he knocked on the door and said, Okay, hey, we'll take it. And this is after I asked him to leave because of their rudeness and I said, yeah, no, it's not for sale anymore. He got livid with me and starts banging on this door, telling me and just starts cursing at me like crazy.
So some choice words, crazy, crazy, crazy. That was the whole incident. He did that for probably like, five or 10 seconds. And then he walked back. He got the point, walked back to his car.
Melissa: She was not really happy with him.
Rob: No, she would wanted the machine . She knew how much money she was saving and the condition that it was in.
Like I said, it was like brand new. So she was not happy. That's why when they went back to the car, I'm sure she told him, hey, you need to go, you know, make this situation right because we came here to get this and we need this. And when he came back I was, super, super disgusted with how he acted inside my house.
So yeah, I didn't let him back in. I made them leave. And yeah, so it was crazy. The one and only that I can remember of out of thousands and thousands of transactions that this was just over the top crazy. So that leads into our question, is it safe to sell on marketplace and meet up with people?
Melissa: And meet in person?
And I mean, out of all the transactions we've done and met in person, that was really the biggest one that we could think of that really the only one that has been, I mean, I heard it all from the back room, so I was like, what's going on out there? My client's like, what in the world? That's crazy. Yeah, so.
Yes, we would say that overall it is safe and we're gonna give you some safety, tips. Tips that you can use to help prevent some things. And one thing that we got out of this thing we did a lot out of the house is we stopped meeting people at the house just because we're like, yeah, it's not really worth it.
We have kids now. It's just not worth it to bring people to the house. And we could have loaded that thing up and put it in the truck. And what we normally do is we meet people in a public place. We'll meet 'em at a, usually at, with strip mall, like with a bunch of stores and restaurants or whatever, and very public place, during the day.
And that's usually where we meet 'em and it's not a big deal. So.
Rob: Yeah, in some instances you might not have the option to, meet somewhere else. Like I said, we don't wanna scare you because this is a one out of thousands and thousands of transactions that I have done. So it's not the end of the world if you do let somebody come to your house, typically, you're not going to.
Melissa: Normally it's fine.
Rob: You're not gonna get somebody crazy like this and two, yeah, do the same thing that we did. Make sure you're agreeing on a price ahead of time. They can come if you're willing to take less, if there is something that they didn't know about, I would urge you to maybe take less if they get there and there's like, Okay, something's not right with this, or, you know, it wasn't in the condition that I thought cuz I couldn't see good from your pictures.
Melissa: And you have taken less.
Rob: I have.
Melissa: It was the way that he delivered himself. And that you had already negotiated it down, previously so.
Rob: I've never had anybody tell me you're going to take less than this. When you do that right off the bat, it's like, okay, yeah, you know what? I'm not even gonna deal with you because I told you guys ahead of time that this was the price.
If you didn't want it, walk away. Don't tell me what you think I'm gonna take for it. Cuz I already gave you that instance. So, and, and your situation. If there is something like we had on our call last night, somebody asked about a treadmill, what if I'm selling a treadmill that's too big to fit in the back of a truck or an suv?
I can't do that. If you guys to meet someone, if that's the case, I would urge you guys to get it in your, either out in your garage, to where you can have somebody look at it. The other thing about electrical devices is somebody probably will want to see it plugged in, making sure that it's working properly.
I've sold hundreds of treadmills from my house and I've done that so. Put it in your garage if you can, on your front porch. If you don't have a garage out somewhere and that's
Melissa: not in your house,
Rob: not inside your house, that you can walk outside and meet somebody or walk into the garage and meet somebody.
If you have to do something from the house, definitely do that. But we definitely urge you in most cases you can meet somebody at a public place. We would definitely tell you to meet if you have a close police station, a fire department, something like that. If you have a scammer or somebody who's a little crazy, they're not gonna show up at a fire station or a police department parking lot knowing that that's where you're meeting them at.
So that is one safety precaution. If you don't have that close, don't stress out. Go to a big public place. The biggest one around that has a couple stores, has parked cars in the parking lot and stuff like that. Just to be safe. You have other people around you.
Melissa: Yeah. And if you don't like, you can't, like you said, and you have to do it at your house, have somebody come to the house.
