This is a real problem on here that I think ought to be talked about. Especially since someone else on here recently told me that they have had exactly the same problem, it seems really widespread.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been relying on the generosity of people on this site, mainly mutual aid, to feed myself and buy basic essentials. A couple of people have come through and helped me. However, most of the posts I’ve made have attracted replies, both in the thread and in PMs, offering help, which the person messaging me never follows through on. This causes several problems:

1. Other people who might have helped see the replies in the thread offering help and think “This person is already being helped, so I won’t bother,” thereby causing the person asking for help to lose whatever help they may otherwise have obtained.

2. It causes stress because I don’t know whether the person just changed their mind, or whether they were tricking me to get my details and now intend to use them for fraudulent purposes.

3. It’s just awful to get your hopes up with an offer of help and check back day after day for it, and it never materialises, and you have the dawning realisation that it’s not coming.

This has happened time and time again, usually the person sends an offer of help and when I reply to take them up on it, they just never respond. However there have been instances where I’ve been strung along for a while. The most recent incident happened over this past week.

Someone sent me a 4 paragraph long essay about how they’d seen my posts and wanted to help, they listed all the ways they’d thought of helping me, from sending food parcels, to their leftover cash in foreign currencies, to paypal, etc but found reasons against all of these ideas, so they said they were sending me a food voucher as I’d asked for in previous threads. I responded to accept.

They then sent another 4 paragraph message, just rambling about random stuff. I responded. Days passed and I didn’t hear from them. So eventually I sent a message asking if they were having trouble with the voucher. They responded “Sorry, I’ve been busy, I’ll do it soon.”

Days passed. I thought he was too busy as he’d said, but then I saw him making endless posts, at all hours of the day and night, chatting to people. He didn’t seem busy. Eventually I realised, he’s not coming through. Aside from the crushing disappointment, now I am worried about what he hopes to achieve. Why did he do this, is he planning to do something with my email address? Or is he really just so oblivious he doesn’t realise how this affects me?

I’ve had other incidents too. One person contacted me offering help and asking for my details. Days passed, I didn’t hear anything, so I asked if there was any problem. He wrote back, “Oh, my wife found out I was going to send money to someone on the internet and said I’m not allowed to do it.” OK, but he didn’t even bother to tell me until I messaged him. I was checking back hopefully every day while he’d already decided it wasn’t happening.

This has happened more times than I have the energy to type. Why do people do this? Please remember there is a real person in desperate need on the other end of the requests you see on mutual aid. Not following through on offers of help causes disappointment, stress and worry. And if you’re broadcasting your offer of help in the thread, it’s probably stopping other people from helping so you’ve cost them whatever help they would have received from someone else.