Skip to main content

A Guide to Craigslist Etiquette


In a world where the amount of trash we generate and the cost of living keep going up, while wages and employment opportunities don't, Craigslist is a God send. 

One of the perks of living in Vermont is that we have a healthy Craigslist market, with a relatively low scam rate.  Sure, I get stood up occasionally, but almost all of the time, if I can actually meet up with someone to make a deal, everything is on the up-and-up.  I think this comes from a long tradition of bartering in a state where the climate is rough, and most of it is remote.

In the interest of keeping this market healthy, I thought I would provide a few of my rules and expectations when it comes to buying and selling on Craigslist.

Always


  • Deals are cash, and in person
  • At an agreed upon meeting location. Must be in a public place unless both parties are comfortable with a house meeting.

As a buyer


  • Only talk to local sellers. 
  • Expect to pay with cash, unless the deal is a barter/trade.
  • Expect to do most of the driving, if not all of it.  If the seller offers to meet you somewhere closer, they are doing you a favor.
  • Be honest about how serious you are, and when you can make an appearance.  Don't call at the last minute and cancel/try to reschedule.
  • Call/text the seller again when you are leaving to meet them.
  • Don't ever assume items will be held for you (but you can ask)
  • If the item is sold before you can schedule a meeting, fair's fair.
  • Know the market value of what you are trying to buy.  If the asking price is significantly below this value, it is at least unbecoming, and at worst, rude, to attempt to negotiate the price even lower.


As a seller

  • Only talk to local buyers.
  • Be honest about the condition of an item.  If you don't know something, say that.
  • Ask a fair price.  Set an appointment with a potential buyer, and don't sell it to someone else before the meeting.
  • Answer contacts in the order they came - first come, first serve. 
  • Clearly communicate your expectations about how a deal will commence.
  • Stay open and transparent with all buyers. Lying or hiding something will only lead to a sour deal.
It is okay to tell someone "well, someone's coming to look at it tonight at 7pm... if it's still available after that, I'll let you know."  If you do, keep track, and follow up.  It's NOT okay to do this: "someone is coming to look at it tonight at 7pm, but if you get here first, I'll sell it to you."

If in doubt, always stay true to your word.  
If you get into a jam, contact all the involved parties and tell them what is happening.


The bottom line is, don't piss off your buyer or seller.  There are of course situations where people are crazy and it's unavoidable, but... do unto others.  If we all work to keep the market fair, it will stay healthy.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reaper, Linux, and the Behringer X-Air - Complete Studio Solution, Part 1

Introduction and Rationale This is part one of a major effort to document my experiences with recreating my home studio, entirely using Linux.  Without getting into too many of the specifics, a few months ago I decided that I was unhappy with Windows' shenanigans - to the point that I was ready to make a serious attempt to leave it behind.  For most in this situation, the obvious choice is to switch to Mac OS.  With its proven track record, support, and options for multimedia production, it is naturally the first alternative to consider if your goal is to simply use something other than Windows. For me the choice was not so simple. I despise Mac OS and, in general, the goals and philosophies put forth by Apple in an effort to ostensibly provide users with an "easy" working environment.  It does not help that I have also failed to find any aspect of the Mac OS UI intuitive, but I realize that this is a subjective matter. With my IT background and user-control* f...
Post a Comment
Read more

An Alternative Take on AI Doom and Gloom

 I've purposely held my tongue until now on commenting about "AI" (or, more specifically as has come to be known, GAN or Generative Adversarial Networks).  It seems like it is very in-style to complain about how it has made a real mess of things, it is displacing jobs, the product it creates lacks soul, it's going to get smart and kill us all, etc. etc.  But I'm not here to do any of that. Rather I am going to remind everyone of how amazing a phenomenon it is to watch a disruptive technology becoming democratized From the time of its (seeming) introduction to the public at large, around November of 2022, to late 2023, the growth and adoption rate has been nothing short of explosive. It features the fastest adoption rate of any new technology ever, by a broad margin.  To give a reference, the adoption rate for AI image and text generation, real-world uses, in just 12 months is comparable to all of that of the another disruptive technology, the World Wide Web, takin...
Post a Comment
Read more

RANT TIME: Why do replies to a message I sent go to my spam folder?

Despite what one would think/hope, sending a message to a given address does not inherently give Google a high confidence that a reply from this address is expected (and, for example, that it should bypass spam checks). I have confirmed with Google's tech support that there is no way to automatically have this happen. The user can do the following: 1. Add the address to your contacts list in Gmail. 2. Check spam folder for replies, and mark it as "not spam" if something ends up there, which should influence the fate of future replies received. I can also approve an address at the domain level, i.e. if it is a big vendor or similar. I've had to do this with several of our Chinese vendors. I regularly ask engineering and purchasing to give me a list of the supplies we deal with, so I can approve them as a preventative measure. For what it's worth, all of the false positive instances of reply -> spam we have experienced have involved the sender's email server ...
Post a Comment
Read more