If you're by yourself, like, you know, just have a friend pop over at the time you're gonna meet them just to be safe. You know, it's never a bad idea. And if even meeting people, if you've makes you feel more comfortable, to have a friend with you, when you're going to meet somebody. I usually don't like to meet up with people by myself.
I've done it with, with the kids for some reason. With the kids, I feel safer. I don't know, it's weird, but usually I'll go with him. You've met up with tons of people by yourself, so just, you know, gauge how you feel. But having a friend with you is never a bad idea. So.
Rob: And the cool thing about marketplace is usually you have somebody's profile.
Yeah. So you can check them out. Melissa typically lists on her name. So there are women who usually reach out to her and want to do that. She can go and check their profile. You can definitely, we, we recommend you doing that just because you can see if they're crazy. If it's a brand new profile.
Melissa: You can see if you have mutual friends.
Yeah. And usually if you do, then you're like,okay,, we have mutual friends, then we're pretty good. So.
Rob: Not a big deal. So yeah. Those are the biggest things is meeting in a public place. The other thing is don't go too far from your house. Don't, don't screw up your day. If somebody's, you know, an hour away and says, hey, will you meet me halfway?
Typically we don't recommend you doing that just because, you might get there, they might talk, you try and talk you down on price. You've already wasted 30 minutes there, 30 minutes back and the time. And you don't know if they're legitly gonna buy the item.
Melissa: So yeah, they might not show up.
Rob: And they might not show up as well.
So you just don't know that stuff.
Melissa: Can you imagine if you would've driven that a Pilates machine to that guy's house?
Rob: No, it would've been crazy. I would've been so upset knowing that that's what they're trying to do.
Melissa: So, but people know that if you're selling something, they are supposed to come to you. That most people understand that.
Yeah. Like we know that if we're buying something across town, we're driving across town to go look at it and go pick it up. We're not asking them to come to our side of town.
Rob: Even if they need help with delivery, you still want them to come check the item out, pay you before you actually take it and deliver it for them.
If you work that out in the deal. You charge extra for something like that, you still do not wanna take it until they have seen it, inspected it, paid you for it, and then you're gonna take it and deliver it. Just make sure that's the safest way to do it, without getting beat up on price and screwed for driving.
Yeah. Long distances. So.
Melissa: But after all the transactions we have done, we would say that it is safe, to just be, but take precautions.
Rob: Yeah.
Melissa: And I think there was, Is it offer up that came up with like meeting places? There was, I don't know if it's still, I think it is offer up. I don't know if it's still a thing, but they actually created meeting places close to you like that were public, that were public areas, that were safe places to meet up. So to give you some recommendations.
Rob: So most people have supermarkets, strip malls, police stations, fire departments, all those places that have public have people around you when you're meeting up with somebody and don't do it in the middle of the night.
Don't do crazy stuff like that. Do it in the daytime. Even if you're working, if you can't take somebody with you, it's always safe to do something like that. So it is, you're, like I said, you're not gonna run into crazies all that often, but out of our 20 some years doing this, I've only run into that one crazy guy.
And that was the only time. So.
Melissa: And he didn't like, physically do anything. He just yelled at and beat on our door.
No, he did beat on our door.
Rob: Yeah, that was, it is what it is. I mean, I could have called the cops and had,
Melissa: that would've been next if he wouldn't have left.
Rob: Exactly. But it only took him, like I said, it might have been a matter of five to 10 seconds that he was at the door beating on the door, getting upset with me.
And then he went and got in his car and left. And that was all that was that we never heard from him again. So it wasn't a big ordeal, but they knew they disrespected me and I wasn't gonna sell them the item no matter what they said. If they were gonna pay me more for the item, I still was already upset and I wasn't gonna sell 'em, sell 'em the item.
Melissa: And I like to keep all communication through the app. You're a little different. You like to get on the phone sometimes with people, like, I mean, you're doing typically bigger deals, so people are more comfortable sometimes when you're getting on the phone. They wanna know something about the item. But for the, like some of the smaller stuff we do, like, I just prefer to keep everything through the app.
Yeah, you can settle a meeting time. You can do everything, all your communication can go through the app. And if people have Messenger on their phone, it's, it's pretty instant anyway, so yeah.
Rob: I don't typically send my phone number, but if somebody sends me their phone number, then I will reach out. Yeah. Through text or through a phone call.
