Although the software platform has never been the most modern and is definitely showing it’s age, Craigslist remains one of the most popular websites on the Internet. More than 60 million people use the site, whether to find an apartment, look for a job, sell off some garage goodies, or something else. Most of us use Craigslist for one reason or another. To find an apartment, to sell old stuff or for something else. With more than 80 million ads posted every month, statistics make it inevitable that something go wrong at some point. When you need help with Craigslist, finding support isn’t always the easiest thing. I wrote this article to show you how to get help from Craigslist support, as well as to provide some tips for handling more common issues yourself.
Craigslist support
There are a couple of ways you can get help on Craigslist. If you’re looking for anything other than self-help guidance, you’re going to need to search for it as it is buried as deep within the website as it is possible to bury something. A good place to start is the help page on the site itself.
The help page tries to direct you according to your issue, technical, scams, spam, press, law, security, harassment and so on. Some subpages have suggestions for you to help yourself. If your query still isn’t addressed, select one of the questions within the page and a Contact Us link should appear.
- Alternatively, just click this link to create a Craigslist support ticket directly.
- You can also email Craigslist at mailto:help@craigslist.org.
- If you are in the US and want to contact Craigslist support by phone, use the toll-free number – 800-664-0633.
Here’s the bad news: unless your issue indicates some major problem with Craigslist’s own software, you aren’t likely to get a lot of help from the site. Craigslist only has about 50 employees, and most of those people aren’t working in customer service.
How to handle Craigslist annoyances yourself
I’m not trying to put down Craigslist here. Their support team works hard and tries their best to deal with the issues that come up, but the reality is that the site is mostly automated and mostly relies on users taking care of their own problems. The support team is overworked, if not underpaid. While I’m sure they do their best, they also have hundreds of other people to try to help. If there is a chance you can help yourself, I would take it.
Here are some common Craigslist issues that you can manage on your own.
Issues with buyers or sellers
If you have an issue with a buyer or seller, contact them yourself to try to work things out. There are lots of instances where a genuine mistake or listing error has been sorted out with a quick email and everything works out fine. There are of course lots of instances where it doesn’t get worked out, but at least you tried.
Delete a Craigslist post
If you need to delete your post, you can do it yourself.
- Log into Craigslist.
- You should land on the Postings page which will list all of your current ads.
- Select the ‘delete’ link next to the ad you want to remove.
- Confirm on the next page by selecting Delete.
Craigslist blocked your IP address
If you regularly post ads without an account, there may come a time when your IP is blocked by Craigslist. This can be because your competition flagged you as a scammer to get rid of your listing, which happens a lot. It can also be because Craigslist’s systems mistakenly thought you were a scammer, which also happens a lot.
You can either use a different Wi-Fi network, use a VPN or email Craigslist direct at blocks-b1@craigslist.org.
Unwanted spam or calls after an ad
Some Craigslist users have an odd habit of saving phone numbers and email addresses and using them long after an ad has been removed. Usually these are to sell services or for spam. You have a couple of options here. You can use a burner phone for Craigslist listings. This is useful if you regularly lurk on the site. You can also block spam numbers in both Android and iOS if you need to.
Deal with spam emails in the usual way. Ignore and delete.
Reset your Craigslist account password
A common issue that most support teams have to deal with is to reset passwords. The website has a way to self-service password changes which is much faster than waiting in queue or going through multiple voice messages when calling the company direct.
- Visit the Craigslist site.
- Select Login at the top of the page.
- Select Forgot password? on the next page.
- Enter your email address and select Reset Password.
- Wait for the email to arrive and click the URL within it to reset your password.
Delete your Craigslist account
If you have simply had enough and no longer want a Craigslist account, you need to contact Craigslist support direct. You can also anonymize the account to render it useless and then forget about it if you prefer.
- Log into Craigslist.
- Go to your account page and replace all entries with gibberish.
- Select Save when done to replace all your account details.
There you go. How to contact Craigslist support and how to fix several issues on your own. Got any Craigslist tips you want to share? Tell us about them below if you do!
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