Something that has really perplexed me about buying items that you want to see work properly is how to ensure your personal safety. Most likely the prospective buyer will check out the item at the sellers house and then what???? Even pyscho's like Ted Bundy seemed normal until his killer instincts kicked in. I'm not saying you're likely to get murdered but how about even robbed? These things aren't unheard of these days.
Considering all the shit thats happening during these troubled times, anything is possible.
I guess you could probably take a friend. Are there other preventative measures one can take? I've started to dabble more with craigslist even though I hate the layout. hopefully i can get over it haha
And does anyone know about those people who request you to ship the items to another province/states.. is that scams? Kinda seems fishy. Just trying to get rid of some old stuff i dont need

How do you know when you walk into a store, it's not going to get robbed at the same time? Shit happens... there's no point being totally paranoid about what could happen. For most things, you won't need to meet inside a private residence to do the transaction. Meet in a public place with lots of people around.

Don't bother entertaining requests to ship your item. Craigslist is for local sales.

I have a feeling you're not just targetting Craigslist, but in buy&sell in general.
Where you meet up someone, do the transfer, and go.

You can't be sure it's ever 100% legit. There's no refund policy. And that's that. Buy if you have a good feeling about it. Don't buy if you don't.

You seem like quite a paranoid guy. It's okay. I was like that too. I brought a friend with me a few times to make some purchases. I tried to test out everything on the spot before buying. My first item was a monitor, the guy met me at the lobby of the appartment, brought down his laptop and hooked up the monitor and let me check it out. My friend wasn't really necessary. I made over 20 transaction through CL, either me buying or me selling, and I haven't encountered any problems.

Don't worry so much. If you are worried about being robbed, go meet at metrotown during the day. If you worry about being scammed, don't purchase electronics then.


Quoted for Truth.


Exchange email back and forth several times. Talk to him on the phone. You can usually feel out if the guy is a douchebag thug or a genuine legit guy.
If you're still worried, don't bother using craigslist then. Unfortunately, there is no ratings or usernames in CL.


Just like a transfer when you buy&sell, the CL site is simple as well.
You click on the city you are from. You search what you want. Everything is simply laid out. You don't need it to look like http://www.2advanced.com for it to work.
Why does a buy&sell site need to look pretty for it to be popular? It works so well, and easy to use and fast to make ads, and you don't even need to sign up membership. That's why it's popular.

LoL, that's a trip, because I did the EXACT same thing two days ago when I sold my monitor! I brought the monitor down to the lobby of my apartment along with my laptop and hooked it all up there so that the guy can check the monitor to make sure there's no dead pixels and stuff...

bought my car from a local dealer that was advertising on craigslist... also got my snow tires from a seattle listing on craigslist. everyone local was out of stock for what i wanted so i was happy/lucky.

craigslist ftw :thumbsup:

craigslist ftw

god dang'it I'm getting totally pwned in this thread. Almost everyone has given their signed sealed stamp of approval for craigslist.

if anyone's had any unfortunate events occur it would be nice if I could get you guys to chime in. I'm sure some people have had some really negative experiences. I'm not talking about flakers or getting lowballed. That seems to be the norm.

what do you have against the layout? it's perfect imo. everything is easily found and the site is kept simple for a reason. it's meant for the average person that doesn't necessarily have a high speed connection and it loads fast on mobile phones.

There may be some negative experiences from dealing on Craigslist, but for every one of those, there are hundreds of good transactions... otherwise Craigslist wouldn't have gotten as popular as it is.

craigslist is the shitt!! most of the jobs i've had are from applying on craigslist!

Yeah, I post there to find people. When I used to post at UBC or SFU's job search, we'd get 2-3 applications a week.

CL, we get 10+ a day.


Everyone's had the bad experiences, but that'll happen everywhere' That's why you put the onus on the seller to come meet you. If he won't come meet you, he's obviously not as serious as it seems, and is quite possibly a flaker or someone who says "I could only bring half the price, you gonna sell it to me?"

the reason craigslist is not so graphic heavy is beneficial for both the users and the makerds of craigslists

a simple design provides easy access to stuff you need. On development side its easy to change/fix features with minimal worry of styling.

another things is that they have a lot of traffic, people prefer to sell, trade and hangout at places with a lot more people than less (like facebook)

What section, i like sex

No bad experiences from CL and I've been using it for years. My only pet peeve with it is the people that reply to your ads that only a few words like, "want, $5?" or "Hi, 7782222222". It's those kind of people that I don't reply to. If you can't write in complete sentences, I don't want to know how you talk.