With the new facebook Timeline, can we send private messages to non-friends?

[iamthejan]

We have a neighborhood "yard sale" page where we buy & sell within the neighborhood. When someone posted who already had the fb "Timeline" profile, we found we could not go to her page and send her a message (w/ personal contact info for the sale). Is there a way to send messages to people who are not on your friends list, or did fb F this up? It creates all kinds of problems when trying to contact people you might know or want to be friends with, before taking the plunge into full-out "friendness".
This is the newest fb profile. There is no "send message" option/button on the page. Just a whole mess of photos mainly.

[Emiley]

I should say next to 'Add friend'?

[Jony]

Yeah you can send, but if the person will allow that and open message button in his profile.

[Monika]

if she has set message status as "only friends" or" friends of friends" can send message then you won't be able to contact her. .

[abraXus]

either you are looking at a fan page (there is no message button on a fan page) or the person has disabled the message feature (you can do that under privacy settings)