Craigslist is about to cost actual money to list a car

Not sure if we discussed this yet but R&T is reporting it's the real deal. $5 per listing apparently.

I'm a bit split on this.

Taking anything from free to pay per use is always a challenge as users tend to get a bit grumpy. It does however, look to be a lot cheaper than other options. Other than Facebook of course.

OTOH this will likely help with scam listings and possibly getting people to care about what they post when listing a car (down with the $1 and "testing the waters" posts!)

Thoughts?

It's been so long, I forget what I used to pay to put in ad in the local auto trader rag, but I'll wager it was more than five bucks.  I don't have a problem with it.

Is it going to be $5 with unlimited renewals?  Or $5 each time?  Are they going to change the duration of the ads?  

Looks like  need to get the old Suburban listed for sale this weekend.  

When?

Facebook is already killing them in this area. If they start charging it may just finish them off. 

I guess time will tell.

Huh.  I still see this:

In Portland:

I've found craigslist to be increasingly annoying. Recently it is just spam emails that I get, followed by 1-2 "Will you take a trade for my broken dirtbike?" responses. As a buyer, I've found it to be more and more just dealers spamming, or delusional people who think that their E36 M3 is worth more than E36 M3. 

Facebook markets has a LOT of annoying users as well, but I have been a lot more successful selling on there then I have on craigslist in the past two years. 

Just in time to catch all the sellers targeting IRS rebates.

crap. Im going to have to start using faceballs now I guess. 

Damn,  I fully support this, but seeing how many people use the facespace instead is disheartening :(

I can't find E36 M3 on facebook, ever.  Its insanely disorganized.

All the curbstoners and shady used car lots listing for sale by owner to get around the ad fee for dealers will be reduced. And without the plethora of free choices out there this might result in a smaller but vibrant and more useful marketplace for used cars, but in reality it will probably result in the gradual death of the Craigslist vehicle section. Or maybe the not so gradual; we'll see.

I've avoided Facebook so far but might have to set up a shell account in order to use the marketplace with this change. We'll see. It sucks so much more than Craigslist but everyone's on there.

Let Go and Offerup are other free choices that also suck so much more than Craigslist.

I hate to see this. I understand the reasoning, and in a perfect world it would work great, but in this world maybe not so much. Only time will tell.

I’m for it - weed out the knuckleheads.  

My son advertises as a chemistry tutor - $60/hour. Has 2 clients from it and pays $5 for his ads.   He’s happy with the investment. 

This is a heartbreaker! I love just cruising CL and seeing what people are posting. Now they will just leave the old cars to rot in the backyard.

Facebook is a horrible entity that I want as little  contact with as possible.

Dealers have been charged over on the dealer side of CL.  That is why you see so many dealers advertising on the Owner side of CL.  I'm happy to see it happen.  

I sell about 4 cars per year.  All listed on CL and I have never had any genuinely bad experiences with CL.  Sometimes the cars have even sold in hours.  To me, CL is still my first choice for listing.  $5 is a great value.  

However, I too fear this will make FB stronger and I generally dislike FB so I have never used their Marketplace.  

EDIT: wow, I should have just reposted what DCulberson wrote.  Our sentiments are the same.  

I started double listing everything on FB and CL... About 50/50 on whether it sells on FB vs CL. Cars and larger items seem to do better on CL, electronics and cheap junk better on FB. I don't mind paying $5 to list a car as long as renewals are included. It's worth it to weed out the spam and dissuade the buy-here-pay-here places from listing their junk as FSBO.

So, is it $5 per week? If you list it before the 15th, is it free for the remainder of the 7 days? 

I have been avoiding FB, even though it's the only access to anything more than the most rudimentary information on one of the autocross clubs that I belong to.

John Welsh said:
EDIT: wow, I should have just reposted what DCulberson wrote.  Our sentiments are the same.  

My brother from another mother!

FB marketplace seems to be more popular by me, NY metro. The search functions are abhorrent though.

In reply to dculberson :

Guilty of the "group think" mentality.  Maybe I need to socialize with others more often?   Naa! 

Good. $5 is insignificant in terms of buying and selling cars, and it will help weed out the idiots and/or chase them to FB where they have to use their actual names.

John Welsh said:

Dealers have been charged over on the dealer side of CL.  That is why you see so many dealers advertising on the Owner side of CL.  I'm happy to see it happen.  

I sell about 4 cars per year.  All listed on CL and I have never had any genuinely bad experiences with CL.  Sometimes the cars have even sold in hours.  To me, CL is still my first choice for listing.  $5 is a great value.  

However, I too fear this will make FB stronger and I generally dislike FB so I have never used their Marketplace.  

 

EDIT: wow, I should have just reposted what DCulberson wrote.  Our sentiments are the same.  

THIS.

Also, considering the number of people who don't use Facepalm, you need CL...FB is just terrible to use for searching anything, and outside of the marketplace is at this point only spam outrage bots and old people posting family pictures.

I stopped using CL much a while back. It was getting overcome with used car dealers, part strippers, etc. Plus the annoyance of varying ways you have to contact people, and having no idea if it's a legit person or not that you're buying from or selling to.

I pretty much just use FB these days:

- a lot fewer scammers

- a lot fewer dealer/chop-shop/etc listings

- buyer/seller has to at least go to trouble to make a profile, so better chance they are legit and not some scammer (plus you at least "know who they are" to some degree before meeting them if you review the profile). For instance, if I'm buying some wheels listed for an track car or something, I'll kind of glance at the profile and see if the person is actually into cars. 

- FB messaging is way more convenient than using the CL email system and or traditional SMS text, IMO. 

- yeah, the search leaves something to be desired, but I'm getting better at figuring out the algorithms and search terms the more I use it. 

I've sold and bought a ton of stuff on FB marketplace this year - more than I ever did on CL. In fact, to clear out some garage space I recently posted about 7-8 years worth of older GRM back-issues (ones I've read 20 times already) and someone is going to come give me a bit of money for them :)

Also the CL "post item, enter all this stuff, hit button, go check your email to confirm, etc" is a hassle. I posted about a dozen things on FB yeserday from my phone, and it took me about 5 minutes to do it. CL would have taken half an hour to do that, with lots of photos, etc. 

as to all the "I hate facebook because xxxx principles, too much junk posts, etc etc".....

I mean, not like you have to "be active" on FB to use it. You don't have to actually have friends on your profile, or post pics, or add much or any real personal information, or even read the "wall" posts or ads. Literally you can just create the most basic profile to allow you to use the functions like marketplace (or to check your local rallycross club page for cool pics of you driving last weekend), and just don't do all the other stuff. It's not that big a deal. 

The even better thing on FB is the "XXX for FS/FT/WTB" pages you can join. I'm on the North American Rally FS page, where people constantly post up good used rally tires for cheap, or other specialty parts in a focused market (stuff that would never make it onto CL for lack of a market). Have some random Porsche 924 part sitting in your garage? There's Porsche 924 Marketplace group on there with a couple thousand members, who are most likely to want your part. Way more convenient than the older-style BBS forums and such, IMO. 

YMMV.