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by foo-bar-bat 1092 days ago
Depends what you use it for. Searching estate sales for shippable small stuff, fine. Shopping for cars or romance not so much.

The problem is the meaning of distance is relative by culture. 250 miles is nearby in American west. Some people drive that far for groceries, a date, work even. Without leaving the county.

Meanwhile from say [checks map] Springfield Massachusetts, same 250 miles spans eight states. Half of which hate each other.

Now try buying a car on Craigslist in Hawaii, where half the listings are on the wrong islands. Part of this is CL's fault and part is the spammers mislabeling location (which is also CL's fault, indirectly).

In the parts of UK or EU where people don't have cars, search radius of 250 miles is worse than useless. Some people don't travel that far their entire lives, unless there's a war on. It makes the whole site feel like buggy American crap.

2 comments

>250 miles is nearby in American west.

californian: it is not. that's a 3-4 hour drive and can get you from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. If I'm driving that far to meet someone, it better be some crazy rare item that can't be shipped, not for groceries.

Even as someone raised in the rual parts of California, the nearest walmart was "only" 40 miles away or so in the 90's.

250 miles is a lot anywhere, even in the American West.