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A mate of mine here in Australia recently moved apartment and wanted to flip a whole heap of her stuff (bed frame, lounges, etc.) to downsize. She was using gum

by NamTaf 8y ago

A mate of mine here in Australia recently moved apartment and wanted to flip a whole heap of her stuff (bed frame, lounges, etc.) to downsize. She was using gumtree (the traditional 'I need to sell a lounge/fridge/etc. site used here) but was getting pretty poor responses. She then tried FB Marketplace and found it to be a huge gain in both quantity of responses (~10x) and their quality (people weren't offering her like 20% of what she listed it at). I also see many uni kids flipping their textbooks and other small belongings on it, because it's really easy and right there in the app everyone looks at all the time. It also targets location, so uni kids living on campus sell directly to other uni kids living on campus and so exchanges become trivially easy. It may not have disrupted the US market, but it's certainly had an impact elsewhere.

alsetmusic 8y ago
> She then tried FB Marketplace and found it to be a huge gain in both quantity of responses (~10x) and their quality (people weren't offering her like 20% of what she listed it at). I offload items I don’t want anymore via Craigslist in the US. I try to give away or sell items at a low cost to reduce the hassle and time that I have to invest (a great deal is less likely to turn into a person who cancels at the last minute after I’ve set aside time to meet). For items with a cost, the majority of emails are insulting low bids. Glad to know this isn’t a local / regional issue.
magduf 8y ago
Interesting. I've heard about FB Marketplace and the other local selling groups, so because I'm moving out and downsizing too, I decided to try it in addition to Craigslist. I've sold a bunch of stuff so far, and while I've listed almost everything on both (on the FB side, I've used Marketplace and also about 10 different local "yard sale" groups that cover my location), as far as I can tell all my sales came from Craigslist. On the FB side, I've had a bunch of communications from totally flaky people who never follow through. The only good thing I can say about FB so far is that I haven't run into any scammers there, whereas they're common on CL, but they're easy to avoid: only deal in cash with people who show up in person, and ignore people who want to send cashier's checks and that kind of crap.

by NamTaf 8y ago

alsetmusic 8y ago

> She then tried FB Marketplace and found it to be a huge gain in both quantity of responses (~10x) and their quality (people weren't offering her like 20% of what she listed it at). I offload items I don’t want anymore via Craigslist in the US. I try to give away or sell items at a low cost to reduce the hassle and time that I have to invest (a great deal is less likely to turn into a person who cancels at the last minute after I’ve set aside time to meet). For items with a cost, the majority of emails are insulting low bids. Glad to know this isn’t a local / regional issue.

magduf 8y ago

Interesting. I've heard about FB Marketplace and the other local selling groups, so because I'm moving out and downsizing too, I decided to try it in addition to Craigslist. I've sold a bunch of stuff so far, and while I've listed almost everything on both (on the FB side, I've used Marketplace and also about 10 different local "yard sale" groups that cover my location), as far as I can tell all my sales came from Craigslist. On the FB side, I've had a bunch of communications from totally flaky people who never follow through. The only good thing I can say about FB so far is that I haven't run into any scammers there, whereas they're common on CL, but they're easy to avoid: only deal in cash with people who show up in person, and ignore people who want to send cashier's checks and that kind of crap.