Garage Sale Rover Droid App

I always seem to find excuses not to go to garage sales but I know the deals are out there and I just need to find the time to figure out what ones are around my location. May be that is the main reason really. The hassle of trying to find the ones nearby my home and when I'm running errands.

When I upgraded to a Droid recently, one of the prerequisites for putting out money to get the Droid was that it had to help me save money and time, besides being fun to play with. And one of the first items I looked for in the marketplace were frugal related apps to help me do that.

I only wanted to stick with apps that were free, that way no money was lost and this made it feel like I was going to the library to check out a book; if I found one that rocked my world, then I might buy it later. Eventually I came across the Garage Sale Rover (free app) and it had the highest star rating for garage sale apps, so why not.

Garage Sale Rover (GSR) has a free app and a premium version for 2.99, I'll get to the difference below. GSR pulls it's garage sales from the craigslist site in your area and plants it on the droid map in relation to where you live.  Since I use craigslist already to find garage sales, this fit perfect for me.

The free version gives you the location and details about the sale with the address, or whatnot, in the craigslist post. The 2.99 version allows you to link the address to your navigation on the phone for the directionally challenged like myself. I upgraded to try it out today, but I uninstalled it later (refunded if done within 24 hours).

First, the pros:

* Link with navigation is very handy (on the premium version)
* Details pulled from craigslist also helpful to know if the sale is worth it
* Quite a few sales in my area of south Denver
* Gives sales available up to Sunday (updates on Sunday night, maybe?)
* No paper to hassle with while driving for directions
* Can call if phone is in details to verify sale is going on (☞ see below)

Next, the cons:

* Not able to add other garage sales I may have found in the paper
* Doesn't seem to update enough to give dates in the future. Today is Sunday as I write this and there is nothing to pull up for next week.
* If you want to link the address to the navigation, the 2.99 charge is needed. Otherwise the free version will give you only the map information.

☞ When I went out today, I had 3 garages sales that I wanted to go to. It was a bust with only 1 garage sale running. It would seem that the other 2 sales were never pulled from craigslist when the owners decided to not have the sales. Not a fault of GSR, but annoying to find nothing and waste gas. Later I did realize I could have called ahead to verify they were having it before I took off.

In the end, I removed the 2.99, premium version and went back to free since I do know how to read a map and I rarely go to garage sales alone; which means I can be the navigator. And overall I'm glad I had it with me, though the people didn't pull their garage sales from craigslist, the GSR app did do what it was supposed to.


Do you have any FREE Droid apps that save you money?