I had to get rid of an air conditioner. It was way too heavy for me to move, and while I have friends who might be happy to help I don’t think the risk of their backs blowing out or other injury is worth it. I needed someone licensed, bonded, insured, all that boring stuff.
There was allegedly an on-site super who would be able to handle things like this but he said no. I don’t understand why. A few months ago he’d moved a small freezer to the curb for me with no complaint. It was, as I was told, his job. Not anymore, it seems. Maybe there was bad blood with him and the building owner? I don’t know, don’t need to know.
So I happened across a new app that is similar to TaskRabbit. You post a job and a proposed payment and, in my case, numerous requests appeared from people willing to move this thing for $50.
But here’s the thing. I don’t have $50 to spend on something like this. As it happened, this new task app offered all new users a $100 voucher for use on any task. That seemed pretty generous to me, maybe even too good to be true, but I used money from that voucher to pay this person. Itt felt like Monopoly money to me but the cash was real for him. He also runs a side hustle recycling air conditioners, so I suspect there is even more coin in this a/c for him to be made.
So I got rid of a hulking, heavy air conditioner for free and that’s fine. I was starting to get paranoid. I had not fully vetted this new platform but it seemed reputable and well rpoduced. When I did not hear from the person all day I started thinking something was wrong. But according to the documentation the money I put into a sort of escrow account does not get released to him until he requests it, upon completion of the project. That’s what happened. He hauled, under great duress, a very ungainly and heavy a/c down the stairs and onto his pickup waiting outside.
It’s decluttering time for me and this was a huge pile of junk to get rid of. Feels like my sinuses are cleansed. I may be unloading those old LP records but I want to digitize them first. I did that with several others a few years ago. Those are the tracks I play most frequently on my Plex server. I’ve heard you can even make a few bucks selling old LPs these days.
But putting that VC capital to use to get rid of an a/c at no cost to me felt wrong, but I don’t care.