5miles: Buy and Sell Locally

Used to love this app years ago and my experiences on it were largely positive but lately I have noticed a disturbing pattern: sellers are either putting up fake ads, don’t seem serious about selling or will leave conversations hanging in messages with no explanation or resolution. I see it happen on 5miles way more than I see on other apps. I use apps like offerup, Craigslist and Facebook marketplace and my experiences are much better at these other places. People on these other sites seem motivated to sell and will respond in a fairly timely manner and usually resolve the conversations whether it leads to a sale or not. I’m not sure why this trend of lazy, unmotivated or rude sellers on 5miles but it’s been happening way too much and so I wanted to share that on here. Not sure if 5miles can do anything about this disturbing trend but bottom line I think they should know how buyer experiences compare at other places. And no, I’m not low-balling sellers or being rude to them when I contact. It’s just a consistent pattern I have noticed these days that sellers on 5miles seem unmotivated and often leave conversations hanging way more than I have seen at other selling apps or websites.

The review by NDIBRO is the truth and 5Miles knows it well. Reading the response to his review is infuriating. Here is what you want to know: this app could have been great if it stuck to what you would assume the name implies. Items listed for sale by users within a 5 mile radius. Its not like that, its all over the map. I understand such small parameters would only work if this app was downloaded by almost everyone but theres no reason that couldnt be achieved by a strong following and ethics which are both missing from 5miles. They dont have a strong following and they have automated fake profiles that will occasionally show interest in items that havent got any attention lately so that you the person who listed doesnt forget that the app exists and seemingly is working towards making a sale. A random person more than 30 miles less than 10 more than 5 down tbe street doesnt matter messages you saying something similar to hey im interrested i would like to buy this or can you send me more pictures; you respond within the same minute or within minutes and all of the sudden this person isnt interested enough to respond how many times does this need to happen before you realize your being stringed along by 5 miles and theyre pseudo accounts. 5 miles is quick to remove any mention of fake accounts or unethical practices on the internet not just these reviews so if you see this dont forget. 5Miles isnt the only app pushing fake accounts but they seem to be the biggest offenders unfortunately.

I'd been trying to sell one of secondary vehicles for quite a while, only using Craigslist. I'd always had luck in the past but it seems over the past couple years Craigslist has become much more "scammy" and frankly a pain/annoying to use due to that fact. So in a moment of frustration I downloaded all of the more recent selling apps: letgo, offer up, wallapop etc. Then maybe an hour or so later came across 5miles (which I had never heard of). The account was easy enough to set up, but choosing a profile pic is ridiculously harder than it honestly should be--centering your pic/getting it to be anywhere near where you want it is unnecessarily difficult. So please fix that. It's quite frustrating😑 Anyway, I digress...so I uploaded my listing pics, wrote my ad, and saw that I already had a couple views in just under 2hrs (and this was in the wee hours of the night). I listed the ad at 3am, and by 6am got my first offer (full price too) and ended up selling the car to them that same day. We communicated entirely using the app, which is great if you don't want to give out your info--email, # etc to everyone and their mom who contacts you regarding an item your selling; especially the ones who aren't serious buyers... The app worked so well/so quickly, that my stepdad thought I was joking when I told him I'd sold it, as he came home and found the car to be gone. So to say he was surprised is an understatement lol He now wants me to help him sell/list cars from his body shop. 5miles met, and exceeded my expectations, definitely would recommend! The only reason I didn't give 4 stars was because of the profile pic nonsense