Learn Australian English in this video episode of The Aussie English Podcast where I talk about buying second-hand stuff online in Australia.

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AE 509: Buying Second-Hand Stuff Online in Australia

What’s going on, guys? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English.

I’m a bit sick today so forgive the voice, but I recorded this video the other day and I decided to put it up on the podcast as well, and it’s a video where I talk about buying second-hand stuff in Australia, so which websites to use, okay?

So, I’m going to put that on the podcast ‘cause I think it’s going to help a lot of you guys. Make sure, though, that you check out video on YouTube if you want to see a screen capture of me using these websites.

Anyway, let’s get into it, guys, and I hope you enjoy it.

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What is going on, guys? Welcome to this video! Today I want to talk to you about buying stuff on the line, ok? Specifically, on Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace. Now, there is a lot of good stuff on here, second hand that’s good quality. Quite often you can buy and at a lower price, you can haggle with people, you can barter obviously on here as well, you can trade things even and you can even find things for free so, this is something that I’ve been using quite a lot in the last week trying to find furniture, trying to find cutlery, glasses, all kinds of stuff that I’ll need for the new house that Kel and I are moving into. So, that’s why I thought I would make this video of you, guys, to show you how I do that to hopefully give you some expressions or phrases that you can use too when bartering with people, bartering, when trading with people, trading, when haggling, that’s the word I was looking for, when haggling with people, right? When arguing or talking or discussing the price for something they’re selling. And I tell you what, never start at the price that they’re asking, ok? You’re not going to lose.

Alright, so, the first one he guys is Gumtree. Now, I love this website. I absolutely love this website. It is amazing, I’ve sold things on Gumtree and I have bought a lot of things on Gumtree including equipment for the podcasts and for a lot of other stuff.

So, I think Gumtree is amazing, gumtree.com.au, is the web site. I’m already here. What do you do? So you are obviously looking for something in the case that you’re trying to buy something, try to search for something that you would like to get. So, there is I’m looking for in this search space here. You can alternatively open up the window down the side here and select category, you know, cars and vehicles, you can find cars here, clothing, jewellery, community, electronics and computer Home and Garden jobs. People have jobs on here, miscellaneous goods, pets, Real Estate services for hire, sport and fitness and even tickets so, I’ve been looking a lot in the home and garden, will open that one up, ok. Hopefully it’s going to open up, oh no, I’ve selected it. And then you will type in the thing year after so, you can obviously see here that there are a lot of options that you can select from. Maybe you will go with dining tables, ok?

You’ll also see it on the side here the area that I want to search, obviously, it’s not so helpful if I’m looking for a dining room table and it is in Cairns, 2.500 kilometres North of where I currently am so, it depends on the object you want. Obviously, if it can be sent by mail, you can buy it on here. We’ll talk a bit about how I would do it if from getting it by mail, but for now let’s imagine that we are looking locally, so, near Geelong.

I find the place, all of these and the same, really. Geelong you can do it by postcode so, close that, and then you can select how many kilometres around that area you want to expand the search results so, maybe I want to go 50 kilometres around Geelong, ok? Or round the postcode 3 2 2 0. So, I hit search and let’s see what comes up. Here we go. Alright so, we had like one thousand tables for sale. 1000 ads of tables that are in the Geelong area so, you can obviously just keep scrolling through. They are in no particular order, but you can order them so, you can go up here sort by most recent, best match, cheapest, most expensive, nearest to me, ok? So nearest to me should be closest to the search location that you’ve put in there, so Geelong. Let’s just do cheapest. So, to start with the cheapest and it will go down all the way to the most expensive and usually when you do that. So here it’s got ads that have been sponsored I think. Cheapest. It’ll start with all the free stuff, right? So you’ve got free dining table and chairs, table dining room desk or side table free, six seat dining table free, tables and chairs free. So, all of this stuff is free and you will see there’s there’s a few here for a dollar, a dollar, five dollars, ten dollars, ten dollars, okay?

