3 places better than Craigslist to buy and sell used items
It’s been a little while since the last time we talked about Craigslist alternatives, but once again you’ve fallen out of love with some items in your closet, and gotten some new electronics that make you less interested in your older ones.
It’s time to sell some things—but where can you go these days that still isn’t Craigslist?
Craigslist has the same issues it’s always had. You communicate with a stranger, and have to meet them face to face, putting yourself in some danger, and opening yourself to the possibility of being scammed.
Thankfully, the internet is a big place
We found some great alternatives to Craigslist, in both website and app form. We’ve showcased three of these places before, which remain pretty good options—OfferUp in particular is still relatively popular, so you might just find whatever you’re selling a new home there. But some time has passed since the last list, and with that, comes a shift in popularity, and time for new sites and apps to take over.
Below are another three places other than Craigslist to buy and sell used items. Many of these places are better than Craigslist because they take away the need to meet in person, they make anonymity (and therefore bad intentions) more difficult, and they make sellers more accountable for their products and advertising. Hopefully you’ll find the perfect place to start selling your used items, and start cleaning out your closet and garage again in a safe and happy way.
Poshmark
Poshmark has taken the internet by storm as the ultimate place to buy and sell used fashion items. Selling on Poshmark is easy. You take a picture of your item in the Poshmark app (or set it up via your account on the website), set a price, and wait for your item to be purchased.
There are events called “Posh Parties” within the app that allow you to list your items along a theme or brand to help buyers with particular interests find what you’re selling, increasing the chances of it being seen, and purchased.
Once the item is purchased, Poshmark then provides a pre-paid, pre-addressed label to place on the box you mail the item in, and all you have to do is get the item to the post office, or have USPS pick up the package.
This is some of the easiest posting, advertising, and selling you’ll find in the used item selling space, and because you’re shipping, you can find a customer anywhere in the country or world to buy your item, with no need to worry about being within driving distance, or ever having to meet another person face to face.
If you’re worried that the low amount of person to person contact, or Poshmark’s lack of user rating system might result in getting a bad item, Poshmark has you covered. The company puts “Posh Protect” on all items, guaranteeing refunds to buyers if an item has undisclosed damage, isn’t as described, isn’t authentic, or when the item delivered is incorrect or missing from the package.
Poshmark also offers “Posh Authenticate,” which is free item authentication (and free shipping!) on items and purchases of $500 or more. This authentication allows buyers to confirm they are getting exactly what they purchased, particularly with luxury, designer items, and allows sellers to verify the legitimacy of their products.
So unlike with Craigslist, as a buyer, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get what you’re paying for, and it’ll arrive right at your door. And as a seller, you don’t have to worry about unfair ratings, or messing up shipping—Poshmark handles most everything.
Letgo
If what you like about Craigslist is the ability to shop locally, and being able to buy pretty much anything, Letgo might be the site/app for you. Like Craigslist, Letgo is an online classifieds listing, only unlike Craigslist, it exclusively offers items (Craigslist also offers services).
When you’re in the app, or just looking at the site, you see all the latest items available for purchase in your area, and their prices, and you can declare your interest in buying them once you log in or create an account.
As a seller, Letgo offers a cool feature of identifying the type of item you’re photographing for your listing, and automatically builds the listing accordingly.
For example, if you’re selling a laptop, the app will be able to identify the item as a laptop, and do all the categorizing for you to ensure you’re getting the maximum number of buyers who might be looking for laptops or electronics at once.
This is handy, as you don’t have to worry about putting things in the right category yourself, and also assures buyers you’re selling a legitimate item, as you definitely took the picture of an actual item rather than using a stock photo.
When a buyer is interested in an item, rather than having them buy the item straight away, Letgo sets up a chat between the buyer and seller, allowing them to communicate without sharing personal emails or phone numbers, and also allowing some price haggling to take place, where there will be a written record of it.
In the end, you still have to meet up with a buyer or seller in person, and verify the quality of an item on your own as well, but Letgo offers some provisions to make that process easier and safer. First, there’s no way to pay for an item through the app, meaning there’s no exchange of currency until the meet up, preventing scams.
Next, Letgo sellers can be rated and reviewed, giving buyers the chance to warn each other about misleading buyers, or lousy products. Also, Letgo accounts can be verified, meaning a person confirmed their identity via linking their profile with their Facebook or email accounts, helping ensure users are real, verifiable people you are purchasing from.
Considering it shares some of Craigslist’s flaws, Letgo is at least attempting to create a safer purchasing environment through user accountability, and encourages safe transactions for any of the wide variety of items you can purchase on the site and app.
So you should still go to meet-ups with a buddy, the way you would when purchasing something on Craigslist, but at least you can be slightly more sure of who you’re meeting, and what they’re selling to you, which is a vast improvement.
Facebook Marketplace
The Facebook Marketplace is another online classifieds listing site where users can sell and buy items of all sorts. The Marketplace is geared toward buying and selling in a local area, the page automatically listing items from your geographic location up to 100 miles away, but you can search for items in other areas as well, in case you’re moving, or traveling.
In the Facebook Marketplace, Facebook users list items in particular categories with certain searchable tags and terms, such as what kind of item it is, its price, the condition of the item, the brand of the item, and more details in its description.
The fact that the Marketplace only works when you’re logged into Facebook once again helps with user accountability, as seller Facebook profiles can be viewed when they’ve posted items, and buyer profiles can be viewed by sellers.
Having a picture of someone before meeting can be very helpful in identifying a scam the day of a meet up, and reporting users for initiating scams not only gets them in trouble within the Marketplace, but as Facebook users as well.
So there’s some advantage of lack of anonymity, but the Facebook Marketplace still comes with some glaring potential dangers. First, items are not guaranteed to be of any quality. With only the report function, and no user rating system, buyers in the Facebook Marketplace are going off of hope of quality.
The Marketplace allows stock photos to be used as item photos, after all, which can be misleading. So because of stock or inaccurate photos, items must be seen in person, which brings about the Craigslist dangers, where you have to hope the person is legitimate, and that any item flaws will be obvious during a meet up.
At least within the Marketplace, you can negotiate an item being mailed to you, like a slightly more personal eBay, but that can be risky too, with no item verification, and making a transaction through a service like PayPal is a risky endeavor when the Marketplace, unlike eBay (as it runs on PayPal) has no obligation to help you get your money back if things go wrong.
But the Facebook Marketplace isn’t all risks. The Marketplace also features Groups, where users can buy, sell, and trade within a Facebook group. Users there are accountable to admins, who can ban bad or distrustful sellers, and help buyers who’ve had difficulties contact Facebook.
Also, the Groups, and the Marketplace, are good places to find yard sales, where items can be looked at in a less pressured, one-on-one environment, with all the advantages of haggled prices and quick pick-ups that come with buying used products locally.
Tags: advertising, apps, Facebook, internet, ratings, verification
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