But I don't typically offer my phone number and say, hey, here's my phone number. If somebody's more comfortable doing that, like I said, once they do that to me, I have no problem calling or texting them and setting, the appointment up that way. A lot of you might run into people who don't want to drive 30 or 45 minutes to pick something up without something more than just Messenger because some people don't answer Messenger quick or they don't get a notification.
They don't wanna come into a meetup and not be able to get ahold of you, so it's.
Melissa: They might not have social on their phone for some reason.
Rob: It's not totally out of the blue for somebody to give you a phone number to make contact with them just because of that. They don't want to waste their time and not be able to get ahold of you if something does come up.
And yeah, they don't get the message or whatever it is, so don't, don't get thrown off.
Melissa: If they start asking you for all your personal information. Don't do that. Don't do that. Yeah. We'll get into scams. I think we'll talk about that on another another day because, that's another thing is like preventing yourself from scams.
But, but we wanted to talk about safety. Yep. And yeah, having a person with you going to a public place are like two of the big things that you can doto keep yourself safe. You know, that's obviously, And you can also do, you said that I think porch pickup.
Can you say that?
Rob: I did not.
Melissa: We talked about that last night.
Rob: Yeah, last night we did a little bit, but yeah.
Melissa: But that's another way, I mean, they're still coming to your house, but if you just wanna do, people do porch pickup, for items, they just leave the money under the door or under the door mat or whatever and leave the item on the porch, and then you're not really physically seeing them.
Yeah. So it is.
Rob: Most people have ring doorbells, they have cameras in front of their house. They have, most people have that nowadays that it's not that difficult to see somebody come up to your house, leave the money you have. Their car on your camera, you have all that stuff. So it's not, it's not that uncommon to do a porch pickup either.
If you just don't want to meet up with somebody, leave it on the porch, let them put it under the rug.
Melissa: Probably wouldn't do that for something expensive.
Rob: No, absolutely not. But something a hundred dollars or less. Yeah. Not super, super crazy to do something like that. We've, I've done multiple times where I picked stuff up off of marketplace and people had.
Melissa: We've never done that as a seller.
Rob: No. But as a buyer.
As a buyer, people like to do it. People have to work for whatever reason, they leave it on the porch and tell me, hey, just put the money under the rug. And that's what I do. Yeah, I'm even over cautious when somebody trusts me, and I think that's how a lot of people are. They're trusting me to do the right thing.
I wanna make sure that I'm doing the right thing. So that's one of those things that yeah, you definitely, I think you run into good will people on the majority of the time that aren't, aren't there to screw you or take advantage of you.
Melissa: So yeah, that one was that a $200 thing that we bought the?
The four-wheeler?
Rob: It was, I think was like $200.
Melissa: Porch pickup. It was a porch pickup.
Rob: And the guy was at work and he said, I left it on my front porch. You just come and pick it up. It was a kid's four-wheeler, a little four-wheeler, econ four-wheeler and yeah, Colorado. We were in Colorado. I left the money underneath it and took off and right as soon as I did.
And that's the other thing is great communication. Yeah. I'm a seller, so I like good communication. I told the guy, hey, I'm five minutes out. I usually do that when I'm meeting up with somebody that I'm trying to buy something. I just wanna be cordial. I wanna be polite, respectful for people that I'm dealing with.
Melissa: Their time.
Rob: Yeah, exactly. So I let people know, hey, I'm five to 10 minutes away, whatever it is on my gps. And then when I get there, if it's a porch pickup, I let 'em know, hey, I just got the item. I put the money under the rug I'm taking off right now, that kind of stuff. So you, they're, they have communication with you.
You, they know that you're doing what you're saying you're doing. So I always, as a seller, I wanna be communicated that with. As a seller, I want that communication for the buyer. So I do the same thing when I'm the buyer to the sellers, I wanna be treated the same way. So yeah.
Melissa: So this is the kind of stuff that we are talking about in the challenge right now.
It sparked this, this conversation. So there's still three weeks left, so we just did the first week. If you want to at jump in, you can still grab the replay. Make $250 extra for Christmas. It's flipitforchristmas.com. Yep. You can check out the link below if you still wanna jump in. We'd love to have you and thanks so much for watching this video and listening to the podcast.
Rob: That's right. You guys rock, and we will see you on the next one.