Craigslist Is My Number One Choice For Selling Personal Items
by Erik Folgate
Filed under Consumer News, Extra Income
I have written about this before, the fact that I think craigslist is a much better option for selling off personal items rather than ebay. Four years ago, you would have seen me putting up stuff on ebay to earn extra cash. But after numerous problems with ebay, I don’t know if I’ll ever sell something on there, again. If I got one more email from Xaing Yang from China about he he has wholesale goods for me to sell on ebay (a.k.a. he’s going to steal my money), I was about to explode. Ebay raised all of their fees about 2 years ago, as well. Not to mention, the market is officially flooded. Unless you have an authentic, signed jersey by Mickey Mantle or an original painting from Picasso, you won’t get as much money for your stuff as you would have 4 or 5 years ago. Once you factor in the listing fee, the closing fee, and then those little added shipping costs that you always forget to factor in when charging shipping, ebay isn’t the way to go.
Also, paypal STILL hasn’t figured out that scammers can pay for something on a credit card, send an empty box back with tracking, and then request a charge back from their credit card company. Yeah, it’s happened to me, and I was pissed. Paypal won’t do ANYTHING for you. I read stuff about it before, but I just thought the people ranting about it didn’t know what they were doing, until it happened to me.
Here, let me say it: PISS OFF, EBAY!
I just sold my dell desktop with monitor that I purchased three years ago for $500 on Craigslist. Want to know how much I paid for the tower and monitor three years ago? $500 bucks! Plus, I don’t have to deal with any fees or the hassle of shipping something that heavy. The buyer picks it up, and they pay me cash. Can it get any better? Seriously, put something up for sale that you’d think no one would want. See if you get any takers on Craigslist.
I know that craigslist has it’s share of scammers. But, they are extremely obvious, and you aren’t trusting a company like paypal to help the transaction go through. Once they hand over the cash, it’s yours to keep. I know that I sound bitter, but try to get past that. Craigslist is my best friend. Even if you need a place to stay in a big city during the peak times, you can probably find a short-term rental for cheaper than what it would cost to stay in a hotel.
If any of you have any success or horror stories about Craigslist or Ebay, post them on a comment.
I sold my house using Craigslist. Helluva lot cheaper then using an agent; I saved about $7500 in commission. Highly recommended!
Wow. Congrats on selling a house that way. Realtors are highly over rated marketing/sales people and unnecessary middleman in a lot of cases. Unfortunately that have a large lobbying group ;-( I’ve known about craigslist, but just started using it. I’m cleaning house and have lots of everything to sell, including jewelry, electronics, and antiques. We’ll see how it works out. We bought 1 thing off of eBay, at a good discount, a long time ago. But we opted out of eBay for our own stuff. You know that 25% of craigslist is owned by eBay, don’t you? Unfortunate :-(
no, i didn’t know that ebay had a stake in them. It’s probably a smart move, because I think a lot of people are starting to sell their personal stuff on craigslist instead of ebay. Ebay is so commercialized now, it’s mostly refurbished and new products.
Matthew, I agree. Craigslist has tons of people looking at houses. It is completely feasible to sell your house for NO marketing costs and NO realtor’s commissions. I personally think that using an agent is overrated for your personal home unless you know a really good one that will go the extra mile to sell your house quickly