Selling on Craigslist

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Are you selling on Craigslist? I am. I have been selling on Craigslist for the last 8 years.

To be fair, I’ve only sold items….not any business opportunity.

It started after I bought my home in Bella Vista, AR in 2001. It came with these white wicker wall shelves in each bathroom. Sorry. Down they came and on to Craigslist they went! They fit some decors – not mine. They can be sprayed any color but I prefer to use them if I had a Florida room in Florida – just sayin’.

From there it encompassed corner shelves, microwave cart, breadmaker (sent that all the way to Oregon), chairs, buffet, china cabinet, Halloween, Fall, & Easter lighted Villages, Parrots, Cocketiels, Finches and cages of all sizes.

There’s a lot more…some items even got into the Society section of our local newspaper. They were 4 colorful plastic Adirondack chairs…this family bought for use in their huge yard…especially family gatherings. And those chairs made the Sunday paper. Oh, and so did the family….

I’ve met the most interesting people selling on Craigslist. People that volunteer at a horse ranch in Pea Ridge (of Civil War fame), a single mom managing acreage and a full time job, sets of dishes to young couples that needed to add to their identical set, a wing chair to a young lady that is going to learn to upholster, and on and on and on.

This year my account was hacked. I started getting e-mails regarding some item #….clicked on it and there was a listing for some sort of ATV. I reported it as spam…moved it to spam and got rid of it. It happened again…this time it was a John Deere tractor. Not my listing.

As it turned out, the item #’s were mine – but the items had been changed along with descriptions and prices. I had 32 items listed….and 32 hacked!

I figured out how the did it ….. I had had a couple responses to a couple of my listings with inquiries on the item number only….not the item itself. I looked up the number and responded back regarding what ever item it was. They tied my e-mail to my account. Is that scummy or what?

Since my move took me 2 months …. I just deleted all listings and any responses I sent to spam. I reported each listing/response to abuse@craigslist while I was at it.

I finished my move – I didn’t say I have everything put up, put away and neat as a pin – Just I’m finished with my move….but not my selling. I’m downsizing – and have WAY TOO MUCH STUFF!

So I’m selling on Craigslist again. This time I opened up a separate gmail account just for Craigslist. When someone responds…I copy/paste their address to the address that was hacked….they can now hack it all they want…and the listings aren’t there.

Today, someone picked up a set of apple dishes. Monday it was a parrot cage….tomorrow who knows!