Deleting a Competitors Craigslist Ads - Unethical Practice By Some

This morning, I am doing the usual follow up, answering emails and voicemails, reviewing yesterday's web traffic, and double checking of our seller's ad placement. One place I advertise is on Craigslist. No surprise there as many real estate brokers use Craigslist as a form of prospecting and seller advertising. Over the past 6 months I have noticed a trend, which I do think is done by competing brokers and not Craigslist consumers, is to flag competing ads for deletion.

Other brokers I know in Washington experience the same phenomenon with their accounts and here is a screenshot of my account from this morning's work.

As you can see, the ads are being deleted shortly after posting which leads me to believe a competing broker is having some fun at my expense. Unknown to them, I am steaming and the only venting, source without swearing up a storm, is to write a blog sharing the frustration caused. As far as I know, there are no safe guards or protection when it comes to flagging ads for deletion as anyone can log in and hit the flag button.

If people where paying for Craigslist ads then I could there be more safe quards, however, all real estate ads can be posted for free. With that said, it doesn't lessen the frustration nor decrease the work load my sellers expect of a full service real estate team.

As I continued to write this post, I continued to repost with the same exact results.

I also posted:

Does this happen in your market? How do you manage it? Do you want to face punch or call in a favor to Chuck Norris to curb this practice? I sure do.