Buying furniture online is a great way to find both new and used furniture in your area. Use Gumtree furniture ads to find great deals to start up or spruce up your home. The best part is… it’s free! And as Gumtree continues to grow, more and more people are using the website, creating an even bigger market for buying and selling furniture.
What is Gumtree?
Gumtree is an online classified that started in the UK in 2000. The creators aimed to create a local London classifieds to allow movers and newcomers to the city to find accommodation, employment, furniture, and to meet people in the community. Today, Gumtree covers 60 cities in countries such as New Zealand, Poland, the UK, and South Africa. Gumtree once featured as one of the top 20 websites in the UK, and is widely used for buying and selling of a vast range of items, as well as for job and accommodation opportunities.
Gumtree is a user-friendly classified that allows you to place or create Gum tree furniture ads for free. If you are a private seller, you can list furniture items that you no longer need for others to browse. You can sell any furniture item. People wanting to buy furniture items can then chooser certain search criteria such as price range, location and furniture type and browse all the relevant ads. Because you can choose a particular region, this makes it easier to do fact to face sales and save on delivery costs. Buying face to face is also a safer way of doing business transactions with strangers.
Selling on Gumtree
If you have furniture to sell on Gumtree, placing an ad is a relatively easy and quick process. All you have to do is click on the button to place an ad on the Gumtree homepage, write a short description of the furniture you are selling, provide a picture (if possible), and decide which category you would like to place your ad in. You can provide your contact details directly on the advert, or you can just give your email address to Gumtree. People interest in your furniture will then be able to respond to your ad via email on the website, with Gumtree forwarding the email to your address.
Stay Safe
When it comes to online classifieds (especially those that are free, there are predators and scam out there so you do need to be vigilant to ensure you are not being duped. Here are some tips for staying safe when you buy and sell furniture and other items online:
- Meet in person when you arrange to see the item and exchange money. Gumtree aims to encourage local face-to-face trading as this is the safest way of doing business. To ensure personal safety, always bring along someone with you and if someone will be visiting your home or business, ask the person to provide his/her identity and proof of their qualification.
- Never send your furniture item before you receive the money for it.
- Don’t trust people who ask you to use Money Gram, Western Union and other payment services before you have the furniture item you are buying.
- Remember that Gumtree doesn’t offer any payment programs or buyer protection, so if you receive emails of this nature (even if they bear the Gumtree logo) they are scams and should be reported.
- When buying expensive items such as furniture, laptops, mobile phones, plasma TVs, tickets for shows, and airline tickets be extra vigilant and take special care to ensure that the deal is legitimate.
- Never give anyone else your banking or other personal information online.
- Keep on top of the latest common fraud and scams so that you can see them coming a mile away.
Any suspicious activity and attempted fraud should always be reported to Gumtree, or even to the police. Essentially, you just need to use your common sense when it comes to buying or selling furniture online; if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.