How I learned to #CleanUpCashOut

"Lady"

My dad was eyeing my old laptop for quite some time. Just like me, it was sleek, efficient and fully functioning. The laptop and I had a special bond, so much so that I came to affectionately call it my “Lady” This led to a series of jokes among me and my friends about me ‘spending too much time with my Lady’, or me ‘lying on the bed with my Lady on my lap.’

Lady was over five years old and I felt it was time for a change. As soon my new laptop arrived I decided to sell off Lady.

Although the thought of my Lady being used by my father caused me to cringe, I still gave him a right of first refusal. He proudly pulled out a Rs. 2,000 note from his pocket and handed it over to me. I looked back at him with utter indifference and walked away.

I logged on to an online classifieds platform and created an advertisement for my laptop. For over ten days I was pestered by people asking about the condition and features of this laptop. Some of them made offers of one or two thousand rupees. Most, just abruptly ended the conversation. One or two of them made offers above Rs. 2,000, but asked me to throw in freebies like headphones.

Finally, after ten days of torture, I finally closed a deal with somebody at Rs. 3,000/-. The buyer was a girl named ‘Aayesha’ and she had a cute display picture. I’ll be honest with my readers that the prospect of hooking up with this cute buyer was an added incentive for which I agreed to the low prices of Rs. 3,000/-. After a flirtatious chat, we decided to meet at a small coffee shop in Goregaon, the coming Sunday morning.

Sunday morning I packed my laptop and made my way to the coffee shop, which happened to be located in a pretty isolated area. When I was just one minute away from the shop, a white van with tainted windows swirled towards me and stopped next to me. The next thing I knew, my head was in a black bag and was being taken away. About twenty minutes later the van stopped and I was dragged till a chair. When the mask over my head was pulled off, I realized I was in an abandoned wear-house and sitting in front of a forty-year old bearded man.

“Who are you?”, I asked.

“Don’t you recognize me? I’m Aayesha.”, he replied and exploded with laughter.

“What do you want?”

“Listen, take this phone and call your father. Either your dad pays or you die.”

I dialed my dad’s number and returned the phone to my kidnapper. The phone was on speaer mode.

“Hello?” my dad answered.

“Hey! I have your son. Transfer Ten Lakh Rupees to my account in the next two hours or he dies.”

“What? Who is this? How do you have my son?”

“I kidnapped him when he was on his way to sell his laptop to me.”

“Oh! So you are the one my son is selling his laptop to? Keep my son and keep his ‘Lady’!” Saying that my dad cut the call.

“Hello? Hello?” my kidnapper looked at me with sympathy and despair. He told me that he had a disappointment of a father too. We bonded over our dad-stories for hours. By the end of the day he finally let me go, realizing that I already had things going pretty bad already.

I came home, tired. My friend Rohan came to my house to meet me. I apprised him about what transpired. He pulled out his phone and in 60 seconds he sold my  laptop for Rs. 5,000/-. He used a website called ‘Cashify'. It was hassle-free and in a couple of days I got my money and my phone was picked up from my house.

From now on I’m only going to use Cashify for getting a good price and also to avoid getting “catfished”. Suggest you guys to #CleanUpCashOut too. Use coupon code CLEANCASH on Cashify to get an additional Rs.250 on the sale of your gadgets.

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