Every transaction is different so its hard to judge a breeder off that... Seems you either have a good buy or a bad one. Sure you could have had a good buy with him and it worked out with no problems... I mean lets be honest people there really isnt much involved in a snake transaction... Well in my mind there isnt... You send the initial email of interest asking ??'s... most people request more pics... you SHOULD get all the information you asked and the pics you requested... after that its up to the buyer... they like they buy... Breeder packs em up nice and ships em out... There really shouldnt EVER be any problems... I do understand that from time to time unexpected things happen and things dont run as planned... thats allowed a couple times here n there... price of doing business... With that said when you business is know to have these things pop up all the time... you know its the business and not something unexpected...

Your reasons for buying locally are obv good reasons just remember sometimes that snake you want isnt available from a local breeder. I dont know about how you or anyone else buy but i decide ok i want this morph... i have x amount of dollars to spend... and i just plaster the market with intrest emails looking for pics... I want the best looking snake for my $$... Yes your local breeder may have a spider or whatever morph you want but are you 150% sure about the way it looks? In the end my lil schpeil is that online transactions can be just as smooth as face to face... and should be... maybe we should have a section on the forum with a list of QUALITY breeders... Like you have to earn so many votes to make the list or something?? Like Djansen said why do we have to search for a good breeder and do back round checks?? I think theres ways around that we just need to put our heads together ....