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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

And speaking of Craigslist...

Is it just me, or are the rest of you as sick as I am of the same overposted dealer ads on Craigslist that start "New Mies Inspired..." or "New Eames style..." or "New Egg Chair..." or "Eiffel Wire Base Chairs...Many Colors"--most in screaming caps?

They're taking over the mid-century listings, yet I'm afraid to filter out all dealer ads, for fear I'll miss something great at an antique mall. If they weren't flooding CL with their ads and would take down old listings when they put up new ones, I might not find them as distasteful, but every page is plastered with them, and I think we've all simply accepted them as an annoyance we can't do anything about.

Since there are hundreds of these ads posted in every major city, it's pretty obvious that they are using some sort of "automated posting device," which is prohibited in CL's Terms of Use, so I think we would be entirely justified in banding together and flagging every single one of them every single day till the dealer decides that advertising on CL is ineffective.

Trust me, I'm usually not a flagger. Typically, I'm a very laid back, "live and let live" sort of person, but this has become my pet peeve, mainly because the clutter makes searching for real mid-century pieces very tedious. I was looking for a chair today, and out of 100 listings on one page, only 35 were legitimate local ads...and the rest were the type I'm describing  here.

Am I overreacting, or is some good, old-fashioned solidarity in order here?

4 comments:

  1. I completely agree.
    Craigslist isn't as popular or well used as it is in the states but I still find the same thing with ebay.

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  2. I'm in total agreement with you about Craigslist. I appreciate being able to list items for sale with no associated fees, but, I know my listings get "lost in the shuffle" with all of the dealer postings. It's interesting how many people in my area post complaints on Craigslist about all of the dealer postings and recommend flagging them.

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  3. I've contacted Craigslist about the problem, and all I got back was an auto-generated list of links to their TOS and help pages. They're not going to do anything about it, so unless users flag the listings and get them taken down every day, they're not going anywhere.

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  4. Completely agree! It's so aggravating. I also cannot stand dealers that post in the "for sale by owner" category.

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