Craigslist is now absolutely, positively, useless

Was just looking on my local CL to see what was out there and to check pricing on a few vehicles. It seems that now they've removed the ability to flag the local dealers spam ads. Now there is only a "prohibited" button to flag people selling illegal stuff I guess. Now all of the local car lots can just put a list of every car make at the bottom of their ad so now it shows up in every search. Looking for a first gen toyota highlander? You're going to have to sift through dozens of dodge chargers and chevy impala ads to find one. Total crap.

What is the next big thing in local free ads? kijiji? something I haven't heard of yet? Tired of CL spammers and scammers.

I've been of that opinion before this.

What's worse is the lack of e-mail or phone number contacts for the freaking CL ads. CL should not allow the ad to be listed or posted without one in the first place

Prohibited is for spam as well.

Click the "owner only" option to skip all the dealer ads. Who wants to pay more to deal with a sleazy used car salesman anyway.

In reply to bgkast:

Dealer ads show up there too. Owner only is the only thing I use and you'll still have to sift through a ton of dealers.

Flagging them hasn't done anything anyway for quite a while, so IMO nothing has really changed.

I have found myself using the -XXX more and more on craigslist. It sucks, and takes a long time, but eventually weeds out all the crap. If I want to check NSX prices I will type "NSX -civic -integra -prelude -m3" into the search bar. From then I refine as needed.

The local car classifieds forum here prohibits commercial advertising and requires user accounts so that the banhammer can be brought to bear on keyword spammers and other lowlifes.

I thought I read somewhere that CL was going to charge car dealers $5 per ad. At least temporarily that seemed to cut down on the dealer ad spam, but now it is back?

Basil Exposition wrote: I thought I read somewhere that CL was going to charge car dealers $5 per ad. At least temporarily that seemed to cut down on the dealer ad spam, but now it is back?

That would only work if the dealers were posting as dealers. If no one is watching, i.e. no one is marking the ads as prohibited, then you'll get junk like has been described. Think of it as cleaning up after people. Do it enough and some people will catch on, but expect that not everybody will.

CL is also difficult to search, because most of the posts/ads are incomplete, I hate texting,calling, and emailing a person that will not properly post what they have. It is a waste of time. It always seems that people miss putting Auto or Manual, or put both...

When was craigslist not useless?

"Just throwing this up here to see what I can get. I have a price in mind, so no lowballs, must sell by noon TODAY or its getting scrapped, phone calls only, no texts, or emails, leave a message since I work 80 hours/week, no Sunday calls. Trades possible, tell me what you have. (Tags run longer than the ad, web sourced photo, no contact info)".

bravenrace wrote: Flagging them hasn't done anything anyway for quite a while, so IMO nothing has really changed.

I see a fair number of ads here that look dodgy in my RSS summary, and when I get there the posting "has been flagged for removal", so apparently I'm not the only one flagging, and there is eventually an action.

Of course, we also get every so often someone frothing at the mouth and spending the first paragraph of their ad demanding to know why people keep flagging it, but it still ends in 4,000 keywords... But that's not often enough to impact usage.

I'm hopeful that it encourages flagging if there's no need to choose a flag category.

Craigslist has become increasingly frustrating and difficult to use, but I can't call it "useless" yet. The bottom line is that it's the go-to place for people selling cheap cars and stuff. Where else are you going to look for sub-$1000 beaters? Autotrader? eBay? Not likely, nobody wants to pay $60 to sell a $1000 car. So, like it or not, if you want to find cheap stuff, you have to deal with the idiots on Craigslist.

One of the really annoying things about CL is their "get off my lawn" approach to certain use cases. Searching it with their own tools is basically useless, third party tools are shut out on a regular basis, as are third party RSS aggregators.

The latter is especially annoying and most likely cost me a very well priced 911 SC.

I really don't what most of you are talking about. I find very few, if any, Dealer ads in the Owners area, and I search car makes in the 'right hand' field and use the 'Years' fields all the time. I never put an email or a phone number in any of my ads because they give you a secure anonymous email to get a hold of me without giving spambots my email or phone number. What's not to like about that.

I just typed 'mustang' into the search field on the far right and got 100 ads of only mustangs. Now if you use the search field on the far left, you will get a bunch of other crap 'mustang' in the text.

In reply to RossD:

Its not nearly as bad in smaller cities, Houston has a ton of buy here, pay here lots and even more small-time car lots that post ads posing as individuals, or simply don't care about spamming up the FSBO section, and re-posting their ads every day or even twice a day.

I frequently use the "title only" search option, if trying to filter out heavily tagged unrelated ads. The biggest problem I have is dealers who not only post in the 'by owner' section, but do so 15+ times per day for the same vehicle that happens to be the make/model I'm searching.

It has crossed my mind to make a CL ad that looks somewhat official (like maybe from CL) that educates and informs buyers that Dealer Ads in the FSBO section are a violation of CL policy. The ad should also warn the buyer that the seller is likely underhanded and deceptive on other practices as well. It may not be safe to meet up with the seller and the car is likely not in the condition stated.

I loved looking for 14" wheels for the MR2 and pulling ads with keyword vomit including GTR, K20, turbo, stanced, hellaflush...

I would argue that it's probably worth every penny that you pay for it.

I've only recently noticed this. Atlanta seems incredibly bad.

Can I ask a question? Why do people put wheels, tires, truck toppers and other parts in teh Cars and Trucks for sale section?

Man that's irritating!