Facebook Marketplace?

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Any way to join without giving all my personal info? I need to sell a bunch of stuff. Some Ranger related, some not.

 

[Shran]

I’ll warn you that my success rate on there was about 5%. Lots of idiots that want to bug you with “is it still available” then ghost you or never show up. Lots of low ballers. I hate it.

Craigslist is close to 90% success rate on sales and very little BS. Takes longer to sell stuff though, but totally worth not dealing with every idiot on Facistbook.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I’ll warn you that my success rate on there was about 5%. Lots of idiots that want to bug you with “is it still available” then ghost you or never show up. Lots of low ballers. I hate it.

Craigslist is close to 90% success rate on sales and very little BS. Takes longer to sell stuff though, but totally worth not dealing with every idiot on Facistbook.

We do have Craigslist up here, but it doesn't look like it's as popular as in the states. Kijiji works ok. Also lots of no shows and ghosts too unfortunately.
I just don't want FB tracking me across the net, so was hoping there is a fairly simple way to join but not give out all my info. I've heard about "sandboxing" and similar but have no idea how that works. I'll research...
Main reason is there is a fairly large Ranger group based around Calgary.

 

[JoshT]

I’ll warn you that my success rate on there was about 5%. Lots of idiots that want to bug you with “is it still available” then ghost you or never show up. Lots of low ballers. I hate it.

Craigslist is close to 90% success rate on sales and very little BS. Takes longer to sell stuff though, but totally worth not dealing with every idiot on Facistbook.

I think it depends a lot on your local market. As a buyer recently I've had more success finding things I want on Facebook. I just don't think people around here post much on Craigslist anymore.

I do understand the fustration about is it still available and ghosting, but I might have a slightly different perspective. I'd say from personal experience that it often might not be the buyer's fault. I have been scrolling marketplace on my cellphone and had Facebook send the "is it still available" message without my knowledge, it's happened several times. The other issue I've had is locations. I have marketplace set to show listings within a 60 mile radius of where I live. It shows listings for everyhere anyway. On the PC there is no real way to force it to narrow down. On the phone I could filter by local pickup only and get stuff that was mostly in that region, but even that is wonky now. I'll tell it to show me pickup only within 60 miles of Warner Robins, GA and it'll show listing for anyplace between here and Washington state without including a location.

On both it doesn't help that people won't properly list or label things in the listings or your listing getting burried in unrelated listings. As mentioned above Facebook is bad about showing unrelated stuff or out of area stuff. Craigslist is better about showing local, but is still full of fake listings, keywork spam, and other crap. They've got no way to control the bots that spam listings for nearly every city with a list.

 

[JoshT]

Forgot to respond to the original question...

I don't recall how much information is required to create a Facebook account. I created mine many years ago to keep up with friends and family that lived out of the area and don;t recall having to give that much. I do know that of what you provide, you can lock down accessability to pretty much all of it. Most of your profile can be locked down so thst it is visible to you and/or friends only.

Most of the marketplace purchases I've made you can only contact the seller through Facebook messenger, and only a city and state is provided for location. Facebook seems to actively block anything that resembles a phone number in listings, IIRC Craigslist seems to do the same. Beyond that they can only see the information that you make available to the public through your profile.

After initiating contact, it's up to the seller to give out other contact information and the two to work out a meeting location. Generally if they insist on offline contact, or claim that they are selling for a third party who I need to call/text, I'll drop the inquiry. I'd rather have an accessable public record of the transaction. I'd suggest agreeing on a local public place rather than your home, but the last three or four items I've purchased were all at seller's home. I went armed, but had no trouble and they never knew it.

Will also advise that if traveling out of area to meet with someone and relying on Google maps, investigate the route before embarking on the journey. It's taken me through some questionable areas that I could have easily avoid without adding much if any time. Haven't had a problem yet, but last time it almost took me into Alabama which was just a little more questionable that I was willing to accept. Fortunately I cought it in time and found a better route.

 

[Blmpkn]

Just make a fake profile. I got a couple buddys who refuse Facebook but want access to marketplace.. one of them goes by Sparrow Marshall and the others "name" is something like C. Dingus McGovern lol.

 

[Sharky]

FACEBBOOK tracks everything you post, message, buy & sell.
do not give any info after the sale, a box will appear when you want to delete a post asking
if it sold, sold elsewhere or did not sell.
I delete all my ads and any/all messages , it may not help but there is less info out there for anyone to go over.

 

[franklin2]

You complain about facebook putting out listings not in your area? But then someone suggests give it false information about yourself so you can sell stuff on it? How will the search feature work if you do not give it truthful information?

And limited access to your account does not limit facebook itself to all your information, just other users. And therein is where the problem lies with facebook. I recommend you stay off it.

 

[JohnnyO]

I sold the cap for my old Sport Trac on FB Marketplace. Also found the wheels for my Ranger there.

 

[Chapap]

Craigslist went downhill with spammers. A good part about it is they used an email relay so no one actually got your email. It seems that the vast majority of folks have migrated to FB. I really don't like how Marketplace is set up. Too many categories and specifics on posting stuff. It seems that most people don't post in the right place which makes all that sorting info worthless.

Really the only info FB will have on you is your email, phone number, and city. Just make everything else up. Is there an "about me" section on FB? Might put in there that you made the account just to sell stuff so perspective buyers (hopefully) don't think you're a scammer.

 

[Roert42]

Around here there seems to be a lot more stuff on Facebook compared to Craigslist, but I rarely have an issue with a Craigslist add.

I tried buying two separate camper toppers off Facebook, the first one I had some many issues setting up a time to go buy it I gave up and the second one my wife’s account banned the second I messaged the guy. I went back to Craigslist.

 

[rusty ol ranger]

Everything on CL anymore is business posting numerous ads over and over for sales

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

I have done a lot both ways in fm, really can't complain much about it.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

And limited access to your account does not limit facebook itself to all your information, just other users. And therein is where the problem lies with facebook. I recommend you stay off it.

This is what I'm worried about, FB following me around the net hovering up data about me. I stopped using FB a decade ago and so far don't know how to delete the account. They make it impossible to do. Similar to Amazon making it so difficult to stop paying for prime.

 

[Chapap]

This is what I'm worried about, FB following me around the net hovering up data about me. I stopped using FB a decade ago and so far don't know how to delete the account. They make it impossible to do. Similar to Amazon making it so difficult to stop paying for prime.

I wonder if that is a valid concern. They *shouldn't* know anything about you other than email/phone. They may communicate with (buy info from) other sites. They may actively try to buy info associated with your email. That sounds far fetched, but I could see it happening.

I think the main source of their info comes from you interacting with FB. Watching videos, looking at pics, seraching marketplace. There's supposed to be an amazing amount of info to glean about a person just by observing them... and FB's algorithms are definitely observing.