Hi. Welcome to You Suck at Craigslist, a site where I make fun of poorly constructed Craigslist ads.<\/p>\n
What? What’s that you say? You’re wondering why I’m stating that, when it’s perfectly obvious what the site is?<\/p>\n
As it turns out, perfectly obvious<\/em> might not be obvious enough to some people, as evidenced by an email I got (exchange is behind a cut, as it’s relatively long):<\/p>\n <\/p>\n From:\u00a0\u00a0 [name_of_moving_company]@gmail.com Checking your service… $5 PayPal payment made, please delete<\/p>\n http:\/\/denver.craigslist.org\/ [remainder of link]<\/p>\n Thank you<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I followed the link, which was a perfectly fine ad for a (different) moving company. I couldn’t find anything mockworthy about it at all. And sure enough, I’d also gotten an email from PayPal saying that I’d received a $5 payment at my yousuckatcraigslist@gmail.com account (which is problematic, as I don’t have a PayPal account with that address!).<\/p>\n So this took me a minute to figure out. I emailed back with:<\/p>\n From:\u00a0\u00a0 yousuckatcraigslist@gmail.com I’m sorry, I’m confused. What is this for?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The response came back:<\/p>\n From:\u00a0\u00a0 [name_of_moving_company]@gmail.com Your add. Please refund.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Then it hit me: A while back I posted a Craigslist ad in which a company offered to flag competitor’s ads for $5 each. The original post is here<\/a>, and reproduced below:<\/p>\n Tired of seeing spam ads? Your competitors got you down? No worries, with our service we will have ads removed within minutes! The process is very simple – just let us know the URL or posting title & section, send us a payment with PayPal, and the ad will be removed within 5-10 minutes (10 ads or more – 30 minutes). We can also do bulk removal at discounted rates.<\/p>\n 1 ad – $5 Payments are made through PayPal, once payment is received the process is started immediately.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n NuclearMosquito emailed this listing, saying: “Now I know in “this economy” (whatever that means), people are looking for new ways to make a quick buck. Somewhere along the line, someone will think, “Hey, I should charge people for an already free service! Maybe even one they can do themselves! Surely someone will fall for it.” Sadly, they just might. This ad promises to flag other Craigslist ads for you. They even offer a discount for bulk flags! Just Paypal them $5 per flag, along with the URL of the ad you want flagged, and they’re on the job. Now really, you have to wonder if the people that read this ad and think it’s something wonderful don’t notice the flag button, that they can click themselves, FOR FREE, in the corner of that very ad! The mind boggles.”<\/p>\n Indeed it does. I should, of course, mention that this ad got flagged. I wonder if someone paid them to flag their own ad? I would have, just for the irony of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The person who emailed me must have googled for something related to “removing competitor’s ads” [update: my search terms show one search for “how many times do you have to flag,” one for “flag craigslist ads,” and three for “craigslist flagger”] and found this post on the site — and then completely missed the point of the post and thought that I<\/em> provided this service!<\/p>\n So after I stopped laughing hysterically, I emailed back:<\/p>\n From:\u00a0\u00a0 yousuckatcraigslist@gmail.com It appears as though you saw this posting on my website:<\/p>\n YSaC, Vol. 294: Flagging on the top right.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nSubject: $5 PayPal payment made, please delete
\nDate: June 2, 2009 5:31:32 PM EDT
\nTo:\u00a0\u00a0 yousuckatcraigslist@gmail.com<\/p>\n
\nSubject: Re: $5 PayPal payment made, please delete
\nDate: June 2, 2009 6:18:24 PM EDT
\nTo:\u00a0\u00a0 [name_of_moving_company]@gmail.com<\/p>\n
\nSubject: Re: $5 PayPal payment made, please delete
\nDate: June 2, 2009 6:40:57 PM EDT
\nTo:\u00a0\u00a0 yousuckatcraigslist@gmail.com<\/p>\n\n
\n
Need Flagging? – $5<\/h2>\n
\n
\n5 ads – $20
\n25 ads – $50<\/p>\n
\nSubject: Re: $5 PayPal payment made, please delete
\nDate: June 2, 2009 6:55:20 PM EDT
\nTo:\u00a0\u00a0 [name_of_moving_company]@gmail.com<\/p>\n