I get that. You don’t want non serious buyers wasting your time, but the implication is that if I know where “they” live then that gives me the opportunity to burglarize them, kidnap them, or kill their kids.
If that is the fear, then anyone who lives on or near a public street should be equally concerned because they are exposing those activities to anyone in the whole world or even someone who walks up to the front door pretending to solicit or ask for directions.
This. People just click and send the default “Is this still available?” message. When I put something up for sale on Facebook Marketplace last month, with French-only description, this default question was usually in French, sometimes in English, and once in Spanish – depending on which language the person was using on Facebook. It’s just laziness.
Some buyers are wise enough to know that a typical seller will get this default message 60 times, so they make an effort to write an actual message to stand out. Which, to me as a seller, is a hint that they probably took the time to read the description, or at least that they’re not mass-clicking on 17 similar items at once.
One thing I’ve heard about with cars is that sometimes crooks browse CL looking for cars with desirable stuff, like nice wheels, screens in headrests, etc. They want the address so they know where the car is to steal from it. Certainly they could just drive around random neighborhoods and peek in the cars they see, but CL postings allow them to browse from the convenience of their couch.
Some buyers just come across as sketchy individuals perhaps erroneously but that’s enough to say nope! next!
On FB marketplace you can at least view their profile. I sold to a guy who was pro Trump on his fb page but very polite and forthcoming as a buyer. Im pretty sure he also looked up mine and saw my anti trump links. Ntl a sale was made he bought my kids loft bed and came in the house to help disassemble it. He offered an extra fifty for it after we agreed to a reduced price and said it was worth it and we seemed like nice people. Lol. You too dude.
Now the pushy dude who wanted my used car made demands on me to take down the ad and give him my address as he was ready with a truck struck a nerve and I blew him off.
I don’t really care about the “is it still available”, because yeah, that’s about the equivalent of “hello”. It’s the people asking questions that are right in the ad that bug me.
Most of my Craigslist experience is for renting:
2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment, available August 1, $1000/month
Most people will then ask, how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, when is it available, and what’s the rent.
I feel like if I have to repeat all of this anyway, I may as well just put “thingy” as the title in my ad.
Same when I sold a car. “How many miles” in the ad, “What color is it” did you see the pictures? “What’s your asking price” in the ad, “What year is it” in the ad…
The thing that bugs me the most when posting things on CL is people who send low ball offers without even seeing the thing.
So if you’re too lazy to take down the ad after it sold, then what? This is why this question is asked.
I need a used computer monitor, and just sent out 3 emails asking if monitors were still available, saying I’m interested, and that I can pick it up today.
Someone just responded by saying, “you can get it tomorrow.”
Full text of the email. It’s not just buyers who don’t know how this process works.
Things sell crazy fast or never around me. I saw an ad for a 4 wheeler an hour old and texted the seller requesting a time to look at it. He responded that it was already sold.
I actually got a call moments after posting a car for sale: “You will take a iPhone 13 fresh in its box for the car.”
You read that right, it was not phrased as a question.
The next sentence was : “The box also contains your daughter’s left pinky finger. If you won’t trade, we can keep offering you different boxes.”
OK, that’s probably a fair use of the term “firm,” but I typically just skip over any ads that list a “firm” price, because 9 times out of 10 (yours excepted), they have seriously overvalued what they are selling. The other day, I found a particular lens – one I already own and am not interested in buying – but a used version selling for $1200 firm on Facebook. The thing is like $1400 new. Sure enough, looking on eBay, the used prices for this lens were closer to $800-$900. I see stuff like this all the time to the point where if a buyer says “firm” I assume it’s overpriced. (And I typically give asking price.)
I just went through this with some local shrewd buyer who insisted on offering $25 for a $30 garden tool that is worth nearly $60. I kept saying “No, the price is $30.” So he finally says “Well, when you can’t sell it for that, get back to me.” Fat chance.
On small dollar items there’s not much room for negotiation so I usually price it about $10 over my goal. That gets the low ballers into my price range.
For me the goal is to clear clutter and not necessarily to make money. So the big furniture items I needed gone were drastically reduced within days and sold.
Sold our 74 VW transport van on marketplace. Full price! They never dickered or hesitated. Later folks told us we could’ve asked much more. Could’ve but it met our price goal of what we paid and put into it and the years of fun we used it. New family is enjoying it now.