So, you get the idea of sorting it that way. On the side here you’ll see the location. So, if we go to the top here, where was it? Here, the very first one is in Point Cook, 43 kilometres on the other side of Geelong, Moonee Valley, Geelong city, that’s nearby, Werribee that’s a bit of a drive. Maidstone that’s a bit of a drive so, you’ll see what I mean. They give you a location you can sort of get an idea in your head of where the place is, but when it’s just let’s just click on one, ok? Dining room table. Eight to 12 seats so, you’ll see up the side here the name of the person, how long they’ve been on Gumtree, you can send them a message, you’ll see photos here, you can make them an offer and they’ll also have their phone number here quite often so, you could call them and ask or send them a text and ask about the product and if it’s still up maybe I want to offer them a certain amount of money or less than what they’re selling it for, although this one is free so, I can’t really offer them negative 5 dollars, you know pay me to take it away!

Down the side here you’ll see the location, which you can click on and it’ll show you where that it’s so, that you can obviously know where you have to go, if you gonna pick it up and there’ll be a description down here too. Quite often they’re pretty short. So, in excellent condition, you could have… you could have it as eight seater or 12 so, you could have eight seats or 12 seats and it looks like that is literally it, just this table. Ok? So, Sobar is obviously selling this or well, asking for it to be picked up, it’s free. You can open up send message and there’ll be an automatic message here, which is hi, whoever the person is, I’m interested in whatever the ad is. Is it still available? And if so, when and where can I pick it up? Cheers. You can send a copy of this to yourself and then you can hit send here and the person will get the message and quite often they’re pretty quick if the thing hasn’t been sold or picked up, quite often they’ll e-mail you back relatively fast.

Also, if for example you are trying to buy something as opposed to getting something for free so, imagine I’m looking at this dining room table, which is they want 10 bucks for it. This one has more images so, I can get a better look at it. There it is, but here is the priceand I can type in whatever I want. So, maybe I want to offer them five bucks. You’d then go go and it will send them that offer. Usually they’ll get an e-mail or they will get an e-mail and usually they’ll get back to you relatively quickly with yes/no blah blah blah. You know, whether they’re up for that price or not.

So, I wanted to give you a few phrases for what I would say. In fact, I might do that after we’ve checked out Facebook Marketplace so, let’s do the same here. Alright. Imagine you are looking for tables on Facebook Marketplace. So, all you need to do is go to Facebook, go to the search here and type in Facebook Marketplace or marketplace and then this will come up, this section on Facebook so you can sell stuff on here you can buy stuff on here. You can do a lot of other things, obviously, organizing it by price. You can search locations, you can do within a certain area around that location, just like Gumtree, it’s really good and you can also go through categories so, maybe I’m going home and garden and this should have everything related so what have you got it, tools, furniture, garden, appliances, household, everything related to those things and hopefully, hopefully it loads up. So, you hit that and up will come all of the different things that are being sold under that category.

So, again you can just see the free things if you’re interested in that by clicking only show free listings here and there show you all the stuff that people are getting ready for free. So, you obviously have to go and pick these things up at least what I’ve searched here because it probably won’t fit in the mail. So, if though I want to say such a price range of $140 to 200 bucks and check that, uncheck that, $140 – $200 buck, enter, and there we go. All the things for that price so, again you can click on it there should be all the relevant information there for you. If I click on the ad you’ll be able to, I guess, contact them so you can ask for details here you’ve got the person who’s selling it. And that is about it.

Some really good phrases to use. Some really good phrases to use, though, guys. Ok, so typically I don’t offer people the amount that they’re asking for to begin with as a rule. If they aren’t going to negotiate on the price they will generally say I’m sorry, but it’s this amount. Ok? Usually, though, most people have a starting price that they have begun with, especially with second hand goods, and you can get them down quite a bit quite often depends on the thing. But this is the kind of thing I would say ok, so usually I will go to ask for details and I’ll write a message saying something enthusiastic, something showing that I really like it. I really want that thing that they’re selling, but I mean I’m willing to pay this amount. So, I would say for instance for this table ”I absolutely love the coffee table. Is it still available? And then I’d say phrases like ‘How about $100 bucks?’ So they’re asking $150 here. How about $100? How does $100 dollars sound? So, how about $100 bucks? How does $100 dollars sound? Could you do it for a hundred dollars? Could you do it for $100 dollars? What would you say to one hundred dollars? What would you say to a hundred dollars?

