Hard Lessons Learnt

Yes! I paid for this lady who was buying bread and cakes and said she had no money. The shop lady told me she did the same thing all the time and she had a Mercedes parked up the road. I wasn’t too upset because I thought maybe in her mind she needed it and you’d have to be a bit weird or desperate to even ask!

I’m rather sceptical when it comes to this sort of thing. I’d rather donate to a food bank or a well known charity than give to random strangers.

Sparklefizz, I'm instantly suspicious of that type of post, so I signpost them to local agencies and charities for help. Why would they beg on social media?

I think those posts are odd. I give lots of stuff to local charities and, like Hetty, signpost people there.

There’s always someone on our local FB page asking if anyone is ‘gifting’ a microwave, tv, fridge, etc, or begging for some special baby milk that they are desperate for as they have run out and baby needs some for tonight’s feed

Then I sometimes see them offering things themselves.

Very strange.

I volunteer in a Foodbank where people can have a cup of tea & a chat. One man kept refusing specific types of food as he didn’t have a cooker or microwave. My friend kindly donated a microwave .
Following Sunday who was selling what at a car boot sale……

When people were first taking in Ukrainian families, someone on our local FB page was asking for almost everything you could think of, from clothes and cosmetics to hair straighteners, and was complaining that she went to PC World asking for a free laptop and phones supposedly for the family she was hosting, and PC World refused. I don't know what she expected.... or even if she was genuine.

I was in the supermarket queue and the older lady in front of me was having trouble with her card. The woman at the next till reached over and put her card through. At my look of surprise she said “I’m not that nice, she’s my MIL” 😀😀

My friend is very kind and obviously has a kind face. When shopping in a supermarket a lady, she thought Romanian, asked if she could put a few things in her trolley. My friend, feeling sorry for her, agreed only to find at the checkout that an enormous chicken and a massive bag of potatoes and a large gateau had been popped in for her to pay for. The woman stood expectantly waiting for her. However, she'd gone too far even for my kind hearted friend. If the woman had even put in some more modest items instead my friend would have paid. But she'd blown her chance.
This woman now ignores her. She stands outside the shop every day looking for other kind people.

In our neighbouring village they have a donation table and regularly a new 4x4 pulls up and a well dressed woman fills up two carrier bags of food and drives off.

People often donate household items, clothes, toys, etc. and the lady who runs this group has to often remind people on Facebook that items are not for resale and to use the words please and thank you. Unbelievable.

I am very suspicious of the whole thing.

This morning I saw a very bedraggled young woman sitting outside some shops wrapped in a thin blanket with a big sign saying 'Ukrainian refugee. I am pregnant. Please help me'. I dropped her my one and only £1 coin (I don't carry cash as a rule any more) and when I was coming back the other way she was sitting with her friend a bit further down the road drinking coffee and smoking. Whether she actually was Ukrainian I don't know but her English was pretty fluent, and without her little blanket and teary eyes she didn't look quite so bedraggled.

People offered all kinds of goods on a local Freecycle site.

I offered some furniture but was then told by a neighbour that the couple who collected it had a secondhand furniture shop in a city a few miles away and that they did this regularly.

Now we take anything we want to get rid of to a charity shop or an upcycling centre where they work with vulnerable people who restore items then they sell the furniture.

Tizliz

I was in the supermarket queue and the older lady in front of me was having trouble with her card. The woman at the next till reached over and put her card through. At my look of surprise she said “I’m not that nice, she’s my MIL” 😀😀

😁

there used to be a lot of begging/appeals over on MN.
in one case a MNer got too involved, took pity on a woman going through a difficult time, and let her stay in her house.
things got out of hand, the woman became demanding and poss dishonest.
in the end the MNer's husband had to order the woman to leave.
no good deed goes unpunished ?

Pay it Forward is a nice idea if it works.

A kind man, a complete stranger, once gave me £2 to pay for my car park fee when I didn't have any change and I was able to do the same for someone else a few weeks later.

If,I donated something which was then sold on, well, it would be helping the person who buys it, and the person with the tenacity to ask for it in the first place.

It's not exactly how it should be, but then life isn't.

A friend did that with stuff I gave her. Should say - exfriend.

I sell on eBay. Last year one of my items was lost in the post. I refunded the buyer and then had to wait 28 days before I could put in a claim but because I was ill I forgot. Buyer came back to me 3 months later to say he had received the item. I asked him to donate his payment to a social enterprise which was close to his home. He came back with “I don’t do charity” and didn’t even send me the money!

At Christmas time the local graves have wreaths put on them.
A relation was a bit disappointed as they had made hers rather garish. At the weekend she went to a car boot market and there was a stall full of wreaths including hers still with the tag on. On her way home, she checked the local cemetery and all the wreaths had gone.
My mum also fell fowl to" My children have no clothes" The visits from the woman got closer until one day she said the clothes were not good enough. My father told her to go, when he went outside he inspected the gate posts and found low down a scratched sign.

We have a local page for recycling and passing on items and there have been several requests for people not to ask for more than one thing a week, as the same few people take everything. One woman got a TV and old DVD player from me, and having seen her name I noticed that within a week or two she'd taken internal doors, children's books, assorted clothes and items of furniture, plus other assorted things - ornaments and the like.

I don't know what she does with them all, but the way I looked at it was that if people want rid of something it doesn't really matter if someone else sells it on - they could have sold it themselves if they could be bothered.

I saw my friends daughter begging in town. She had a loving supportive family ( my friend was a vicar). Never figured out what it was all about.

So far as freecycle goes, I don't care who takes what I offer. I am offering because I want the stuff gone from my house and usually the sooner the better.

Some years ago I was buying a large quantity of baby items for Christmas baskets that my friend and I did for a local mother and baby home. The lady behind me in the queue asked me why I had so many items and when I explained she insisted on paying for the lot! The lady on the till and I both had tears in our eyes at her generosity.

Yes I’ve been caught out on my local Nextdoor giving things to people I thought needed them then found out they sold them on eBay.