So after I bought my house, I found a brand new in box, unopened light fixture in a closet in the bedroom.
I returned it to Home Depot for $150 in store credit. And I don't feel bad about it at all.
So yeah, no, I wouldn't contact the seller about items they left in the house.
He also left behind a cast iron griddle in the drawer underneath the stove and I use that puppy all.the.time.
Ha! Same thing happened to us. She left two ceiling fans and a custom order faucet (that was so ugly) in the closet. We returned them for store credit to Lowe's. It was about $750 worth of stuff. Happy house warming to us!
Post by bostonmichelle on Aug 15, 2013 13:23:35 GMT -5
I probably would contact the old owners. Our lovely sellers' left us a tanning bed to deal with. Its still sitting in the basement, any takers? We are putting it on craigslist this fall, we've been so busy the last year and a half we haven't had time to move it out of the basement nor did we need the room, now we want the space for other junk.
The only thing our seller left us was 2 baggies of what looked like 10 year old pot. You touched the bag and it crumbled. We tossed it into the burn barrel outside.
I'd imagine it'd be too late now to ask about them, but if I were the buyer, I'd assume the seller would contact me if they wanted the items back or not since a lot of people do leave stuff behind on purpose.
Some of it was pretty inconsequential (ceramic cannister left waaaaaaay in the back of a low cabinet) but there were some photographs left taped to the back of my office door that I knew that they would want.
I contacted our realtor and she contacted their agent and we worked it out so that I could get their things back to them.
If it was trash or something, I'd assume that they left it on purpose. But clearly you were washing the diapers and were presumably still taking care of them/using them. In the same situation, I'd have tried to contact you.
ETA: Full disclosure, though, we CD so I would know what they were (and how much money is spent building a stash!) I'd give her a pass if your buyer wouldn't recognize them for what they are...
I figured it's too late to reach out and I chalked it up to my mistake and didn't want to bother her anyway. But I'm still obsessing that she didn't reach out to us and am bummed I left the diapers there in the first place. I've got to let it go.
On the plus side, she never cashed the check we wrote her so she could change the locks on the doors. Maybe that was her way of making amends.
Amends for what? This is such an odd outlook. While I might have set the diapers aside and let our realtor know we had them, IMO the responsibility lies with whoever left the stuff behind. You seem to think that the buyer was ethically bound to take on the responsibility of getting your stuff back to you, and I disagree.
Post by changedname on Aug 15, 2013 13:32:35 GMT -5
Oh, a couple of months ago (after living in this house for a year), I found a brown paper bag with tons and tons of boxes of an anti depressant. They were hidden right at the back of the closet and I'm not sure how I missed them. I just gave them to the pharmacy to recycle but I feel bad because I bet they cost $$$.
I figured it's too late to reach out and I chalked it up to my mistake and didn't want to bother her anyway. But I'm still obsessing that she didn't reach out to us and am bummed I left the diapers there in the first place. I've got to let it go.
On the plus side, she never cashed the check we wrote her so she could change the locks on the doors. Maybe that was her way of making amends.
Amends for what? This is such an odd outlook. While I might have set the diapers aside and let our realtor know we had them, IMO the responsibility lies with whoever left the stuff behind. You seem to think that the buyer was ethically bound to take on the responsibility of getting your stuff back to you, and I disagree.
This is where I am. Would it have been nice for her to reach out? Sure. But I really don't see how it's her responsibility. Or that she owes you anything because of it.
I'm giggling at the stories of sellers leaving behind crap and the buyers thinking they did it accidentally and that it serves the sellers right for being douches. Guys, they were still being douches when they left that crap behind for you to dispose of. My dad recently bought a house and his real estate agent had to breathe down the seller's agent's neck to ensure the seller removed all his junk from the property, or my dad was going to get stuck having to dispose of about twenty old leaky hoses and five wobbly ladders.
I figured it's too late to reach out and I chalked it up to my mistake and didn't want to bother her anyway. But I'm still obsessing that she didn't reach out to us and am bummed I left the diapers there in the first place. I've got to let it go.
On the plus side, she never cashed the check we wrote her so she could change the locks on the doors. Maybe that was her way of making amends.
Amends for what? This is such an odd outlook. While I might have set the diapers aside and let our realtor know we had them, IMO the responsibility lies with whoever left the stuff behind. You seem to think that the buyer was ethically bound to take on the responsibility of getting your stuff back to you, and I disagree.
You're right. I didn't want to put her out by reaching out to her. But I did hope she'd put herself out by reaching out to me. Ha.
Amends is a bad word. Maybe some sort of universal karma that she didn't cash a $100 check from us and the diapers we left behind were probably worth that much.
Post by karinothing on Aug 15, 2013 14:11:13 GMT -5
Well, one if I wer eyou I have would have contacted the buyer ASAP as soon as I realized they were missing. And two, as a buyer I would have contacted the seller to let them know. But I am nice like that.
Maybe this is is became I cloth diaper, but I assume the OP isn't talking about prefolds. NOt sure one would think to use teh following for a dust rag . Sorry I realize this has nothing to do with the post but it just seems odd to me! (I also have no clue what kind of diapers these were, but since she said they were nice I assume something like the two listed below, neither of which seem very dust rag like).
Ha, yes. They're all BumGenius diapers and inserts - maybe a few prefolds that I put on the floor when I change him. So she can put those to use if she's industrious. If she's smart, she googled it and figured out she can stick those puppies on ebay.
For what it's worth, I don't think any of them were stained
Post by mollybrown on Aug 15, 2013 14:52:04 GMT -5
I had our previous seller's contact information, and left a cabinet full of things on the porch for them to come and pick up. I also contacted them a year later when they accidentally had some new electronics shipped to our house. If I had to arrange for shipping and didn't have their contact information, I probably wouldn't have bothered. A handful of cloth diapers wouldn't have seemed that valuable to me. I agree that you should have contacted the buyer right away when you realized they were missing.