So, those are some pretty good phrases that you can do it to at least get things started. You’re then get a reply usually, they’ll say if it’s been sold or not or they’ll say look I can’t really do it for that price. Maybe they’ll say it’s non-negotiable. It’s $150 bucks. Take it or leave it. They might say take it or leave it as in accept it or decline it. You can have it for that amount or you can just go away or they might offer you something above that amount so, they may say look I can do $130 bucks or they might say How about $130 bucks? Or could you meet me at $130 dollars? As in 150 is here, that’s their starting price, hundred bucks is here and you offered that and they want you to meet them in the middle at a hundred thirty dollars, ok? That’s a common one as well. The last option is that they will just accept it and they will say alright we got a deal and then you’ll have to organize either picking the thing up so, you’ll get an address from them or a phone number from them and usually a time when it’s available for you to go around and get the thing and I guess, generally, I would say pay for it in cash. So, pick the thing up and pay for it either in cash, give the person cash or transfer the money once you’ve looked at the thing and you see that it is what you want. Ok? That’s what I would do with things that I’m picking up, don’t pay for it before you go and see it, make sure it’s something that you want and then pay for it when you put it into your car or maybe give them the money beforehand and then put it in your car and go home. Everyone’s happy, right?

Now, If I’m doing this with things that are getting sent to me in the mail you do have to be careful because you can… the option is that you send all the money to someone you’ve never met and you hope they send you the item, but I’ll tell you about two things that I’ve done recently. Ok, first is that I have done that in the past when I’ve had the person’s Facebook, their name, their phone number and even their address that I’ve just sent them all the money I’ve taken that responsibility on myself given them the benefit of the doubt and hope that they send the goods and the thing that I did that with for example was on Gumtree when I bought my 7D Mark II, the camera that I have, Ok? And that was about eight hundred fifty dollars. So, I actually gave them the lot, I sent them everything, which thinking about it now probably wasn’t the best ideas, but the person was trustworthy and they sent the camera and I got it. They will usually go to the post office. They will take a photo of the thing and they will send that to you as proof that they have sent the item.

I don’t recommend this. It’s just what I’ve done in the past. If I really want to save a lot of money and I can find the thing, but it’s not within driving range. So, that camera for example came from Perth, which is on the other side of Australia and there was no way I could drive there. So, that’s what I would do. The other story here was that I bought headphones recently and I bought something else recently for the podcast as well, but what I did was I gave them half the money to begin with. I then asked for a photo of them in the post office sending the parcel and only after I had seen that did I send them the rest of the money and I also got a name a phone number and often their Facebook or some other kind of address, right? So, again, I don’t recommend that. Obviously, if you can find something close by that you can go and see physically, that’s a lot safer. You won’t have the risk of having money taken from you and not receiving the goods that you want. But that’s kind of the trade off if you find a good deal and it is not within driving distance and you can’t get there, it’s going to cost too much to get there. That’s the sort of way of doing it. That’s sort of way of doing it and being as safe as possible, right? So, you kind of have to decide whether or not you feel like you can do it whether the situation seems good, whether you’re comfortable doing it. But that’s just one option. Ok?

Anyway, those phrases I hope they will help. I really recommend, though, bartering or at least I really recommend haggling, though, because you’ll save quite a bit of money I think for instance the camera I saved I got half price and it was nearly new. So, I almost saved $1.200 dollars instead of buying it new. The headphones I got for probably $100 less than when they were new. And again each time I save probably up to 50 bucks, 50 dollars.

Another thing you can do when haggling is offer them low if you’re going to have the things sent to you and then go back to their price and ask them to include postage. So, imagine they’re sending something or they’re selling something for $150 dollars and you offer them $100 dollars and then they say look I really want $150 bucks. You might say ok, I’m willing to pay a hundred fifty dollars, but can you include postage? Meaning can they pay for the postage, ok? And quite often when you have that kind of discussion they’ll be like alright I’ll do that. You know, I haven’t had too many people tell me just a flat out no. So, I hope that helps, guys, don’t forget those kinds of phrases like ‘can you do it for $50 bucks? How about 50 bucks? What do you say to $50 bucks? or is $50 bucks okay?” Those are some really good phrases that you can use there when starting that haggling negotiation over price and then often you’ll hear things back like ”I’m sorry, I won’t budge. I won’t budge on the price” or I’m sorry only go as low as..” certain amount or I can only do this amount or they may even just say yes, you’ve got a deal. When are you going to come and pick it up? Ok? So, anyway, I hope this video helps guys, make sure that you stay safe. Don’t put yourself in any kind of risk that you’re not comfortable with doing and just, yeah, I hope you get some good deals on Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree. Good luck!