Olx vs Facebook Marketplace: A subjective review

thought bubble

It’s a dilemma. We live in Mumbai sized house. It’s small, but very comfortable for Ag and me, with a beautiful view of the Arabian sea. This means that any new furniture purchase has to displace something else of equal or more volume. It’s Archimedes’ principle at play.

The sequence of events that followed was not triggered by physics though, it was pure chemistry. An emotional reaction triggered by a good discount on Flipkart and a beautiful piece of furniture. There was a spontaneous combustion of cash and some flash decisions had to be made on where the soon to be delivered product would be placed.

We looked around at all the furniture and asked each one if they wood volunteer. All we got was silent treatment. So we made the choice for them. Sofa so good. The good ol’ cane furniture set got the boot.

Wow, you made this far through the bog of horrible puns? Bless you and more power you. I promise you more sense and fewer dead jokes here on.

Review mode on

If something needs to be sold, I prefer to check with local vendors first as they will take care of moving things and it could all be wrapped in a day. However, the rates I was offered were far too low.

The next best bet was the marketplaces. We took a few good photos and made a nice ad on Olx. Quikr user experience was a put off and I could not identify the section where I should post my ad; so I didn’t bother with it. I had also heard of Facebook marketplace so I added the same details there as well.

After a day I realised that I might have quoted a tad high a price, so added in a decent discount after which we started receiving quite a few offers.

On OLX, there were two people who tried to pull a fast one on me with a UPI scam, but I was able to call them out on it fast enough.

Facebook marketplace was remarkable, with so many people showing interest. However, most of them would go beyond two interactions. Strange!

Things improved towards the weekend as more people started showing genuine interest and we started lining up people to come visit our house to see the furniture and seal the deal.

The person who finally bought it came to us after seeing the ad on OLX. They showed interest, visited us and finally paid up for the furniture as well within 18 hours. The others waited for too long and missed out.

Here’s the actual data.

CategoryOLXFacebook Marketplace
Views98481
Bookmarked64
Messages1125
High-interest 37
Low-ball offers52
Spam20
Sold YESNO

This has been my experience with both the marketplace with a sample size of one, and hence calling it a subjective review.

Either way, it was an interesting experience and I would definitely use both these marketplaces going forward as well. From a scam protection perspective, I think Facebook offers a better cover.

Which site works might also depend on the day of the week you’re putting up the ad and the category of the product.

Image credit: Sašo Goričar


2 responses to “Olx vs Facebook Marketplace: A subjective review”
  1. gurupanguji Avatar

    I need more puns!!

    1. balu Avatar

      I’ll definitely work towards that 😀

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