SCUM OF THE EARTH: DEALERS WHO PUT MONTHLY PAYMENTS AS PRICES ON CRAIGSLIST

748. That's the number of car listings on my local Craigslist that are either down payments or monthly payments, as opposed to the actual price of the vehicle. This makes shopping for a cheap car on Craigslist nearly impossible since you have to scroll through so much garbage. Other sites like Facebook Marketplace don't seem to have this problem, and these fake listings are the sole reason that Craigslist is not my primary car shopping website.

It's worth noting that listing a down payment or a monthly payment as the sale price isn't just annoying for users, it's against Craigslist's own rules. According to Craigslist, misleading; deceptive; and/or miscategorized items are prohibited from the website. I would argue that these listings fall under misleading, deceptive, and/or miscategorized, since the price advertised is not the actual price of the car.

source: https://www.craigslist.org/about/prohibited

source: https://www.craigslist.org/about/prohibited

EXAMPLES:

I don't know what it is about them, but something just makes me irrationally angry scrolling through four pages of misleading ads in order to find a vehicle that's actually for sale at the advertised price point.

How can we combat this?

Flag, flag, flag. These blatantly violate Craigslist's own rules, and flagging them will get Craigslist to notice them and take them down. This is the only way to get these false, miscategorized listings removed from the site. It might be a pain to flag all 748 listings, but I flag at least some of them in hopes of alerting the Craigslist team that there is something wrong.