What: OfferUp is a free site that allows you to sell personal items, ranging from musical instruments and furniture to clothing and books
Commissions & Fees: None
Husl$core: $$$$
Expected pay: NA
Where: Most major cities
Requirements: Must be over age 13 to use the app; if you’re under age 18, you must have parental supervision; smart phone
Review:
OfferUp is a phone application that allows you to sell everything from clothing to cars. There is no fee to list. However, if you want your item to get more attention, you can pay to have it “bumped” or “featured.” The site suggests that sellers ask for cash payment; if they want to pay through the app, everything goes through Stripe, which may charge a processing fee. The site wisely advises sellers to walk away from buyers who suggest that they pay with personal checks, cashiers checks, prepaid cards, etc. Often these buyers are bogus and attempting to scam you out of both your item and, potentially, get you to “refund” them overpayments. It’s only later that sellers find out that this is a fake check scam. Scammers hit nearly every sale site, so there’s nothing different about the fact that they hit OfferUp too.
The reason this site gets a lower score than some of it’s competitors is that its app has a number of glitches and customer support is missing in action. There are other free sites to sell your stuff, most notably Craig’s List and LetGo, and they appear to be the better choice. But, there’s also no reason not to list your items for sale on all of the free sites.
What their users say:
Have been on Offerup for a couple years. And all of a sudden it lets me post but they really aren’t posting. No views; no comments; no offers; so I decided to see from another computer. My ads were not on there. Don’t respond to your problems. This site has gone entirely down hill
So I’ve been using Offerup for about 6 or so months and just within the last month it has stopped allowing me to send or receive messages. I have made two or three different accounts yet they all do the same thing even after I verify the emails for each account. It will let me search every type of item and find them and I can technically “send” a message but it does not send. I sent a message on the app to my friend but he did not receive it and still has not.
Offer up has a 9.9%, service fee plus an additional stripe services fee 10%. A $10 sell resulted on a $0.99, and $1 stripe fees.
OfferUp only charges fees when you choose to use their payment system, rather than simply accepting payment in person. For a small sale, you’d be smarter to just tell the buyer to pay you in cash.