Over the last 6 years, Midwest Pet Finder has made several changes to policies, in order to keep our site safe, fresh, and fun. We have gone above and beyond to provide informational pages that teach sellers how to market better, inform the public on scammers, bring issues of abuse to attention, and more. 

We are finding that we are getting closer to these goals, more and more, everyday.

Scammers 

We are proud to say, that no scam ad has ever gotten on our site. Any suspicious ad goes through a couple of searches, to verify the lister:

• We run the IP Address to find the Origin of the seller.
• We check the e-mail address on all 4 of the Major search engines.

Most of the time, the IP Address is enough. It will almost always come up Nigerian. When it isn’t, the e-mail address often uncovers ads throughout the web, claiming to be from several different states around the country.

We have e-mails forwarded to us from all over the world. We have looked into the sites that they come from most, and decided that the biggest factor, is the ease of contacting sellers. Many sites list in a format that has e-mail addresses stacked all the way down the page. It is simple for the scammers to just go down the list contacting people. On our site, each ad has its own page. This means they have to open each ad, one at a time, and then contact. This seems to have slowed down the scam e-mails quite a bit. We rarely get them forwarded from our own customers anymore.

Stale or Invalid Ads

At some sites, you will sift through hundreds of ads. Many are old, and probably invalid. Some are marked “sold”. This gets very frustrating. If the animal is sold, get the ad off the page, so an animal that is available can move up, right?

Midwest Pet Finder strictly enforces updating of ads, and does not allow marking an ad “sold”. Through the course of this process, we have also managed to eliminate some of those “in it for the money” sellers. This kind of seller does not want to keep tabs on their ads. They list any, and everywhere, and have no pride in their animals. They ultimately get frustrated with having to update, and go somewhere else.

Leaving you the buyer, with quality ads, and sellers! 

Honest Sellers?

Some of our policies are designed, in part, to gauge the character of a seller. In our research we have found that the standard newspaper ad, that runs for 7 days, can be anywhere from $30.00 – $330.00. Our Classic ad runs until the animal or litter is sold, has a large photo (that in many cases we touch up for you), tips on making your ad sell better, and costs only $8.00.

So, it is not unreasonable that we would ask that you only run one animal, or litter per ad. But you would be surprised by the number of sellers who will try to get around that rule. Multiple offenses will get a seller banned from our site, and has. It is our own theory, that if you will be dishonest over $8.00, we don’t want to know what you would be motivated to do, for more than $100.00. And we certainly don’t want our shoppers to have to find out either.

As of today, I feel I can honestly say, at least 85% of the advertisers in the classifieds are good, honest breeders. I have dealt with them for years. They are always honest in their ads, have never had a shopper complaint, keep their ads current on their own, and are all around nice people to e-mail with occasionally. Thank you to those sellers!! You are the ones who keep this site going. Most of the rest are new sellers. We hope to see great things from them as well.

Quality vs. Quantity 

If I ran this site like the others, I would be probably be making pretty good money by now. But in these times of dishonest people, skyrocketing prices, and lower quality merchandise, I just wanted to do something that was better.

Some days, I just want to fold it up. And then a new customer will come in, and be very excited to get started, and it is all worth it again. Or, an existing customer will drop a random note of thanks, and after I clear the tear, I kick myself for even thinking about quitting.

Others tell me to raise the price for my services. But I don’t want to do that. I need to believe that there are enough honest people, who love animals the way I do, to make this site earn even a modest living. If not, I will get by with what I have. And be happy that I have found as many as I have. And do my best to keep sharing these people, with you, the shoppers of Midwest Pet Finder.

Happy Shopping!

Layla + Laurie – www.midwestpetfinder.com