Problems with Craigslist: Bad Management and Staff
Let’s start off with the management and staff. I haven’t met them personally so this is simply one persons opinion formulated by his dealings with them. To me they seem to be a bunch of geeks and nerds who couldn’t get any attention or dates in High School and are now exacting their revenge on the rest of humanity through their little community called Craigslist. They won’t give you any assistance or guidelines in relation to posting but if you make a mistake or infraction, you’ll be banned for life. Their TOS sounds like a really good plan, unfortunately they only apply it when it’s convenient for them. The support forums are really a joke, for the simple reason that all the staff does is sit back and watch all the little people posting their problems on the forums, yet they wont get involved or post answers. Nope, they clearly state that the forums are for ‘Users to help other users’. So you really don’t know if the information your getting is right or wrong, and the staff won’t chime in with any help. They remind me of a cartoon of a maniacal mad scientist sitting back high atop a hillside castle looking down on the poor peasants and laughing maniacally at the crazy schemes that he’s cooking up to bring down upon them. They’ll get their revenge upon us normal people yet! When not staring at the computer monitors they probably sit around their cubicles playing with their Dungeons and Dragons dolls. Sorry, my mistake, they’re called ‘action figures’.
To make things worse, the Support Forums have a rating system built in. A way of bashing you over the head if they don’t like what you say. Any post that is made in the support forum has some little numbers next to it. These numbers represent rankings of what the ‘Community’ thinks of your post. The numbers will be green and with a plus sign if people like what you said, and will be RED with a minus sign if they don’t like what you said. The funny thing I have noticed is that only brown nosing comments get green numbers while other posts that are making suggestions for improvements get red numbers. If you post “I love Craigslist just as it is.” you’ll get a huge plus rating.
Craigslist doesn’t openly list information on how to get a hold of a real human, but if you do some really careful searching, you can find some contact information. If you contact them because you have a problem, they will either give you a cryptic response or not respond at all. I guess you could say that from their customer service you get exactly what you pay for, NOTHING!
They act like a click of small minded individuals who haven’t grown past their childhood problems and are still resentful of the world around them. I must blame both management and staff, because these problems seem systemic, and they carry through the entire organization (19 employees as I understand). As with any company on this planet, you have to judge them by their actions and their customer service, or lack of it.
Craigslist's Dirty Little Secrets Revealed 
Even when free (btw, free site does not equate to non-profit site) one might have some expectation of clarification and redress of issues, as to when perplexed by an item deletion for example..some avenue to explanation of why…..instead of pretending to have ‘help’ links which merely lead you to a form of ‘help” where a message board of often demented feral trolls who have no access to who ever deleted your item, or why, and ‘help’ you by making obtuse accusations or at best really useless at cross-purposes ‘help’ suggestions. All on the premise of it being a ‘user-driven site” Accordingly, I only list on it when I have nothing better to do… i do agree with you that a lot of people who get scammed were probably naive, though, that’s the case in anything. In short, the only ‘help’ they have is a user board. And it has never worked, not once, and how can it? So there is something off about anything where that is the only avenue to assistance.Best thing you can do with such an establishment, is just have low expectations and therefore limit or terminate your uses for it.
It’s true. You’re correct. I just went to the forum for help with an ad that was continuously being removed and I was greeted with insults, accusations about my account that happened on accident, all kinds of garbage.
You’re exactly right they act like a little clique of immature kids with no communication skills who just hate their jobs or something.
I agree. They act like kids. I just went for some legitimate help with why my ad was being flagged and removed and I got a nothing but rude unhelpful responses that eventually erupted into name calling and insults on their part.
It’s exactly like you said just a little “clique” of immature, unprofessional people.
Yes…the ‘Help’ board = a trolling cockheads club that is worse than useless, because you will always tend to be drawn into attempts to reason with the Harlequins and Mad Hatters…and, they are it. To my knowledge, there is no other avenue , no one else to ask, unless a CL mod interjects in the post, even they do not frankly seem to have access to case details.So, wtf.
