The problem with Craigslist
For work, I post listings to Craigslist. Over the last two months, any post that I post gets flagged and taken down in about an hour. I make sure every post I put up is different, I post with a variety of different headlines, and no matter what I do, I refresh in about an hour and I see that the status bar for that listing has gone from green (active) to red (flagged/deleted). I made sure to follow Craigslist and federal guidelines, but nothing helps.So far I've had one post stay alive long enough to make it off the front page of results. Within 24 hours of being online, that post got me 4 calls/emails and 1 application, so it drives me to keep trying, but I can't seem to replicate that posting's success. I emailed Craiglist and they haven't responded.
Yet at the same time, somehow miscategorized spam posts like "Yòu can Öwn a home" go unflagged. Not to sound paranoid, but it would seem that someone is out to get me and the unfortunate thing is that if anyone flags anything, it just gets taken right down so there's not much I can do except hoping that next time I put a post online, my nemesis is on lunch.
edit: Tried with 5 more listings. All flagged and deleted. Updated image.
edit2: I'm up to 20 posts in the past 60 days that don't last an hour.
January 28, 2010 at 7:50 PM
I have also experienced that problem. I'm sure it is other people who are trying to rent out their room and so eliminating the competition.
Sidestory: Michelle and I went to some Furniture Outlet store and just to keep this short, let's just say they screwed up some stuff and our fridge didn't fit, yadayadayada. They were 100% unapologetic and made us pay extra shipping to get something that would fit (even though he assured us the sizes were standard without measuring the space). I was PISSED.
Fast-forward to later when I'm selling the old fridge and dishwasher and randomly my posts start getting flagged on CL! Maybe I too am being paranoid, but I think it was their used department that did it since they list like ten items a day on CL. Result: for like two weeks I flagged everything posted by them as spam (I also flagged it at home since they need more than one IP address to make it take). Yes, not very ethical, so I won't try to justify it. Did I mention I was pissed at them though??
Anyway, a solution is needed for each side of the problem. Let's talk offline about it. top
January 28, 2010 at 7:50 PM
I hope that comment didn't just get on there like 18billion times. I had immense troubles getting it to take at all. top
January 28, 2010 at 9:24 PM
Trying to post multiple comments from the same IP? Sorry "Joel", I think I have to flag this as spam.
My current theory is if they think your account is a spam account (because lame people flag it too much), then they let your posts be up for a certain amount of time before autoremoving them. top