The Bag Trade
In my earlier post "One Bag Lifestyle," I detailed my One bag travel lifestyle (or philosophy). Now, thanks to a trade or sale rather I only have one bag left. Willingly and now without choice I'm a one bag travel sort of guy. A few weeks ago I had placed the "other" luggage on Craigslist citing the end to my polygamist luggage lifestyle (Posted in least smug way possible). After few weeks have passed since my post, I assumed my listing was in the purgotory of Craigslist.
Luckily, just as my girlfriend was suggesting it was about time to donate the bags to Goodwill I received a buzz on my Android. I held up the sush finger to parlay the importance of me checking my phone for a possible spam e-mail only to notice someone was interested in one of the two bag's I'd posted. Before I delve into the details of my bag trade, here is a brief history of my trades on Craigslist...
1. Traded my Nintendo Wii (which I found out is a great cure for hangovers, play an active game and you're back to normal in no time!) for a plant my butt on a couch gaming comforts of a Sony PS3, which does not cure hangovers. I met the guy I was trading with at a grocery store parking lot, then took him to my house to test the merchandise...which defeated the purpose of meeting in a parking lot...but the trade went smoothly and both parties were/are happy in the end.
2. hmm...well I guess I only traded one thing on Craigslist. But I could write a book (pamphlet) about selling on Amazon.com, the jacket would read, "Learn to secrets of selling your junk on Amazon!"
Back to my bag trade, I called up the guy who asked to purchase one of my two bags, based on the accent I could tell he was another Indian guy. I was expecting to haggle for an hour, throwing in extras like a midnight infomercial in order to make a sale of something I was willing to donate. I'm Indian, and I like to haggle, a lot. So much like a boxing match let's begin with Round 1!
Ding Ding!
Round 1:
Guy: I'd like to buy just one of your two bags! The smaller one!
Me: Ok, that'll be $25 (45% of the combined $55 price)
Guy: Ok deal!
My Internal monologe....Wait, what the hell! I'm confused, did this deal really just end!?
Me: Ok let's meet up in the parking lot near In-N-Out, and trade.
Guy: Wait do you live at the Grigio? I live there too! Let's meet there.
Me: Done!
Break... 7 hours later.
Round 2:
Guy: Hi Boss, where do you live?
Me: Apt # xyz.
Guy: See you in 5 Minutes
20 minutes later (Indian Standard Time folks!)
Me: Hey! Here's your bag, all the zippers work!
Guy: Ok cool, hey can I get both bag's for $40?
...Here comes the haggling! too bad this guy decided to haggle after I'd spent the day wine tasting and driving 5 hours! (More on that later!)
Me: Yeah Ok.
The guy probably had the same internal monologe as me, he's Indian down to his time management skills. It may not be entirely too clear who won, but considering I was on the verge of donating the luggage, and it was already a sunk cost, so I call me the Winner! The extra $40 in my pocket will vouch for that! So there you have it a literal blow by blow account of my one bag traveldom. True test will begin soon on my trip to Argentina!
I would say the deal was ok. considering zero versus 40bucks.
ReplyDeleteWii for hangover is a good idea. I will pass that one to a few friends.
A post on teaching us how to sell our junk on Amazon would definitely be helpful. I'm looking forward to read that.