If you want to get insulted for free just go to their help forums to try and see why your ad was flagged, after insulting you, next thing you know they have blocked your ip address.
Yeah, that sounds about right. But you know, there are people out there that actually enjoy being insulted and put down. Hmmm, how can I turn this into a money maker?! š
How does one get ahold of a real live staff person? Their faq help pages and phone system are so narrow, its very frustrating trying to find answers to my questions.
Namely, I’m very concerned about the security of emails being exchanged through the craigslist relay. I’m frankly terrified that personally identifying and compromising content may be stolen by hackers through the site. Millions of users work and family lives would be wrecked if their private personals ads and email reply communications were to be exposed. Do you know if the text content and attached files of emails that are bounced through Craiglist’s anonymizing relay are stored anywhere by CL? For how long? Are they accessible by CL employees? In a related note, how long are copies of deleted postings stored before being permanently deleted?
Thank you.
You want to do what….to …to contact CL?! ROFLMAO…… After 15 minutes of laughing my a$$ off I can now answer your question (I’m just having fun with you, all kidding aside) It is literally not possible to contact CL. They have made it that way on purpose. I’m sure that they have some contact for legal purposes, but for average people looking up to the Olympus of CL, fogetaboutit! They hide and obfuscate everything about themselves so that no one will be able to reach them. BUT They want to know EVERYTHING about you. All the other questions you asked I also cannot answer because it is NOT made publicly available. I can pretty much guarantee you that CL staff can see your emails and read them. I can’t tell you how long they are stored or what type of security measures they use. I would say to take care of your security yourself and DON’T rely on CL. Use fake info in every way you can. Only give our real information when you contact the other side DIRECTLY not going through the CL system. DO NOT post anything on CL that could possible come back to bite you in the A$$ or ruin your life. Only give out real details when you know you can somewhat trust the other side and use more secure channels than the CL system. Hope that helps.
If your account is being put on a hold. The best and fastest way to create an account, that is to delete the old one, and use a new email address to open a new one. It takes less than 5 minutes to achieve such a simple task. I have been using CL for over 6 years, never has a problem with my account. I even changed my email addresses and did what the system required and it worked out just fine.
fuck creating new accounts, to deal with deletions with no avenue to clarification..your post is a bit like those people who just got mugged at knife/gun point at an ATM, where some other troll comes along and tells them how strange that seems because they use that ATM for years and it never happened to them.
I have been selling most furniture, some bikes, and some electronic pieces in the past and Craigslist has helped me to earn nothing but fortune in the past 5 years. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Craigslist, it is I call “internet criminals” or “internet scammers” that are causing the reputation of the site itself. In the past 5 years, I generally spend at least 30 to 60 minutes every day to BUY and Sell my products. I have observed how Craigslist has improved the friendly usage of many features that would help users to use to increase the efficiency. And Believe me when I say it, Craigslist is the simplest, most friendly, local, protective site you will find among those giant online markets like Ebay, or Amazon, or Itsy. Craigslist is a web tool, it depends how smart users are to work with it. There are scammers everywhere, if we are well aware of their appearances and their approaches, just do not let them get in the way. Craigslist is FREE for users to use, how much more services do you expect the site to help when it is already free.
I agree with you on everything you said. I just wish more people had as positive an experience as you have had at CL.
That had always been my experience until I went to log in one day to try and list something and my log in didn’t work. I thought maybe I was using the wrong password or something so I clicked “forgot password” and received and email saying “we cannot fulfill your request to change your email as your account has been placed on hold.” What?! I am not a creeper? I do not phish….I have sold loads of items of the past years….so what happened? I have no way to find out and no way to fix it…I thought maybe it was a mistake or maybe a “time out” sort of thing, so I waited and tried a month later with the same results.
To say I am disenfranchised is putting it mildly…
Unfortunately the internet has become a place where companies and people can give you the cold shoulder at will and not give a crap about it. It is common place for companies large and small to block you, delete your account, not pay you what they owe you, or whatever, and give you NO response to your queries when this happens. People are becoming more distant and less respectful of each other as the internet takes hold of more and more parts of society, sad to say.
