Freecycle? HA! Ain't Nothing Ever Free

It started out as a good idea.

I heard about Freecycle through someone's blog (I'm not mentioning your name!!) and I thought it was a great idea. It's a free service where people give and get stuff for free. You have something you want to get rid of? Post it on freecycle and someone will take it. You need something for free? Chances are, someone on freecycle has it for you to take.

See? A good idea. In theory. I have stuff at the house I want to get rid of. It's too good to just put in the garbage. In just being too lazy to take it to Salvation Army or Knights of Columbus or some other benevolent organization, I thought I'd post stuff and let them come pick it up at the house. HA! Has anyone sensed any sarcasm in the title of this blog? Nothing is that easy.

I signed up for freecycle and I have regretted it ever since. See, instead of what I think it the prudent way to do things, such as post all of this crap on your website and let people come to your website to look and see what they want or to post their unwanted items, yahoo thinks the way to go is to take each of those posts that happen in a day and email them to every single member who has signed up for this service.

I am getting 30 to 40 e-mails a day now. If you were to open one of these infuriating emails, you would see a link at the bottom that states "unsubscribe". Gee, that sounds easy. Do you think it would work? NO. I've already "unsubscribed" over 30 times already. In that same email is a link that goes to where you need to change your settings. However, in order to change your settings, you need a yahoo login! Hello? You let me sign up for this piece of crap service without a yahoo login but in order to change my setting I need a yahoo login? Fine. I get yet another email address I will never check. I go to my settings. I see an option to make my account a "web only" account which means no more e-mails. If I want to find something, I need to go to the web to do it. Excellent! That's what I'm talking about. However, I've changed my settings to "web only" three times already. The daily emails are a reminder that no one is paying attention to that setting.

When you first join this exasperating website, you get five or six emails with terms and conditions and dos and don'ts. Each local version of freecycle has a moderator who is supposed to monitor the website and who you could go to with questions. Herein lies another joke of freecycle.

I have repeatedly gone to my moderator. First I get that it's an easy fix (as if I'm that much of a dumbass) and all I need to do is to hit the unsubscribe link on any of the incoming emails. Of course, I countered with the fact that I have followed the link to unsubscribe. Over 30 times! And, I've also copied and pasted the address into an e-mail numerous time in case the link just doesn't work. Yeah, been there, done that.

I got no reply to this message. So, I tried again stating that I am continuing to hit unsubscribe as well as going into my account via yahoo and choosing the setting of web only. If he/she can't help me, please send along another contact name and number that I can reach to resolve this issue.

Now I've pissed he/she off. First I'm told to quit yelling at him/her. Honey, it's email for crying out loud! I'm not typing in all caps, so I'm not yelling! I'm frustrated! I want you to go away but you won't go! He/she is trying to "investigate" and so far has verified that my account is set to web only and it must be a glitch in yahoo as to why I continue to receive these emails. He/she has requested that my account has been deleted. Great. Will this happen in my lifetime by chance?

So far, I'm not deleted. I continue to receive these emails (so far we're up to 10 today since 7:00 a.m.) and I continue to feel as if I'm just banging my head on the keyboard.

So, now what do I do? How do I make it stop? The only answer I can come up with is to violate their terms and conditions. Per the T&C, live pets are prohibited from their website as is any pornography. So, should I post unwanted pets and pornography? Maybe that will get Chris from freecycle to do something about this!

Any other suggestions? My head is getting misshapen from all the banging on the keyboard!