For 3 1/2 years, I have both bought and sold on craigslist. I have had some good experiences and some limited success. But I have had a lot of very bad experiences which have proven to be an education of sorts. I will briefly mention my good experiences and then go into more depth about my bad experiences and what I have learned hoping that I will keep my readers from making my mistakes.
The good experiences somewhat speak for themselves. I have sold many items on craigslist meeting many nice people. In some situations, I have become casual friends with these persons. I have been happy with selling the item that I no longer needed and earning a few dollars as well. I have also bought some items on craigslist. And I have gotten some very good items at very good prices. In a few cases, I have gotten excellent deals.
But I have had many bad experiences that overshadow the positive ones. And those are the ones that I want to focus one.
There are a lot of fake people on craigslist. What I mean by fake is that there are a lot of people both appearing to be buyers or sellers who have a hidden agenda. They will post items for sale and they will respond to items for sale appearing to be interested buyers.
For instance, I had several small rugs to sell. There were about eight. I posted them on craigslist and got about 85 responses. But about 80 of the persons responding were what I call the fakes. However, the other five were genuine and real. And those five bought all my rugs.
Some of the fakes are very easy to detect immediately. They send you a one line response like “are they still for sale” or “what part of town are you in” and nothing more. Very soon, you realize that they are spammers and do not bother to respond.
But others are more cunning and deceitful. They appear to have a sincere interest in your item. They ask a relevant question or two and often give you a phone number. You might send an email back and or phone the number given you. And never hear back.
In some cases, you might speak with the person and make an appointment for them to see the item. Or make an appointment to meet them somewhere. They never show or they cancel giving you a good excuse as to why they had to cancel. But, you never hear from them again.
I have often wondered about these fakes. Why do they do this? I have come to believe that these person are information brokers. They gather information about persons and sell this information to others. This is how they make money.
Sometimes all they want or need is your email. They respond to your anonymous craigslist ad but when you respond back, they have a personal email. When they send you a phone number and you call it, they then have your phone number sometimes with your name and address. If You chat on the phone and trust them enough to give them your address, they then have your address.
In some situations, these fakes could be criminals and worse dangerous. They could try to harm you physically or attempt a break in or steal your identity. This is probably unlikely but it is a possibility and you do read or hear abut this happening in the news.
In the majority of situations, I have come to believe that they are gathering information that they are using for their own purposes or selling to information brokers meaning that you will probably get on line spam, telemarketing calls or junk mail because of your involvement with this person. It is time consuming to deal with these fakes. It is annoying and you realize that once again you have been taken by a craigslist fake.
The same with items posted for sale. I have come to find out that some of the sellers are the fakes. And again, I have come to believe that the purpose is to gather information about prospective buyers. If you answer the ad, the seller either has your email or phone number depending on if you responded by email or phone. if you responded by phone the seller might also have your name and address.. This ruse is usually “shorter and sweeter” than those fakes who are pretending to have an interest in buying your item. Often when you call, you get an electronic voice mail but not always. Sometimes it is an answering machine. The key to recognizing these fakes is that you will not hear from them. They never respond back either by email or phone.
Craigslist seems to be attempting to cut back on these fakes. They have made it more difficult to post an item for sale. Often there is a telephone verification. There is an easy to use link to report spammers from the email that they send you. For a while, it was getting out of hand. It seems to have improved slightly with the newer controls in place.
However, it is becoming more difficult to sell on craigslist. I do not get the same responses that I did three years ago.Most of my posting are not selling. It could be because of the economy or it could be that many prospective buyers have been forced away because of the number of spammers and scammers. I plan to keep using craigslist both to buy and sell but I do so less often and reluctantly. I wish that there were an alternative to local selling. Or better yet, I wish that craigslist had not gotten so corrupted.
This article is not meant to discourage anyone from attempting to buy or sell on craigslist. I am hoping to educate you in the hopes that you might avoid some of the spammers and scammers on the site.