Click here to see all the ads this spammer is dropping in the Furniture By Owner section. Dealers like this have an entire section dedicated to them Because they were overloading the casual sellers and making craigslist useless. Please take a moment to Flag all this spammer's ads. It shouldn't take long and the more time this business gets flagged the easier it will be to flag the ads off. Flags are cumulative and never go away, but I bet if we make it difficult enough for this guy to keep ads up he'll go away!
Thanks so much in advance.
Ugghh, how I hate those asses. They make it such a bloody chore to wade through their mess. There's also a lot of appliance ones where I live as well. There'll be literally a page of nothing but the same ad posted 30 times!!
ReplyDeleteOh gosh, this must be nationwide. They do this in Nashville too - I'm talking hundreds of ads every day in all kinds of categories. I finally got tired of flagging them. I contacted CL with no response...but I didn't figure there would be. They must have a computer program that somehow posts those ads? I emailed one of the ads one time, telling them that they're not winning any customers by completely annoying people to death. Never got any responses out of them either!
ReplyDeleteHi Eartha.
DeleteI'm wondering if you are clicking on the "By Owner" button at the top of the page after searching for your keyword. If not you are getting the results from both the deales and owners.
Anyway, did you see THIS?
http://nashville.craigslist.org/fuo/3926812816.html
Thank you for telling me how to do this. I now make it a point to mark as spam every one that I come across when looking for private sellers.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your point regarding the mattress dealers. They are obnoxious with the overposting and I flag them when they do it in the fsbo category. However, there seems to be a gray area in the definition of "dealer." I noticed you use the term "casual" seller. There are a lot of sellers who post in the fsbo category who buy and sell enough to be considered "dealers". (you and I included) I don't bother flagging them because I judge it unobtrusive to other sellers, unless they also obnoxiously over post. ("casual" sellers who list 20 different dishes in 20 different ads, etc.)
ReplyDeleteOne solution I have is to "quarantine" all mattress sellers to their own category. Even when they post in the "dealer" category, they spoil it for other reasonable dealers. Or, ban All mattress sales on CL! Who buys a used mattress anyway?
Oh, and sorry! I may have flagged your Jolly roger plea listing for not being posted in rants and raves:)
Yeah, it's not that they aren't following "the letter of the law" that drives me to a posting like this...and truth be told, I expected / expect a little backlash...but the serious mass posting EVERY DAY, it's just too much. I don't mind seeing a miscatagorized ad here and there. That's just part and parcel for craigslist.
DeleteAnd I do believe "Dealer" is the wrong term for c-list to use in any category except auto sales, where I believe it originated. It should be "Business"...in my humble opinion.
As for flagging my Jolly Roger...no big deal, it should be flagged. I don't mind. Does anybody even read the rants and raves? Last time I checked in it was all racist crap about president Obama. Not my cup o tea.
Everybody -
ReplyDeleteIf you don't already do so, please be sure to click the button at the top left of the craigslist page that says "by owner" after completing your term search.
This will greatly reduce the number of business ads that you will have to sift through. Your results will still be peppered by a few unscrupulous businesses but it will be merely annoying as apposed to crippling!
I honestly don't know how these people get away with this. We finally quit posting anything on CL altogether, because we'd only post once every week or two...and always take down our old ads...and CL was disallowing our posts, saying they were too similar, even though they were completely different items with different pictures and different titles and descriptions. Go figure. I flagged every one of his posts, but I doubt it will help. He's found a way around being detected by CL, and he doesn't care who he inconveniences.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, we make more sales as a result of our Facebook page than we ever did from CL, so it turned out fine for us. Maybe if more of us would quit using CL, they'd get the message.
Hi Dana.
DeleteCraigslist keeps changing it's "monitoring" algorithms. Used to be I couldn't post two vaguely similar ads, like what you were discribing, without the mighty hand of C-list wagging it's finger at me. Now...they don't seem to care about that anymore. Then it was how fast you were posting ads. I couldn't post more than one ad about every three minutes or they'd be Ghosted, meaning that the ad would show up on your account as live but it would never show up on the list for others to see it. Now...I'm not sure what they are doing to keep people from overposting since I know I can post the same exact ad twice and within just moments of each other, but I do know they still have some sort of Ghosting algorithm up and running because I still occasionally run afoul of it. I've learned to double check my ads before just assuming they are out there!
One more item of interest concerning flagging - While craigslist never reveals any of it's secrets concerning so, in my experience of trying to flag off dealers who overpost in the wrong section I've found that we all get One flag per day / per ad. I find it very gratifying to come back daily, flag an ad and then Refresh the browser to find that My flag took the ad down!
ReplyDelete