Craigslist Story From Hell

In the past Tony and I have used Craigslist/Philadelphia for ads to find new tenants for our garage apartment rental and to sell things that range from antique rugs to cars. And other than a few of the expected quirky experiences most people expect on Craigslist, we haven’t had any grand scale unusual issues. At least not until today, and I thought I’d post about it for other people in case they aren’t familiar with Craigslist…especially if they have kids.

We’re in the process of selling one car that we’ve had for eleven years. We’re not in a rush, the car is still in great shape, and it’s been babied and garage kept since the day we took it off the showroom floor. In fact, I don’t even like selling it, which is why we’ve kept it this long. Whenever Tony brought up the topic I would change the subject. But it’s time for something newer and we put an ad on Craigslist last week. My problem is the emotional attachment. I LOVE it.

The ad we posted was a standard affair, with a dozen photos that I thought looked better than some I’ve seen dealers post in their web sites. So far, we’ve had replies from some very nice, wonderful people, one of whom actually did a car fax report and offered it to me for free. He’s in Richmond, VA, and couldn’t make it up here last weekend because of the weather. He still might be a strong buyer, but even if he’s not he’s still a great person for going to that trouble. He didn’t have to do that. And he’s not the only nice person who has contacted us. We had one guy who was a small dealer locally see the car and make an offer, but we couldn’t agree on a price and parted friends. Two days later, he e-mailed me and told me he did buy a similar car at the price he wanted, but then told me to stand firm on my price and that he thought it was fair. Seriously. You don’t find nicer people than that!!

But today I had the all-time fruitcake of Craigslist contact me, and it was the most unusual thing I’ve ever seen. Instead of stating interest in the car, he wanted to trade some kind of alcoholic beverage event for the car, which was really nothing more than vulgar, low-end self-promotion through craigslist in order to promote himself and a small unheard of radio show he has on a small local radio station no one listens to. I replied this way, verbatim, from my inbox:

Please don’t spam me again. I’m not fond of that and I’m being very polite right now.

I’ve had a long day. I really was trying to be polite to him. I don’t spam people that way and I don’t like anyone doing it to me to promote themselves. ESPECIALLY on Craigslist.

He replied this way, verbatim with all the spelling errors:

You are a total imbecile and ill be flagging your post…and im not selling XXXX…you’re very defensive…buyers beware methinks…get off of craigslist you amateur con man

Again, my reply, which I always keep, with screen shots, just in case:

Spam is spam. I’m selling a car honestly and with good intentions to nice people. I’m not interested in XXX or anyone hocking XXX.

As you can see I haven’t posted his name or what he was selling and promoting because I don’t want to give him any more attention than he deserves. But what really bothered me the most was that young adults who are underage are buying and selling cars (and things) on CL and his spam could have been sent to any of my nephews and nieces and they could have been taken in by his scam.

He continued to harass me a few more times, and even laughed at the fact that I was concerned about minors and blasted me for being too “American.” I’m not joking about that. I won’t repeat the things he said here now. But it ended when I stated in no uncertain terms that I would report him to CL if he continued to harass me. I still might. I’m not sure about that. I’m also not sure about whether or not CL will even do anything about it. I’ve been through situations like this with other online places like CL and I didn’t get much satisfaction. So I decided to post about it here anyway, so people can see some of the things you might have to deal with on CL. In some cases, we are all dealing with the Wild West days of the Internet. Most of the time it’s safe and there are no issues, but you always have to be on guard for the few wing nuts out there spamming who don’t think there’s anything wrong with minors having controlled substances.

Beth Robinson Vermont Supreme Court

I’m posting about Beth Robinson who serves on the Vermont Supreme Court for several reasons, one of which I can’t disclose right now but will announce sometime very soon.

Robinson is openly gay and has been important to same sex marriage and civil unions. From wiki:

Robinson served as co-counsel in the case of Baker v. State, the landmark 1999 decision that led to Vermont becoming the first state to enact civil unions. She was subsequently involved in the 2009 legislative battle to enact same-sex marriage, chairing Vermont Freedom to Marry and working closely with Shumlin, a prominent supporter of same-sex marriage, who was then president pro tempore of the Vermont Senate. Robinson was also involved in Shumlin’s gubernatorial campaign.

You can read more at the link above, and I’ll be posting something else about Robinson very soon.