When I'm buying, I simply wont even bother to ask where you're located if you're too stupid or lazy to put in your postal code. "Calgary" isn't good enough. I live in the SW. If you're in Evanston, I'm not coming for your bag of kids clothes. I can go to Walmart. I will not reply to your ad or waste any of my time finding out where you are, even if you're my next door neighbour. I refuse to give you my money, because you are a kijiji struggler, and you've already wasted 10 seconds of my life by getting me to click your ad, and then not telling me where you are. Also, when I'm buying, if you can't post a pic, you're ######ed, and I don't want your stuff because it might infect me. No click for you.
When I'm selling, I take multiple pics, I answer all the questions people are going to ask, and I write the ad in clear English with punctuation. At the bottom of the ad, because I'm a-ok with all three, I put:
phone/text/email
And just in case you don't know about the view map feature as a buyer:
Located in deep SW
Not only am I being courteous and increasing my chances of selling the item quickly, I am also reducing my own time being wasted by people calling to ask questions and then ruling out my item as the one they want. Also, if people call me and ask something that I stated clearly in the ad, I can also size you up beforehand, and I pretty much know that you're lazy, and that I'm not haggling my price, because you don't know how to think. It's amazing how much you can learn about a person by posting or replying to a kijiji ad.
But most importantly, when posting something that's worth any more than a couple hundred, you have to post at the bottom of your ad that lowballers will be ignored. It's amazing how effective that is. It reduces those idiot texts of "I'll give you $400 for your $4000 car CASH MONEY TODAY" by about 90%. And when you get one of those robot replies, you must not answer them.
It's really not hard to win at kijiji. Checking the seller's other ads often alerts you to them selling stolen stuff, or that they're curbing cars, or that they're really weird. There are lots of ways to figure out who you're dealing with. I treat a kijiji transaction with a fair amount of consideration, but honestly, it took longer to write this post than it takes for me to write a kijiji ad for a high chair, or a vehicle.
Last but not least, if it's an expensive item, and you're a bit wary about handing over cash, make the meeting place a police station parking lot. They don't care. I think they actually endorse the idea. And people that don't want to meet you at the cop shop probably aren't people you want do a transaction with.
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