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Cooter
Cooter SuperDork
5/3/19 10:46 a.m.

In reply to Brett_Murphy :

Yep.

Also check the "Barter" and "Free" sections.

CyberEric
CyberEric HalfDork
5/3/19 11:20 a.m.

So I posted my E30 before the fee, and got a ton of emails about the car, mostly scammers or idiots. I reposted it when the fee hit, and now Imngetting no emails whatsoever. Thought that was interesting. Maybe just coincidence?

Cooter
Cooter SuperDork
5/3/19 11:29 a.m.

Less people are bothering to go there, scam or otherwise.

CyberEric
CyberEric HalfDork
5/3/19 12:53 p.m.

In reply to Cooter :

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. I decided to bite the bullet and post my car and scooter on facebook, ugh. We'll see what happens.

Brett_Murphy
Brett_Murphy UltimaDork
5/3/19 12:53 p.m.

What kind of E30?

 

RevRico
RevRico PowerDork
5/3/19 12:57 p.m.

Barter, free, general, farm & garden, even the wanted section. These are places on CL I'm finding more cars for sale. There were always a handful in those sections for whatever stupid reason, but now it actually makes sense people are putting them there and hoping they don't get flagged. 

CyberEric
CyberEric HalfDork
5/3/19 1:07 p.m.

In reply to Brett_Murphy :

It's a 5-speed convertible, so no good for racing really. Needs a lot of love, but it's still fun for what it is.

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/cto/d/el-sobrante-bmw-e30-325i-convertible/6873053986.html

CyberEric
CyberEric HalfDork
5/3/19 2:19 p.m.

Well, this doesn't look good. The ad was on facebook all of an hour and I got this message:

"Will pick it up today for 900.

And hrow some high end wine ontop"

The car is priced at $2,500. Those were his exact words. Not even a "hello." This is way worse than Craigslist.

John Welsh
John Welsh Mod Squad
5/3/19 2:23 p.m.

In reply to CyberEric :

On those types of responses I usually just answer.  "Okay"  

I still never hear from them again.  

Kreb
Kreb UberDork
5/3/19 2:34 p.m.

Craigslist has traditionally been the antithesis of tech companies - small, extremely profitable and happy. Their biggest expenses were the lawyers that it took to keep ebay at, um,  bay. They don't have to charge, but greed will out. 

I don't mind weeding out the not insignificant amount of chaff from Craigslist, and 5 bucks is a pittance, but Facebook just isn't formatted as well for my needs. Not nearly. So now, instead one time-waster, I have two. Lovely.

On another note, is there any way to easily flag people on Facebook? There's a technique going around now where guys use completely  invalid descriptions to draw traffic. Say,  post a Corvette and show a Lebaron. Interestingly, it sometimes goes in reverse. I saw a beautiful 1950s panel van listed as a Pontiac Aztec the other day. It happens way too often to be a mistake.

Dave M
Dave M Reader
5/3/19 3:13 p.m.

So Craigslist is rendered useless, and Facebook is still Facebook. Seems as this is a lose-lose!

GCrites80s
GCrites80s Reader
5/3/19 4:22 p.m.

I think one of the main problems with the whole thing is not that low-income individuals don't have $5 to sell a cheap car it's that they don't have a credit or debit card. I think it is somewhat unfair to them. Scammers all have credit cards though.

Powar
Powar UltraDork
5/3/19 5:24 p.m.

I just spent the money to list my old C10 on the local CraigsList. I'll report back either way.

CyberEric
CyberEric HalfDork
5/3/19 5:28 p.m.

Now my guy sweetened the deal, he just let me know the following:

"Over 700 for 6 bottles it is a set

In a wooden box"

NOW we're talking!

I think paying has led to fewer spammers on CL... maybe? I'm not sure why that would happen though. 

irish44j
irish44j MegaDork
5/3/19 8:32 p.m.
CyberEric said:

Well, this doesn't look good. The ad was on facebook all of an hour and I got this message:

"Will pick it up today for 900.

And hrow some high end wine ontop"

The car is priced at $2,500. Those were his exact words. Not even a "hello." This is way worse than Craigslist.

I posted up three old, rusty Army 81mm mortar ammo boxes on CL a couple months ago. I got a few emails, all offering half that. The one guy who offered $40, I agreed to meet him and he never showed up.

Posted the same boxes FB for $50 (more than what they're worth) the other day. Got six messages within an hour, all willing to pay full price. Sold it to the first guy, he came and got it, and we discussed his plans to use them for some random project that was kind of interesting. 

FB people are largely the same people that were on CL I'd guess (minus the small percentage who refuse to use it and plus all the people who never used CL in the first place but look at marketplace because they're already on FB anyhow). There are gonna be hits and misses just like CL. I just like the ability to look at the person's profile and see if they at least seem like a legitimate person (something you can't do at all on CL, it's just an anonymous email address). I still think the requirement to "show" who you are somewhat tamps down the number of scammers and stuff. 

I've sold a ton of stuff on there, and had almost zero lowballers or wierdos. Mostly just normal people buying stuff. Stuff that is fairly worthless, for the most part, so much that I'd never even bother posting it on CL. FB is way faster to post something (like 30 seconds) so it makes it more convenient to post small stuff or cheap stuff. 

Again, YMMV. I used to spend hours a week on CL just browsing for random cars and stuff. I haven't been on it in a month....

