[quote=weberlin]San Diego CL sucks compared to SF/Bay CL. I’ve lost count of the number of missed appts I’ve wasted my time with trying to sell/rent/do stuff on San Diego CL.
*sigh* I miss the Bay Area.[/quote]
weberlin, as you know it’s not craigslist that’s the culprit here – it’s the people who run ads and respond.
craiglist started in SF and I believe there is a higher level of trust doing business on it there. I can’t even count the number of times my kid who lives in SF has bought furn., airline tix, ski-lift tix, concert tix (bought & sold), textbooks and all kinds of other necessities, meeting persons at a street corner, coffee shop or their house to do biz or I pay thru paypal while they’re meeting the seller and booking their trip.
I also believe a higher percentage of people there have paypal accts and are active resellers on auction sites.
I find any kind of internet ads I see from there are generally posted by more reputable sellers than ones I see from here.
Take pets for example.
Throughout the eighties, my ex-spouse and I raised cats and I had a registered cattery. So I KNOW what it takes to be a reputable breeder. There are a FEW reputable breeders in No. County SD but they CHARGE $850 and up for a puppy and $600 up for a kitten, reserved in advance. Since I know what kind of work and how much $$ it takes to raise a kitten or puppy to adulthood, I was not interested in acquiring one.
Nearly all the craigslist ads in SD are puppy/kitten mills from MX who are peddling thousands of diseased and inbred animals out of SD County parking lots or private (south or east county) garages (with fake papers or no papers). These animals usually end up having a multitude of health issues throughout their lives. I feel so sorry for friends and aquaintances who have purchased these animals, only to have them get sick and die young. Most of all, I feel sorry for the animals.
In the past six years, just dealing with cat breeders I’ve previously shown with and a very reputable dog breeder (all 500-700 mi. away in NoCal), I was able to acquire gorgeous and well-bred young adults (2-3 yrs. old), granded and retired from the show circuit, spayed/neutered and with limited registration for a fraction of the SD cost simply because the breeder elected not to use them in their breeding program. FWIW, one of my pets was a regional winner in SF Bay, competing in five states.
I won’t adopt a shelter or other homeless animal, NOT because they aren’t good pets, but because I can’t shoulder huge vet costs, given my situation. Vet costs are now 6-8x what they were when I was raising cats and a catastrophic vet bill would just wipe me out.
weberlin, I think we have to deal with the MX issue here in SD County in all the “underground” and second-hand trading we do here. SFbay does not. And there are many more pockets of well-established individuals and families (with many holdings) than there are here, just by virtue of its size and amount of businesses and jobs. Besides obvious geographical differences, that’s the main difference between SD County and SFBay, IMO.
I am from Alameda County and will most likely be headed back up that way to retire (not sure exactly where yet) in 4-6 years after living in SD County 40 years.
