I wish Castanet was all over Canada

[phoenix 2000]

I am here for a few months only and have been so impressed with Castanet. In other places I have been people are stuck with Kijiji and it is more hassle than it's worth to try to find anything through all the paid ads and repeats. It's a mess.

The only question I have had is the curious absence of properties for sale here, if you click on that category you get Toronto or somewhere else, which seems odd to me. That's a VERY minor quibble about a website that seems to be very well managed and is certainly easy to navigate and doesn't clutter everything up with three times the individual posts with commercial posts and ads for everything under the sun starting with credit cards. Congratulations Castanet for actually serving your readers.
After all, if nobody ever posted stuff the commercial ads would dry up as well.

It's also nice that you delete stuff after a month instead instead of letting it hang around and mould. Altogether a great site and I would love to see you across Canada.

[Graham Adder]

Stick around and read daily. I promise your impressed stance will be changed forever.
The grammatical and factual errors I see daily are atrocious.
Just read on....you'll see.
I'm glad Castanet is not nation wide.
I wish a more professional site would kick up and bury this one, but so far all the competition has been equally lame.
In time...in time.

[underscore]

I found things quite the opposite, I was so happy to use Kijiji when I lived in Ontario briefly.

[phoenix 2000]

kijiji used to be slightly less chaotic than it is now. I find it now to be hugely frustrating as page after page the top half at least is filled with the exact same ads and the bottom quarter is filled with rotating commercial ads. If you look up travel trailers you are as likely to get horse or utility trailers as you are a travel trailer ad.

It's unfair to compare the sites for their news stories as kijiji makes no effort in that direction at all, they are strictly ads. I think there are lots of places you can get the news and think it's cool that at least Castanet tries, though that's not why I come here. Kijiji also doesn't have a forums section as Castanet does, it seems as though Castanet owners are trying to cover all the bases and perhaps they are stretched a little thin at times but kudos for trying. Kijiji doesn't try to do anything but bombard you with invitations to pay for the ads you post there and with paid commercial ads.

Especially given that this area seems to have an astonishing number of accidents for its size, I would think readers would be grateful for a head's up about accidents, road conditions, weather and so forth.

Kijiji makes no effort to do the least extra thing for their visitors. I have noted that the free/private ads are not as numerous there now as they used to be, AND Kijiji has now started to advertise on TV, so they must be noticing that people are not as involved with them as before. It's like the TV, after a while the commercials make it just not worth while.

I have been looking at Castanet since November and I am impressed with how much they try to service the community. If sometimes they miss the mark, well, so do we all. Kudos to them for having high ambitions and for trying to give back to the community instead of just trying to suck every last penny ( I suppose it would be nickel now) out of their visitors.

[kibbs]

When I first used castanet I started selling things I rebuilt to make ends meet .i then started to advertise my business here and it blew the yellow pages out of the water .Now I get to argue with out my brother interrupting. Thank you castanet you have helped make my life better . Everyone should have a castanet.

[Liquidnails]

The Castanet classifieds are great.

The forums can leave you wondering if there's intelligent life in the Okanagan.

[Nebula]

The forums can leave you wondering if there's intelligent life in the Okanagan.

I resemble that remark.

[Troy]

Thanks for the feedback - the positives and negatives. I'm going to sharing it with the rest of the staff.

Also, feel free to share your requests and complaints with me. I'll do what I can to help.

Troy

[Troy]

The only question I have had is the curious absence of properties for sale here, if you click on that category you get Toronto or somewhere else, which seems odd to me.

There are plenty of local properties for sale in our system. Just use the "Real Estate Listings Search" box along the right side of the real-estate pages. There are well over 1800 houses, 700+ condos, 350 townhomes, etc. Please let me know if you need any further assistance.

[kibbs]

I used to advertise in the buy and sell in ontario and the simcoe shopper,when i moved to kelowna nothing,free paper but ads were not cheap.Then the clouds parted and there was castanet aaaahhhhh!
There is nothing better than free ad space .When I could advertise my biz for free I was elevated to another level in life .
When it got too crowded and others bailed cause they charged I gladly forked over the measly 20 bucks. cha ching again for me again.
Now i have a social club and virtual museum on castanet .You might say im a fan .I always wondered why they did not merge . The other paper format is dead to me.Castanet should start buying up little paper media outlets nationally and converting and merging them with this format .Id love to share a thread with someone from out of the okamartian valley.
I also got a great deal on my last van from the castanet.It seems it s worth the drive to penticton for many things.

[Donald G]

To Phoenix 2000 ...

There is no doubt Castanet serves any number of useful purposes. But, in my opinion, if you were here for a bit longer and became familiar with our B.C. political situation ... especially the Castanet political comment strings ... you would find that there is a very distinct and identifiable political bias toward one particular party.

[good-cause-girl]

I love Castanet. I also cruise The Calgary Sun (they try and charge you for the service after viewing 20 stories), The Calgary Herald (not very user friendly online) and The Vancouver and Victoria Paper and by far Castanet is superior.

With Castanet you get to buy or sell anything, find a place to live, check 'cams' all over the place, see who died, read letters to the editor, check the flyers, get some funnies, mindlessly read and contribute to the forums and above all, it is easy to manouver around. It is extreemly convenient.
90% of what you need to start with is on the front page (nice) and the rest is only a click away.

It is free,,, I repeat,,,,,FREE!

Should we ever move from Kelowna I will want to find a 'one size fits all' online newspaper/news site just like it and if there is not one, I'd like to start one.

If you find anything wrong with the site or its content, they are more than willing to talk to you and/or change stuff. ( don't be rude and frivolous, that never gets anyone anywhere)

No matter where you get your news, someone is going to be offended, political veiws upset and no one will ever see eye to eye. Sometimes the story is to brief for some peoples' liking, but that might be all they were given. Sometimes they need people 'on the street' to contribute (like any news agency), as they are a bunch of humans and make mistakes and also can't be everywhere all the time.

If you don't like Castanet, why not hand them your resume, get onboard and show them how to do it. Or you could always go somewhere else for your news.

I would love to see Castanet-calgary, Castanet-victoria and most of all Castanet- PEI (I've always wanted to see that side of Canada, just for the cams of the storms)............... Hmmm

[underscore]

There are plenty of local properties for sale in our system. Just use the "Real Estate Listings Search" box along the right side of the real-estate pages. There are well over 1800 houses, 700+ condos, 350 townhomes, etc. Please let me know if you need any further assistance.

Does the map option actually work for anyone? I can never get it to work on any PC I use.

[Troy]

Does the map option actually work for anyone? I can never get it to work on any PC I use.

Thanks for letting me know. I'll check it out...

[Bsuds]

I get a nice clean white page with the number of houses found.

No map.