 

Side note: not sure if it was there before or not, but in the automotive section, FB now lets you select year ranges for cars and a lot of other things. I don't recall seeing that before. Anyhow last night I was looking for Celicas down this way for Nonack and i put in "Celica" and year range 1985 to 1987. Pretty sure I got all the local celicas in that year range, plus "related" cars like MR2, Celica Supra, and a couple other sporty 1985-1987 hatchbacks.

So, maybe they're refining the Marketplace search (or maybe i didn't notice this stuff before)

volvoclearinghouse
volvoclearinghouse PowerDork
5/3/19 8:39 p.m.

In reply to irish44j :

I think we're talking cars here...your examples all seem to be other stuff - lower $$ stuff. I have 3 cars on CL and FB now and have had nothing but garbage from FB, while I've actually gotten some interest from the CL ads. 

irish44j
irish44j MegaDork
5/3/19 8:47 p.m.
volvoclearinghouse said:

In reply to irish44j :

I think we're talking cars here...your examples all seem to be other stuff - lower $$ stuff. I have 3 cars on CL and FB now and have had nothing but garbage from FB, while I've actually gotten some interest from the CL ads. 

Perhaps. When i sold my WRX on CL, I had about 25 people emailing me, almost all of the ridiculous lowballs (for a car taht was already priced way, way below value since i wanted to sell it fast). In the end I did sell it (the guy paid me in a giant wad of cash that reeked of weed, but that's another story), but it wasn't a fun experience. But I find buying and selling later-model cars on any venue sucks. Really old obscure stuff, we're all the same oddballs so those tend to go smoother (bought both my Porsches off CL with no issues)

I bought an e34 on marketplace (for the engine) and had no issues. Piece of cake and I was able to look at the guy's profile and see he had pics of his family standing in front of his house on it, and I saw the car sitting off to the side so I knew it was likely an actual car and an actual person, which is a bit of peace of mind. 

I suspect i'm making CL out to be worse than it is and FB better than it is. I also suspect people who hate FB are doing the opposite. We all have our biases. 

nimblemotorsports
nimblemotorsports New Reader
5/3/19 11:17 p.m.
GCrites80s said:

I think one of the main problems with the whole thing is not that low-income individuals don't have $5 to sell a cheap car it's that they don't have a credit or debit card. I think it is somewhat unfair to them. Scammers all have credit cards though.

I am VERY leery of giving my credit card information to CL, talk about some place that most likely has no security at all.  If they took paypal, it would be so much better, but nope.

Dootz
Dootz New Reader
5/4/19 4:23 a.m.

In reply to John Welsh :

Dealers get overcharged because they're absurdly spammy and continually do stupid misleading things like posting only a payment number as the price of a vehicle instead of the total price OTD

Knurled.
Knurled. MegaDork
5/4/19 7:49 a.m.
CyberEric said:

Well, this doesn't look good. The ad was on facebook all of an hour and I got this message:

"Will pick it up today for 900.

And hrow some high end wine ontop"

The car is priced at $2,500. Those were his exact words. Not even a "hello." This is way worse than Craigslist.

"I'll take $3500 and you can keep the wine"

CyberEric
CyberEric HalfDork
5/4/19 11:33 a.m.

In reply to nimblemotorsports :

This is my guess as to why people aren’t posting on cl, not because they don’t want to pay or don’t gave credit cards.

CyberEric
CyberEric HalfDork
5/4/19 11:33 a.m.

In reply to Knurled. :

Bahaha!!!! Yes, that is genius!

Brian
Brian UltraDork
5/5/19 1:15 a.m.
Dootz said:

In reply to John Welsh :

Dealers get overcharged because they're absurdly spammy and continually do stupid misleading things like posting only a payment number as the price of a vehicle instead of the total price OTD

You can't always post an otd price.  

I'm a dealer and depending on where my customer is registering the car, the otd price will vary.

As to those saying $5 isn't alot.  It is when you go to renew the post every 2 days and they charge $5 each time.  That's $75 a month per car!  I can't afford that.  If it was $5 and free renewals for 30 days, that wouldn't be so bad.  Cl also picked a terrible time to do it.  The amount of inquiries on things for sale had just about dropped to 0 at the same time they started charging.

ProDarwin
ProDarwin UltimaDork
5/5/19 9:23 a.m.
Brian said:

You can't always post an otd price.  

I'm a dealer and depending on where my customer is registering the car, the otd price will vary.

Fine, but you can get close, and you can post potential deals & whatnot.  Posting a payment is incredibly misleading, because that can vary by an insane amount, and it makes filtering totally ineffective.  If I am searching for a $5k car, seeing cars with payments that are less than $5k has zero value.

 

Also, why the hell do you need to renew the ad every 2 days?

Brian
Brian UltraDork
5/5/19 9:36 a.m.
ProDarwin said:
Brian said:

You can't always post an otd price.  

I'm a dealer and depending on where my customer is registering the car, the otd price will vary.

Fine, but you can get close, and you can post potential deals & whatnot.  Posting a payment is incredibly misleading, because that can vary by an insane amount, and it makes filtering totally ineffective.  If I am searching for a $5k car, seeing cars with payments that are less than $5k has zero value.

 

Also, why the hell do you need to renew the ad every 2 days?

I agree with you on the posting of monthly payment or down payment for a price as very misleading.
if you renew an ad every 2 days (most frequently available) you show up as new when people sort by newest post.  

I renew

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