Whats your worst online vendor experience?

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A few years back I ordered some adult sterbai cories from a guy who said he knew how to ship fish perfectly.

I ended up with a literally dripping and soaked box. He had bagged the cories two or three to a bag, small bags, and most of them were DOAs. The few that survived died in quarantine. The seller apologized vaguely but implied if I had gotten the box sooner it wouldn't have happened. No, really? Your packing had nothing to do with it?

I will name a vendor because most everyone I know in AZ has had problems with them: AZ Aquatic Gardens. I was stupid and some time back, I saw what was labeled as Black Forest Shrimp on their site. I wanted those shrimp. I'd pay good money to get them, and some cory hastatus, so hard to find otherwise! I ignored the No Local Pickup signs and ordered the shrimp and fish, delivery to my part of AZ.

When I got the box, the shrimp looked nothing like the picture; they were low-grade black crystal shrimp. All dead. Floating with netting INSIDE the bag. AAG said that the netting was what they used instead of moss for the shrimp to hang onto. The cories were all dying or dead when the box was opened. I called them right away, offered to send pictures within the hour, and I got a very 'eh' reply. They offered to resend the same animals again, as long as I paid for overnight shipping. I apparently made enough of a stink that they got it through their head I wanted a refund, and to this day refuse to take me off the mailing list.

Sad because if you look at their web site, they look legit and great. But buyer beware.
 
The only bad experience I can recall other than a vendor sending me a smaller than expected fish was when I sent a fish to another member and UPS lost the shipping package.


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I can't speak for other vendors, but I always try to make it right if something turns out wrong. I recently screwed up and had some sizes wrong on fish I sold. I gave a partial refund and the customer was happy. That said, some people cannot be satisfied once they have a negative experience. That is totally their right, sometimes things go wrong. Maybe it is the fault of an airline (it happened to me this week on fish I shipped to our farm), maybe the fault was ours, maybe the customers, but no matter what at some point you will lose fish or make a mistake. One thing to keep in mind is that the dealer you are working with is by no means growing wealthy at your expense. Keep a cool head and most dealers will be reasonable.


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docturtle91b said:
+1

But since the op would rather we didnt I'll respect that and just say that a certain large reptile company out of Florida that I used to do business with on a fairly regular basis (once every two to three months due to my job) has had their quality drop off to a large degree both in customer service as well as healthy animals to the point that I will not even order from them. I've had problems such as getting the wrong shipment several times (one time a box full of HOT inverts when I was expecting turtles), multiple doas, sickly animals covered with parasites (ticks and mites), horrible packing (frozen food with live reptiles/inverts), with an ever worsening attitude from customer service when there is a problem. Now when they first started out they were great and in full disclosure I haven't gotten anything from them since 2008 since that was such a horrible experience. So maybe they have improved since then but I'm not willing to risk it.
Click to expand...

Just wondering, did that company happen to have a show on discovery channel, ive considered buying reptiles from them.

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Its been pretty interesting reading about all the stories! I have been on both sides of the "tank" for this one. I shipped a lot of fish and I bought a lot of fish. I couldnt agree more with Bluegrasscichlids!! I had a customer once tell me he wanted me to ship priority mail to a military base across the country. I let him know I was very familiar with military mail and it's often very slow. I didn't want to risk it, but he confinced me. Needless to say, after a week his fish were DOA. He slammed me on forums saying I was a terrible seller and I only ship DOA fish. I refunded half the money, but that wasn't good enough for him. I

I have also bought saltwater items online. After hours of picking out exactly what I wanted, I sent him an email asking him to have the package left on my porch incase I had to work late. He of course did not do that, when I got home the post office was closed. I picked up the box the next morning, it was wrapped in a bag because it was dripping wet. Everything was DOA, and many of the crabs were empty shells. I sent him an email within 1 hour, but he said since I wasnt home for the delivery, all DOA policies were void. To this day I will never spend a penny with that guy.
 
I had one vendor send me a poorly-bagged (leaky), ich-ridden mormyid at one point. It was funny still getting emails from him and being in his email-blast group after that experience.

Perhaps a worse experience (although with more positive results) came when I ordered 2 endangered (aquarium bred recently) paratilapia from Texas. The vendor in this case actually did an incredible job packing the fish, but UPS lost the package for THREE DAYS. I kept calling them asking for updates and telling them they were going to be responsible for killing two critically endangered fish, but they had nothing for me the first two days.

On day 3 (the fish had been in the mail for 3 days at this point, during the dead of NYC winter) I get a call saying that they'd tracked down my package and I should have it shortly. I thanked the woman but explained to her how depressing it would be to open a probably soggy box of dead fish I'd been waiting for. The package showed up later that day and amazingly both paratilapia were alive! One of them was sort of swimming on his side barely, and I almost didn't bother even putting him in the tank, but once he was acclimated he completely recovered, and is now possibly my most robust fish.

If they hadn't been so well packaged (awesome vendor!) in those little O2 in CO2 out bags I doubt they'd have survived.
 
I bought from a vendor here and the two expensive pikes I bought died before they were shipped and the vendor didn't want to give my money back...just store credit but I did not want any other fish they had...a month latter and with the help of another vendor, I got my money, but never again!!!!!!
 
i paid 300 dollars for a fish and later to find out that on here the same vendor sells them for 200 and it was a vittatus tiger fish not a goliath.. i was so mad! so it was almost like a double loss
 
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