My account has been ‘placed on hold” , there was no notification, I found out only when making my occasional sign-in, only one ad for bicycles on it, and was not any kind of breach of TOS that I’m aware of, of course as usual with CL there is no reason or explanation, even the ‘contact us’ does nothing except get you sent a useless generic form response suggesting you post on forum. Not even sure if you can post on the forum when you are blocked from signing in anyway. I’m wary of even trying to post on the forum for help, too many freaks who live there get up heavy in your face, and how the fcku can people who did not even suspend the account know why it was suspended, all they can do is guess.
If CL cares to , they can respond, there is no other way for me to get any help unfreezing the account. Thankfully I do not rely on it that much.
This is quite common and you are correct about all that you said. I would suggest that you wait a little while and see if it’s only a soft hold and if the account becomes free again shortly. If not then I suggest creating a new account with all new info if you really want to use CL.
yeah, it was a ‘soft hold”…so since then, they can soft shove-it, frankly…some FWIT on the ‘help’ forum tells me that my claims of an account suspension were a false-claim..his reason being that he could not find a thread there by me about it. You know, the whole shebang, some people may find some kind of merit in it, me, I don’t need it.
I just want to know why my 4 posts have reached their limit, and I cant update. And I see my posts (brand new posts), show up on page 7. Yet…… some loud mouthed, all CAPS idiot, can post 5 or 6 obnoxious posts…. all on page 1 ! anybody have info on who’s palm we have to grease on craigslist staff?
I just want work, and a level playing field. ( To the staff at craigslist, let me kmow how much you need, I’ll pay it)
Some advertisers are way breaking the rules, flooding the pages with repeat ads, so I know it works for some. Just please include me, and others who play by the rules, and get frustrated seeing the ad pages hijacked by the few, while we play by the rules. $100 bucks get me on page one after I submit? Who do I send money to? any response from craigslist staff would surely be appreciated.
fairness, is all I ask. and if protocol requires me to hand over money…… so it be,
Thanks,
Butch
It’s difficult to understand completely what you are trying to say but I think I got it. The reason your posts are showing up on page seven is probably that you are changing or editing a post and so it puts it back where it had fallen to instead of putting it on page one. That trick of modifying posts to get them to the top of the list went out years ago and doesn’t work any more. As far as reaching a limit, that is because you can only repost the same post so many times. You need to create new unique posts or they will be treated as old posts and not allowed to go through. This is done to prevent spamming by simply renewing old posts. There is no fairness in the system. There are many ways to break the rules and have your posts appear on page one and I cover that in the members section of my website. While you and I know that the same people may be posting the same ads (or similar ads) and flooding the pages at Craigslist, the system doesn’t know that because it is being fooled to believe that these are different people with different posts and there is NO human supervision of ads.
In the past 4 years of selling on Craigslist, not only I have fallen in love with the site, I have also been pleased with the money that is made by selling furniture.
My ad was flagged twice in the past 4 years, it might be due to Errors of the System, but you know we all have to be patient and grateful because even humans makes mistakes, why is the we are not allowing man-made computer systems make mistakes too.
I am on Craigslist almost every day and I confidently have become the expert of how to advertise and how to market your stuff in order for them to be sold. It is so much FUN to sell on Craigslist. And there are few a jerks and bitches out there. Hey, everywhere you go, there are always those kind of folks.
After all, we all bear the responsibilities of making this world we live in a better place to live.
Nothing brilliant about a loser that spends 6 hour a day posting all over the web promoting a flagger group that never existed.
If it was a one man hoax the guy was brilliant.. amazing one man caused so much mayhem all over CL. I commend him.
I spit my drink all over my computer monitor when I read the bull the chump wrote in the other reply. Its Complete BS. Google three words to find out more. “Raleigh Boyz Hoax”
I got their attention…I formed a big flag club and took out many R&R boards…we never mess with income post..R&R is the losers playground and when their boards vanished they whined to CL,
CL got so many complaints about the raleigh boyz the staff made a few comments about us on one of their blogs.