When did Craigslist jump the shark?

I just wish people would actually respond to their Craigslist ads in a timely manner. I've used it once to find the place I've moving out of after six months and still using it for hopefully my third place.

 

CL seems to pride itself on the fact that it only has 28 or so employees. Maybe these wonderful altruists could, you know, hire a few more folks to police the site a little bit? I think they can afford it.

 

I've done fairly well buying, selling and giving things away. But when I advertised for a roommate, I got so many variations of the "I am from out of the country and I want to give you two years rent in advance" scheme it was scary.

I finally started responded with "please send me your mom's e-mail address. I'd like to see if she knows what you're doing." Oddly, no one followed up.

But after sorting through all the spam, I did find a roommate.

 

I haven't used Craigslist for apartment hunting, but I did use it for job searching. I applied for a part-time position advertised there, but when I got a reply to my e-mail with resume and cover letter, there were several red flags that just screamed "scam" to me. That's not even counting the ones that screamed scam just from the text of the ads themselves.

I think the whole Craigslist murder case is going to be a major drag on Craigslist's reputation. I'd definitely think twice about using Craigslist now.

 

I have two rules for searching for jobs and apartments on Craiglist.

- For apartments, there has to be a phone number listed. I can deal without a picture if there's an address, and I can deal with a picture if there's no address. But there always has to be a phone number.

- For jobs, there has to be verifying information. If a company is hiring and wants you to send your app via email, you better be able to verify that the company exists, that they have a website, that there is an opening available, etc. Ideally, they link you to an application process through their site or through their corporate site. Or something. I stay away from random jobs that just say, "give us your info and we'll take it from there."

 

See, I hate phone calls on stuff like that. It seems like so much more of a commitment. What I do is find one with pics AND address, then use google street view or drive past and make sure they match.

Even that isn't foolproof, as I learned.

 

T

The same thing happened to a buddy of mine a couple years ago, unfortunately he got taken by the scam. His parents had asked him to sell their old piano for them on craigslist, so he put the offer up asking $1000 for it. He got a reply from an interested party, and after a few emails they agreed on the sale price. However, when the guy mailed my friend the check it was for $3000 instead of $1000. My buddy called the guy and he got some story about the guy's secretary filling out the check incorrectly, and he asked my friend to deposit the check and then wire the remaining $2000 to him via western union. Unfortunately my buddy fell for it and to this day I will never forget how upset he was when the check bounced 2 or 3 days later.

 

I've tried to sell a few things on Craigslist. But between the spam and the total unreliability of the supposedly legitimate customers -- one woman emailed to say she'd buy the TV I was selling and would pick it up that evening, then wrote again 30 minutes later to tell me she already bought another one, but So-rry! -- I've determined it's a total clusterfuck.

During it all, I couldn't stop thinking: The death of the newspaper advertising business was exacerbated by, to some degree, THAT piece of shit Web site?!?

 

So THAT explains why I'm feeling such unnatural glee over Craigslist's shark jumping.

 

The next time I get on CL will be the first. But after the missus got laid off, she used it extensively in the job hunt and wound up finding and landing her current job through it. She said the spam could be aggravating but not paralyzing, and you could spot it from a mile off.

 

Some of it, yes. But some of it, no.

 

I completely agree with you, and to this day I still don't understand how my buddy fell for the scam. I guess he just had a tendency to trust people too much...