Difficult Situations & Problems

Freegle Volunteer Wiki › ⚠️ Difficult Situations & Problems

However long you've been moderating, members find new ways to surprise you. This section collects what other moderators have learned from dealing with awkward or difficult members, spam and scams, disputes over reselling or no-shows, and genuine local or national emergencies.

Start here: How To Deal With is the master index moderators use to find advice for almost any tricky situation.

Where to start

• How To Deal With - the hub page linking out to specific items, circumstances, problems, emergencies and sample messages for the situations members throw at you.
• Specific Problems - an index of common problem-member scenarios, from complaints and banning to spammers and scams.
• Specific Circumstances - an index of tricky-but-not-hostile situations, like auto-responses, cross-posting, no-shows and sob stories.

Community policies and judgement calls

• Cross-posting - the pros, cons and practicalities of members posting the same offer or wanted to more than one community.
• Distance - How far away is acceptable - why members don't have to live near a community to join it, and what to weigh up before adopting a local-only policy.
• Phone numbers - the advantages, safety risks and scam potential of letting members share phone numbers in their posts.
• Borrowing or Lending - the case for and against allowing borrowing and lending posts on your group.
• Lending Liability - the legal small print on who's liable if a borrowed item causes damage, and why groups that allow lending should flag this to members.
• Resellers - Freegle's rule that reselling is fine as long as it's disclosed before collection, and why an outright ban is hard to police.
• Reselling - what to do if a member is reselling without disclosing it, plus how Trash Nothing enforces the same rule.
• Sob stories - weighing sympathy-seeking detail in a post against the safety risk of members sharing too much personal information.
• Too many wanteds - how to respond to complaints about WANTED posts, and the case for leaving the community to self-police.
• Fair offer policy - the now-retired tickbox that let posters say they'd wait before choosing a recipient, and how the idea lives on as wording in Trash Nothing.
• Group Polls - how to run a quick poll, for example via Doodle, when you want members' opinions on a policy change.

Member behaviour, complaints and reporting problems

• Problem members - why patience and diplomacy usually beat confrontation, and what not to tolerate along the way.
• Banning - why permanent moderation can beat banning outright, questions to ask yourself first, and how to spot a member who's rejoined under a new name.
• Member Complaints - how to write a calm, fair reply to an angry member, and why it matters for Freegle's reputation, not just your group.
• No-shows or time-wasters - practical tips, like phone contact and reply deadlines, for cutting down on people who arrange to collect and then don't turn up.
• Reporting Problems - the information (userid, device, browser) to always include when reporting a website, app or ModTools bug.

Spam, scams and fraud

• Scams - how the Ukash/courier scam works, and the footer wording that helps warn members off it.
• 070 telephone numbers - how these premium-rate numbers are used in scams, and why members shouldn't call them back.
• FreebieJeebies - the referral scheme some members exploit to farm free items, and how to report it.
• Boxbe - the anti-spam tool that floods your group with auto-verification emails, and what to tell members using it.
• Auto-responses - how to recognise item-harvesting auto-responders and stop them getting an unfair head start on offers.
• Spam Arrest - why this spam-filtering service's terms of service are risky for anyone who replies to a filtered member.

Emergencies and urgent appeals

• Emergencies - who to turn to when things go wrong, from the Mentor Team to the national mailboxes: the message is simply "please ask".
• Emergency Response and Urgent Appeals - the background and national strategy for how Freegle responds to disasters and crises.
• Emergency Response and Urgent Appeals - Group Response - what local communities should bear in mind if they want to help during a nearby disaster or emergency.
• Emergency Response and Urgent Appeals - National Response - the step-by-step process support@ilovefreegle.org follows when an organisation asks Freegle for help.

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Prefer to browse? Every page here is also listed A-Z in the Difficult Situations & Problems index. Back to the home page.