This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, hey, what's up? Chris Guillebeau here, your host of "Saddestal School." Got an interesting listener question today. It's essentially about reselling free stuff, or reselling stuff that you get for free. This guy in particular received some free display equipment at a trade show, wants to know if he can resell it without worrying, or does this create some kind of ethical dilemma? I thought it was an interesting question because I used to be really into free stuff.
Okay, like I would do a lot for free stuff and probably too much. Like I was the kind of person that, if I was at the grocery store and they were giving out free samples, I would take the sample even if I didn't like that food. I would drink a coffee at night if the coffee was free. These are just a couple of examples. Like it was really quite extreme.
So fortunately I have graduated to some degree, but there is still a lot of free stuff out there, especially if you get into scavenging and going around looking for furniture, other items people are disposing of, et cetera. So the question is more broadly speaking, can you resell items you get for free? We're going to talk about it today in this episode. [Music]
Hey Chris, this is Roger from St. Cloud, Minnesota.
And I've been listening to this show for about a year or so. Thanks to you and the side hustle school team for the inspiration. My question is, can I resell something I received for free? I worked at a trade show and two of the booths next to me said they didn't need some of their display equipment. I asked if I could take it and they said, sure.
But I didn't tell them I was going to try reselling it. Now I'm wondering if I have an ethical obligation to be clear about that when buying items or taking free stuff like that at a trade show. Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks Chris. [Music]
Thank you so much Roger and good news here.
In this situation, I don't see anything at all wrong with reselling that equipment. The vendor clearly didn't have a use for it. They didn't say anything to you like, okay, you can have it for personal use, but don't sell it. You know, it's a free market. People give away valuable stuff all the time.
If they don't want it again, if there's no restriction on it, you can kind of do what you want. I read an article about people who hang around certain well off neighborhoods or zip codes, where they kind of drive around with a truck looking for furniture that people have left on the curb. So in my opinion, if someone is throwing something away, once they're done with it, there's nothing preventing you from claiming it for your reselling kingdom. The only exceptions would be if something is marked not for resale, for example. And there it's fairly obvious that the original party wants to prevent this issue from coming up.
As to whether they can or not, I guess that's where that ethical dilemma comes in. But from everything Roger says in his answer, it sounds like that trade show giveaway is fair game. So good luck, Roger, and all the other resellers out there. I am cheering you on. Let me know what happens.
And if you have a question of your own, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. As you can tell, we're featuring them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects. It's so cool to hear from you. I always enjoy hearing what people are working on. So let me know, and hopefully we can support you in some way.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
