In praise of petsmart

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I have never had problems with PS fish... oh wait that is right the girl who worked there wouldnt sell me fish because the oscar eats fish so she would just sell me an Oscar and that is it.... I dont think so, I am not going to have a single Oscar in my 150gal so I just walked out...

I would say there fish are fine but there employees arent...
 
BushFishRox;1083540; said:
I have never had problems with PS fish... oh wait that is right the girl who worked there wouldnt sell me fish because the oscar eats fish so she would just sell me an Oscar and that is it.... I dont think so, I am not going to have a single Oscar in my 150gal so I just walked out...

I would say there fish are fine but there employees arent...
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depending on where you are, and what store it is. That's sort of the point of me starting this thread. It's not fair to claim that ALL Petsmart employees are jerks, or not knowledgeable about the fish. I think you have to view them as individual stores, not the chain as a whole.

I think people should say "my local Petsmart sucks". Not "Petsmart sucks". For a big box chain, they're actually pretty good. I would also say that the chain as a whole is actually better than some local mom and pop shops.

my $0.02
 
My petsmart is like this:
Employees: Uneducated when it comes to fish.
Fish: Actually surprisingly decent. The CARE of the fish is up to par (like, they to do alot of water changes on the tanks, like 3 or 4 times a week). The selection isn't that bad, and sometimes you can score pretty big at my petsmart by working the ignorance of the employees. I go in for alot of supplies and more than once I've spotted mislabeled fish and got them for really cheap (ie, I bought a Jag for $1.50 because it was in a "mixed african cichlid" tank. I sold the Jag to a "real" LFS for $8).

Supplies: Yep, I go to PetSmart constantly for supplies. Price Matches can't be beat, and if I bring in a print-off of BigAls or Dr. Fosters and Smith, I get big $$$ off without Shipping Charges and without the wait of online. So there ya go. Employees bad, fish ok, supplies good.
 
wizzin;1083556; said:
depending on where you are, and what store it is. That's sort of the point of me starting this thread. It's not fair to claim that ALL Petsmart employees are jerks, or not knowledgeable about the fish. I think you have to view them as individual stores, not the chain as a whole.

I think people should say "my local Petsmart sucks". Not "Petsmart sucks". For a big box chain, they're actually pretty good. I would also say that the chain as a whole is actually better than some local mom and pop shops.

my $0.02
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well because of that I started shopping at a local Super Pet which was awesome, fish and employees. Now Pet Smart has bought them, tanks are a little dirtier now, and all the cool staff either quit or was fired... and now they have a few women who keep fish but dont actually know much about them, trying to tell me an apollo shark grows to 1.5' with her hands...
 
wizzin;1083531; said:
yeah, I've actually had worse luck with the stock I've bought from the most popular LFS in Pittsburgh than the local Petsmart. Like the Ramerizi pair I just bought a few weeks ago that turned out to have parasites. WC my ***..
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Most wild caught fish have parasites, they need to be treated when brought in from the wild.
 
reverse;1083595; said:
Most wild caught fish have parasites, they need to be treated when brought in from the wild.
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true. I did q't them and I did treat with jungle, but no luck. :( I guess it's not fair to put rams in with the mix since they're so prone to DIE. :irked:

Point of all this is that not all Petsmart stores are bad, and what most people are experiencing are bad employees, not the store as a business. What do we expect? We want cheap cheap cheap, so they don't make HUGE profit and ergo have to hire CHEAP labor. We expect that Petsmart hire only Marine Biologists for employees, and then expect to still pay cheap prices on the fish/equipment? Doesn't make sense. Lets face it, most if not all of the Petsmart employees are there for a temp job. It's not a career place after all (except for this one lady at the one I go to. :screwy: ). It's just funny that we expect so much from these employees. I mean, they only carry about 250 different species, all with specific needs and different sizes etc. You want some high school kid making $7.50 an hour to know what each and every one of the details of every species they carry? C'mon people. It's a cheap pet store. Deal with it.
 
well super pet used to hire knowledgeable people, Doug the old fish manager is now at big al's I was told...

so if you know your stuff about fish then you can make it a career and make decent money at it too...
 
We have a petsmart here in boise,from your posts i'm intrigued, maybe i'll go visit and see what they are like.
 
I don't really see how its an employees fault for customer ignorance.

They are just dong their job... which is basically feed the fish occasionally, get rid of the dead ones, bag fish when told what the customer wants, right down the fish price on bag, say "have a nice day" and move on.
 
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