Craigslist.com is today considered the world’s largest online classified ad service, created by Craig Newmark in 1995 on a simple promise – free online classified ads – and accidentally discovered a powerful niche. Over the years Craigslist has proven to be a very successful tool in regards to free classifieds and many have used it to find employees, find jobs, buy and sell everything or even to find a date.
While, one can buy and sell almost everything on craigslist.com, this highly trafficked website is today lacking an appeal owing to its very basic site design. The problem is that the website is too open source and offers a design that has no aesthetic appeal.
However the problems do not end here. The website is filled with spam and despite the organisation trying out all measures all seem in vain. While people might argue that why complain because it’s a free service anyway, I genuinely feel that spamming is an inexcusable practice – free or otherwise. I actually tried a couple of other free classifieds listing websites and my experience was better than my experience with craigslist.com. While I received many replies to my listing on craigslist.com, most of them were spam. The newer free classifieds listing websites have real thought-out website designs and offer an overall classier experience, which is where Craig’s List is missing out on.
When one posts a classified ad on the website, the only security measure is verifying the person’s email. Once you click on the link provided in the email, the ad is live. No wonder it’s so easy for scammers to operate. Unfortunately, because of the huge number of ads being posted every minute it is impossible for them to police each of the bulletin boards. So they have this feature where users can ‘flag’ inappropriate posts. Once flagged as inappropriate, when a new user tries to read it, they get a message saying it’s been flagged by other users. I really wonder, why Craigslist didn’t work on something simpler like, a flagged ad simply didn’t appear in the listings at all once somebody flags it.
Having said that, I liked the fact that craigslist.com offers each poster an anonymous temporary email address which allows users to advertise anonymously without worrying about their email address being attacked by spammers.
CRAIGSLIST FOR VACATION RENTALS:
Although the website has a quite a number of vacation rental classified ads, I would not recommend owners to post their property details here. Over the years numerous rental scams have come to light wherein scamsters copied the property details posted by genuine owners on craigslist.com and posted them again on the site. For travelers too, this is not a very safe platform to plan your vacation accommodation. The website itself says: “Deal locally with folks you can meet in person,” and “Never wire funds via Western Union, MoneyGram or any other wire service – anyone who asks you to do so is a scammer.”
This goes to show that Craig’s List is not yet ready for the vacation rental segment. Owners might post their properties or travelers might post their requirements on the website, but it’s nothing short of exposing yourself, your property and your money to scamsters.
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