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How Have & Seek works

Have & Seek is a free classifieds board for people in the United States. It is operated by VFR Solutions: features may change and data may be reset.

Browsing and accounts

• Anyone can browse Listings and Quests, search, filter by place, open posts, see photos and use the maps.
• To post, save, message, respond, report or block, create a free account or sign in. Depending on what is set up, you can continue with Google or with an email link or 6-digit code; your account becomes active once your email address is confirmed. After signing in you return to the page you were on.
• Members who already set a password can still sign in with it.

Location, regions and distance

• Your location is shown next to the Have & Seek name at the top of every page, underlined; select it to choose a town or ZIP and a distance on a map. New searches look 5 miles around the center you choose. Slide from 1 to 15 miles, or type any whole number from 1 to 1,500, or choose All United States.
• The name shown is your region: the named part of the state your center is in (for example, Pierce, NE is in Northeast Nebraska). Regions are Have & Seek’s own custom regions and together cover the mapped outlines of all 50 states and DC; see the region coverage map. A region only names where you are. Which posts you see is decided by the distance around your center, which can be smaller than the region or reach into neighboring regions and states. The board always shows the actual center and distance.
• Your choice, a town with a distance, a named region or All United States, is remembered on this browser with a preference cookie (see Privacy) and always comes first; choosing another replaces it. If a saved town ever drops out of our place list, the board asks you to choose again instead of showing a wider area. Without one, members start 5 miles around the home place on their profile. Otherwise the board suggests a nearby town from your approximate network location, marked “approximate”; that guess can be wrong (for example on a VPN or mobile network) and is not saved. If no town can be identified, you are asked to choose one. The site never asks for your device’s location.
• Links you copy include the exact place and distance, so other people see the same posts. Older links with a distance keep it.
• Locations only change what you browse. A post’s place, a Quest’s search area, service coverage and map matching work exactly as before.

Listings and Quests

• Listings are things members have: goods for sale (or free) and services they provide.
• Quests are things members are seeking: a product they want to buy or a service they need, with a budget, “seeking free”, or “open to quotes”.
• You can respond to a Quest with a message and an optional proposed price, without publishing a Listing.

Posting

• Choose Listing or Quest, product or service, a category, and a city, town or ZIP.
• Save as a draft (only you can see it) or publish. You can add up to 6 photos after saving.
• Pause a post to hide it temporarily, close it as sold, fulfilled or closed, or archive it. Closed posts stay visible with their label but no longer accept new messages.
• Category details for Quests are preferences you describe in your own words; they are not compared automatically. On a post’s map, coloured pins are possible matches found by fixed rules. For products: same subcategory and within budget when a budget and a price are set. A product Quest’s radius is a distance preference shown by the circle, so items beyond it can still be green and are marked “Outside” the search area (browse still filters by radius). For services: same service type, compatible in-person/remote work, inside the area or both remote, and within budget in comparable units. Gray pins are other nearby posts in the same category group, with the reasons they don’t match. It is not AI, so always review the details yourself.

Messages

• Each person has one conversation per post. Messages are visible only to the two members involved.
• There are no email or text notifications in this preview. Open Messages to check for replies; open conversations refresh every 15 seconds.
• A message or proposed price is not a purchase obligation and nothing is paid through Have & Seek.
• Blocking a member stops new messages between you in both directions and hides their posts from your signed-in maps. Published posts are public, so a blocked person can still see yours while signed out.

What Have & Seek does not do

No auctions, checkout, payments, shipping, delivery, escrow, fees or subscriptions. Members arrange payment and hand-off themselves. See Safety.

Reporting

Use “Report this post” or “Report this member”. Reports go to an admin review queue. Admins may hide posts or remove access. You will not receive an automatic reply.

Building an app? See the API for developers. Using an AI assistant such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity? See Connect AI assistants.