Too complicated

A few years ago, I went to a garage sale where I found a nice camera tripod, and the price was very reasonable.
I decided to buy it, but I hit a snag.

The number on the little label was not the price but a number. The owner had to look it up on a list and find the corresponding price.

What a ridiculous concept. Why not just put the price on the item, like (almost) everyone else does. It saves buyer and seller time and there will be no confusion. She wanted retail price for the tripod, so I walked away from it.

It wasn’t the first, or the last, time I have seen people do silly things at yard sales.

Frequently it happened that the seller didn’t know how much to ask for an item. You’re the seller, you should know much you want for it. I wanted to buy a table from a lady and after asking three times she did not give me a price.

And then are the situations where the seller has to call someone else for a price check. More than once, someone asked me to come back later because they were unable to provide the information. Poor preparation, for sure.

A few months ago, I went to a sale down the road. The garage was messy, disorganized if you will, but there were some decent tools I was interested in. “Everything is for sale,” the owner said. Then I pointed at four different items and guess what: “Those items were not for sale.”

I told him he should either remove those things or put a “No Sale” tag on it. He just shrugged his shoulders. In the following weekends he continued the sale, but I didn’t stop again. I won’t deal with people like that.