Craiglist: First Impressions

I have shopped online for everything from textbooks to computer games for years, frequenting the likes of eBay, Half, Amazon, NewEgg, TigerDirect and other popular online retailers. I even maintain a fairly active Seller's account on eBay, a useful way to de-clutter my room by selling off stuff I do not need. However, to my chagrin, I have never tried out the much-discussed local marketplace website, Craigslist, at least not until recently. I am currently shopping for a different car, and many people recommend browsing Craigslist for their car listings. Craigslist is an interesting place with many unique tidbits about it that were easily noticeable upon my first few visits.

First off, people do not seem to know how to spell correctly on Craiglist. This is a little surprising for me and made me wonder if everyone listing cars were 12-year-olds. Not all listers take this approach, but the mentality seems to reek of "It's the Internet, who cares how I spell/misspell?" This is something often found on message boards discussing World of Warcraft and almost never seen on eBay or Amazon. I think it is probably due to Cragilist being a "quick list" place, less formal than a eBay or Half item listing. Still, I am trying to avoid items listed on Craigslist with too many misspellings and errors, just to be safe.

Scams and scammers are common all over the Internet, but a place like Craigslist seems especially vulnerable to such types. Of course, the owners of Craiglist understand this and have placed warnings and other things on the website to help consumers avoid such problems but I am still wary. Some things send off warning bells, like the when I followed the link to a guy's Photobucket account through a picture of a car he was selling, posted on Craigslist. The posting looked legit and he had listed the car for an extremely affordable price. However, on his photobucket, he had ten to twenty other cars and trucks he had taken pictures of at his house, presumably for sale on Craigslist as well. This set off a few warning bells in my head-how many private individuals (listed as such and not as a dealer on Craiglist)sell that many vehicles? I steered clear of that potential pitfall quickly and continued looking.

Listing information can be wonderful or extremely random and sparse. Some owners go out of their way to list as many details as possible about their car, while others basically just list "car for sale + price + phone number" and leave it at that. The only real competition for Craiglist that I am aware of is one started by the guys behind eBay, Kijiji, and while it has considerably less postings, its vehicle selling area contains way more info per car than Craigslist does.

Still, I like Craiglist. The sheer number of new entries on any given day keeps me busy and keeps things interesting. It may be a little more risky than other online reseller websites but I like the overall feel. It's basically a constantly updated version of the old Nickel Ads-style newspaper listings. Hopefully, I will find the vehicle I am looking for soon and also find some other swell deals on other items on Craigslist.