Automating Facebook Marketplace Listings from CarGurus

[Haron]

Just tried it, still showing "300 miles driven"

Hi Lewis — I’ve fixed the 300-mile issue. The system will now default to 300 miles if the mileage is below 300; otherwise, it will use the actual mileage. The update should be approved on the Web Store within the next few hours.

 

[Haron]

Hi Haron,

It looks amazing tool, I liked that.

I noticed that mileage is always entering 300. Other than that looks solid.

Hi Mustafa — I’ve fixed the 300-mile issue. The system will now default to 300 miles if the mileage is below 300; otherwise, it will use the actual mileage. The update should be approved on the Web Store within the next few hours.

 

[carguyfiles]

Late to this but the 300 mile thing is worth explaining because it bites everyone who builds this. Facebook's form won't take mileage under 300 on a used car. So when the scrape misses the odometer the code ends up with 0, the floor bumps it to 300, and every car posts with 300 miles. Haron your fix of "default to 300 if it's under 300" keeps that exact bug alive for every car where the scrape failed. Unknown mileage should stay blank and the post should fail loud, never a made up number. A buyer who drives out for a 300 mile car and finds 80k on the dash is a lead you lost and usually a report against the account.

Photos not attaching is almost always order and timing. CarGurus serves images off a CDN that checks the referer, and Facebook's uploader wants real files not urls, so you download first and then hand the files to the input in the right order or the hero shot ends up 7th.

On the ban comment, levin is right that form fillers are a gray area, but the bigger risk I've seen is pace. 40 cars in 20 minutes from a fresh account gets restricted. A human cadence from an account with history mostly does not. Nobody can promise zero bans though and anyone who does is selling you something.

Full disclosure I build AutoLander which does this whole workflow, so weigh my opinion with that in mind. The posting part is the easy part honestly. What dealers actually need after that is price changes flowing to the live listing, sold cars coming down the same day, and photos in a consistent order. That's where the hours actually go.

 

[Jignesh_TurboSell]

Late to this one, but it's the most useful thread on the topic here, so adding what we learned building the same thing.
The 300 miles thing isn't Haron's bug. Facebook's vehicle form won't accept mileage under 300 on a used car. A tool has two honest choices: show the dealer the real number and warn that Facebook will reject it, or floor it at 300 and say so. Silently posting 300 is what gets a rep an angry buyer.
Photos: Marketplace takes 20 per vehicle listing. Page and profile posts take up to 80. Feeding it more than that is the most common reason a batch "doesn't attach". Cap first, then upload.
Joe is right about where the value is. Getting a car onto Marketplace is the easy part. What dealers actually pay for is the car coming down the day it sells and the price following the website without anyone touching the listing. That's also where the account risk lives: a listing that says $18,900 while the site says $17,500 gets reported, and reports are what draw reviews, not volume by itself.
On cadence: the reps who never have trouble post the same handful of cars at the same time every evening from their own browser and their own login. The ones who get restricted dump 40 cars in ten minutes from a shared account. Any tool that lets you do the second thing will eventually cost you the account.
Disclosure: I'm with TurboSell. We make a Chrome extension that does this across the dealer's own website and about twenty listing sites (CarGurus included), posts to Marketplace, Pages and profiles from the rep's browser, and handles the sold/price sync above. Free to start, no card. Not here to sell it in Haron's thread; happy to compare notes on the CarGurus scraping side, which changes under you every few months.