I agree with what Phoenix said. I post on craigslist as well, especially when I have rescues, but typically I don't sell to the people who contact me through there. At least by me, people seem to think that because it's craiglist, everything should be either free, or a few dollars from it. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand the meaning of "small rehoming fee," or selling chins as livestock in the appropriate section...but people here want something for nothing.
Not to mention, the craigslist people around here lie through their teeth. I once got people emailing me saying "oh well we can get our chinchilla from the humane society for $25, but we thought we'd rather get a pedigreed baby from you so we can breed it later on, can we get that for $25? We'd really like that." I bet they would. The best part is, there is not a humane society in the area that will let you leave with a chinchilla for $25.
And of course that's not the only instance -- I was selling a large ferret cage last week. Had it listed for $55, figuring I could go down to like $50 or $45... and I had someone email me saying "oh there's 3 more ads for the exact same cage as yours and they're all $50, so can you go down to $50?" Now, that's fine, and I did, and they bought the cage. But I was sitting at my computer at the moment I got that email...and not only was there not three ads for the same exact cage for $50.... I couldn't find a SINGLE other ad for even a similar-sized cage for $50.
Not to mention, craigslist idiots get the pet first, cage later, so 90% of them expect you to rush home from whatever you're doing so they can pick up their new chinchilla cage, cause they bought the chinchilla first (without a cage) and didn't put any thought into what they were going to do with the chinchilla when they got it home...and now they're scrambling.
I get a lot of people that see my ads and ask if they can have everything for free because their son has cancer, it's their wife's birthday, yadda yadda.... I get the feeling that a lot of people think that with some sob story you'll just hand them whatever they want. I mean, in my life, I've had to work for what I want, is reality different for some people? At one point I was selling two chins and a cage for $150... I had someone tell me a story bout how their 6 month old chinchilla died some horrific death (can't think of what it was now), and how they'd really appreciate if I could give them the chins and entire setup free, so the guy could surprise his wife with two new chins. Um... if you killed the first one in 4 months, even accidentally, you're not getting any of my chins, especially not free...
IMO craigslist people are often not worth the patience it takes. I put pictures on all of my ads because I know, personally, I'm more likely to look at an ad with pictures... I'll get an email saying hey can you email me pictures.. it's like did you even LOOK at the ad? Typically whatever I'm selling isn't going to require macro pictures from this_far away...
Course, my craigslist ads are also a page long, actually say the dimensions of the cage, the colors, how "used" it is, this and that... so they're not "cage for sale, call the following number." Which also makes me think some people don't read them. Which is fine, but I personally would rather get a pet or a cage or something from someone who posts all the information ahead of time, because those ads that are like "puppies for sale for $50" (and that's it) I imagine get a lot of fruitless emails asking what breed of puppy. I try to avoid that by posting long ads with a lot of information, so that the only people emailing me are ones that aren't asking stupid questions and wasting my time.
All that said, I've met some great people through craiglist. The people who adopted our $1000-in-vet-bills-rescue-chin came from craigslist, and I think they are the best chin-parents anyone could ask for, and with craigslist, I think it's often the case that you really have to weed through the annoying rhinestones to find the diamond.
Wow, that's a book. Sorry.
