Ive rawdogged it with my real name, and a bare email (no alias), no vpn, bone stock chrome, and they still need a video selfie from me. im not comfortable with that (though i might cave eventually, i need to look at cheap shitboxes, dont know of any oother sites like that)
thanks all
Step 1: Don’t sign up for Facebook
I haven’t had Facebook in years, but I’ll admit the marketplace is pretty damn good for finding secondhand deals. Luckily (unluckily) my wife doesn’t give two shits about being spied on so I browse it from her phone
Marketplace was fantastic for buying and selling all sorts of stuff for years, but it is now plagued with fake listings and scams and all kinds of undesirable shit now. The scammers seem to have no problem whatsoever cranking out new accounts on the regular, and Facebook doesn’t seem to give a shit. Any time I report any of the scam listings I get a response from FB about 3 weeks later saying they did nothing wrong, so they took no action. Fuck Facebook.
It must be location dependent, but our local marketplace is a goldmine (it also might just be an FB group, not sure where all that’s at these days). Every now and again you get some dufus trying to pull some shady shit, but this is a small town where most everyone knows each other, and people are pretty quick to call it out.
and what else do I use? Craigslist dead as he’ll, autotrader and the like have comparitively nice cars
I recommend autotempest as it searches multiple sites.
it searches what autotrader, eBay, Craigslist, and cars.com
all those are either empty or have relatively nice car
I want that 3k dollar civic with a mild oil leak
The problem is what you’re looking for is far less common than it used to be.
The bottom has dropped out of the market. Cars under a certain value are usually scrapped and/or parted out. You will find them occasionally but it’s getting rare. In my local area I find that Craigslist has the best selection of beaters, but it’s still difficult to find anything worthwhile under $4000.
Might be time to consider a motorcycle, scooter, or e-bike of you can make it work
Edit: one more thing. There are ways to browse FB marketplace without an account.
and how? no account?
If you’re looking for cheap cars, check if your state/city/area has a govenment auction site. In minnesota we have MNBid and you can usually pick up impounded vehicles or old govenment fleet vehicles for dirt cheap.
Have you tried going to some of those lower end local used car lots? Before cl and fb we used to look through the newspaper and go to used car lots. I know you’ll pay a little more than from a private seller unless you haggle, but at least there’s a selection. No Facebook required.