That is just fear of the unknown. It's never the big scary boogie man people make it out to be. You want to buy something that someone else wants to sell. You both understand what it is worth and you don't want to deal with mailing, waiting on fees and other nonsense to process, and waiting 30 days for payment. It is instantaneous and 90 percent of the time, Craigslist transactions are as smooth as butter.
Indeed. Usually I meet Craigslist buyers/sellers at a nearby coffee shop that gets a lot of business. There's no way anything bad could happen to me there.
I've actually met a number of interesting people buying and selling stuff via Craigslist at this location and we've ended up chatting over coffee for an hour or so before going our separate ways. I feel bad for anybody who isn't open to this sort of experience.