NEVER GO TO PETCO!!! PICTURES!

sharkfinsean

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Dec 14, 2012
69
0
6
25
Baltimore, MD
Hello,
I have been in the hobby for almost a year now. I have a 29 gallon reef tank with some Zoas, Palys and ricordias as well as 2 clownfish. I would like share with you what I have experienced at Petco in the past year. The closest pet store to where I live is a Petco and for my first fish, I go to Petco and purchase 2 Ocellaris Clowns and within a week of having them, one of them gets ich. I frantically go out and buy some medicine and a hospital tank and after 2 days of treatment I lose my clownfish and in the next couple months, the 2nd clownfish swims into the back of the tank and dies. I buy 2 more clownfish from Rick's Fish & Pet in Frederick, MD and I have both of them right now, they are happy and healthy. In November, I go back to Petco and I purchase a Flame Angelfish, which contracts ich within 2 days of having it and again I set up the hospital tank and put in the medicine and after 3 days of what seemed like progress, she was swimming upside down and laying down on the bottom of the tank. I go to Petco that morning to talk to the manager about the sick fish he had sold me, he tells me that the ich is my fault and pretty much called me a lair after I had informed him he had sold me a sick fish (ich is in the fish for a few days before you start to see symptoms). So I go back home and I check on my Flame angel and she is dead. Fed up, I call Petco's customer service hotline and I talked to the first guy for about 3 minutes before he transfers me to his supervisor and after like 5 minutes with this person, I am transferred to the next supervisor and after a couple more minutes of talking to this guy, he tells me he will contact his supervisor so he can help me and call me back, he confirms my phone number and says his boss will call me back in 15 minutes. Needless to say I never got a call back and I asked my father to help me to compose a letter to Ms. Razia Ritcher, the Senior Vice President & Chief Customer Champion. After a week of no reply, I get an email with a $60 dollar egift card attached, with no apology or anything to say what it was for and somehow, the store contacted my father and said that I get a free Flame Angel. Petco gets their shipments on Fridays and they don't ship a Flame Angel for 2 weeks and when they finally got the shipment, we had to call them to find out what was in their shipment and I had track practice so my dad had to go pick it up and the manager never apologized for offending me. On Sunday my mom went to the food store right next to Petco and because my little sister loves hamsters and I love fish I offer to take her into Petco. That was the worst visit to Petco I have had to date, first off, I was never greeted, next I saw possibly the most neglected tanks I had ever seen, I see their entire marine fish system smothered in algae and dead and sick fish, I counted 4 dead fish in one tank, these fish were being consumed by one of the Chocolate chip stars, these fish must have been there for a couple of days. So I take out my phone to take pictures of the tanks so I can try to resolve this issue with the customer service hotline but as I am doing this, the employee whom hasn't spoke to me up until this point (I have been here for a good 30 minutes and still have not been greeted or helped), she raised her voice and with an attitude said "You can't take pictures in here". Here are the pics:petco pics 2.jpgpetco pics.jpg

So I stopped and as my mom walks in, my little sister runs to my mom to get her phone to take pictures of the Glofish because she really liked them and again with a way worse attitude then she gave me she told my sister the same thing. We walked out without saying anything else, as soon as I got home, I called the Hotline and after being transferred AGAIN, I inform the man of what happened and I sent him the pictures by email and asked for him to inform me what happened when it does, he said he would have someone sent out to investigate and I haven't heard anything from him since. And if you have read this far, I would like fr you to do me a favor, tellt his story to everyone you know and never shop at Petco for any pet, please use any other store that sells reliable fish or other pet products, these employees don't care about little children, please never give these people another dime.
Thanks for reading
~Sean

petco pics 2.jpg

petco pics.jpg
 

Daonni

Gambusia
MFK Member
Dec 5, 2012
331
1
18
58
nh
Petco can suck, but so can any store, usually a management problem. Don't you have a lfs? I am fortunate our petsmart is ok. In the future check fish really close prior to buying.

Sent from my LG-L38C using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 

festaedan

Piranha
MFK Member
Jul 25, 2013
2,234
230
81
22
Maryland
I agree, Petco sucks! The customer service is terrible.
One time I went to petco to buy a 29 gallon tank during their $1-a-gallon sale. Out of curiosity I go around to the back of the store where they keep their live fish. In one tank they had some "green terrors". They where low quality thoricthys hybrids. I counted 3 dead ones in the tank, 1 of them was covered in a white fluffy fungus. I go to check out the oscars, 5 dead ones in the tank. I saw lots of diseases and deformities, one of the oscar's pupils where so tiny I could barely see them. He would constantly shake his head and swim into the walls of the tank. The rest of the oscars all has ich. The koi where even worse. On almost all of the koi their scales seemed to be peeling off. They where obviously extremely underfed, all of their stomaches where becoming concave. One of them was even missing his tail and couldnt swim straight. The tank had 4 dead ones. All of the dead ones where being eaten by the live ones. I move over to the tetras. They all had extreme cases of ich. I told one of the people working there that they had a disease. They said it was normal.

Long story short, never shop at Petsmart.
 

sharkfinsean

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Dec 14, 2012
69
0
6
25
Baltimore, MD
I live in Westminster, when is the dollar a gallon sale, as I said, I have a 60 dollar gift card there and I haven't used it yet
 

charles-n-charge

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Aug 28, 2010
1,644
3
68
Livingston Tx
You can't really base your opinion of such a large company on just a handful of stores. Petco, like many large company's, has hundreds, even thousands, of locations that they do business out of. Every store, crew, management team, and location is going to be completely different; meaning that some stores will be fantastic, while others fall behind.

It's ok to say that you dislike that particular store, but not so much to say that you dislike the company as a whole.


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
 

FuriousFish

Piranha
MFK Member
Jan 8, 2012
2,427
98
81
America
So you're about 45 mins from House of Tropicals...

Petco, Petsmart...seriously what do you expect?

Matt
House of tropics is the bomb diggity the iwner actually cares... Last time i went i got my baby jaguar cichlid and it started not doing well in the car so when i brought it back he HAPPILY exchanged it and put the original in a special hospital tank...


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
 
zoomed.com
hikariusa.com
aqaimports.com
Store