I received a call to take a look at some things that were stored in the garage of a vacant house. They wanted the garage cleared so they could sell the property the next spring (months away). After taking a look at the contents, I determined there was about $2,000 of value and about $500 of junk hauling fees. It was a very poor location to hold a sale on-site (it was also a bad time of year) and many of the items (welder, air compressor, etc.) were too large and heavy to load, haul, unload, store, load, haul, unload, and then sell. When things don’t fit well for me I try to come up with a good solution for people. I gave them the card of a local auctioneer that would come and pick up the items of value and put them in a sale scheduled for the next weekend
I also gave them the card of a guy who would do the junk hauling. The auctioneers fee is 25%, so if my figure of $2,000 was correct, they would get $1,500 from the sale, spend $500 on the junk hauling, leaving them a net of $1,000 and the place empty in a week…
The next day I was at the landfill, with a load from the job I was working on, when the same people pulled in with a large U-Haul truck and dumped the entire contents of the garage (power tools and all) in the pit. Instead of making a couple of phone calls and putting money in their pocket, they were paying to throw usable/salable items in the landfill.