ThatWeirdGeckoGuy
Member
So, I really wish I didn’t need to come here to file a bad post, but I don’t think I’m doing right by the hobby in keeping my mouth shut about this. June 2009 (16 months ago, for those keeping track) was the Super show in California the Gekkoni Day gecko symposium was attached to. It was a great show, and there was a great sense of camaraderie among the attendees. I met Kyle Van De Veer there, someone whom I had never done business with before, but had spoken to online and seen as an online presence for a while (We’re all familiar with this, no?). Kyle had been posting Pachydactylus rangei for sale online, and I asked him if he was interested in doing a trade for a pair or some juveniles. He looked at what I had, and asked about trading for Repashy superfood and crested geckos. We agreed upon 3 64oz bags of diet and 15 crested gecko babies (my choice of which animals went). In exchange, Kyle was to provide me with 0.0.3 juveniles in July 2009, once they were ready to ship. For those of you that are doing the math, That’s $150 in diet, trading at retail, and crested were wholesaling at the Super show at $15 to $18 each. The Pachydactylus rangei were selling at the show for about $100 to $125 each.
Anyway, fast forward to July, 2009 (15 months ago, for those of you keeping track). No rangei. Also, no Kyle. First, he didn’t answer his phone. Then, it was off. Then, temporarily disconnected. Back on, and so on and so fourth. Kyle also did not respond to emails, private messages on forums, or facebook messages. To be honest, I thought something bad had happened to him, I did not think he was scamming me. Previously, he had been a regular poster of for sale adds on the Pangea forum, and he wasn’t doing that either.
Fast forward to September 2009 (13 months ago for those keeping track). Kyle starts posting adds on Pangea, and he’s has rangei in the adds. I keep PMing him, asking for my rangei. He keeps telling me that he doesn’t have the money to ship them, but if I’ll send him $50 for shipping, he’ll get my animals out. I tell him, you send me the animals, and when they arrive, I’ll send you the shipping costs, if he provided me with the receipt. He did not have the money for that, apparently, nor could he borrow it for the one day it takes to send a shipment. So, when he starts marking adds as sold, I instantly PM him and say, you just sold animals, you have money, send me my stuff. This goes back and fourth, until August 2010. That’s 11 months of the same song and dance, and I know I should have come here much, much sooner, but Kyle was giving me the sob story of how he had no money, and was moving, and as someone who has been broke, I felt for him, He was very, very convincing.
August, 2010. I finally get Kyle on the phone after the treat of BOI posting and calling the police. Again, I hear the story of no money, moving, etc.. No one moves for 11 months. He also told me he was having a hard time finding crickets, because of the cricket disease going around. Then, he tells me he is getting out of geckos. So, Kyle and I agree he will send me the geckos he owes me, the geckos he owes my friend John, and another 40+ geckos, so I can help him out in selling them. The agreement was, send me my stuff (which is now 1.4 tigrinus, not 0.0.3 rangei), Johns stuff, and extra stuff you want to sell, and I will house it, feed it, and care for it for the next 7 weeks until the NARBC Tinley show. Once again, I understand being down on your luck, and I am trying to help Kyle out.
Kyle and I sit down on the phone to discuss what he is going to send me, and, counting my geckos, the geckos for my friend, and the geckos I am going to bring to the show, we hit 53 geckos. I tell Kyle it’s no problem, I have enough cages to house all of them, as long as they’re desert species. We go down the list of what he’s sending me, and guess what’s on the list of stuff he wants me to sell? Rangei. I question him on this, and he says it’s 1.1.1, and that an adult pair is worth more than what he owes me. This is true, but for all I know, this 1.1 came from the babies I was supposed to get almost a year and a half prior. However, I am a man of my word, I agreed to take the tigrinus (which basically means I paid $300+ for 1.0 tigrinus, because females are a dime a dozen), and he was imploring me to try and sell the rangei, since they were the most likely species to sell, and he was really hurting for cash. He then tells me I should keep the trio of P. ressei if I want to balance out the deal, a species I have no interest in. We work out what the retail price of the geckos should be, and what he wants out of them. It comes out to about half or retail, which I think is a fair price, considering I will be housing and feeding these animals for over 6 weeks. We also agree that I will either A) pay for the return shipping out of his money, or B) pay for the return shipping out of pocket, and he will give me gecko credit from the box.
Then, the weeks start to go by.
Kyle, where are the animals?
Kyle, where are you?
Nick, why haven’t you posted adds like you said you were going to when I gave you the list of animals I was going to send?
Kyle, I cannot and will not post animals for sale I do not have in my possession. I need to see them and know they are healthy before I stamp my name on them by selling them.
12 days before Tinley, Kyle asks when he can ship, after another threat of BOI and police. I say you can ship for Tuesday or Wednesday arrival. He commits to Tuesday. No box. He commits to Wednesday, something came up. No box. He calls and says he’s going to ship them now. I won’t be home Thursday, so he ships them to a friends house (the same friend he owes geckos to), someone whose been keeping geckos longer than I have, and who I have literally trusted with my entire collection while I have been gone, sometimes for weeks at a time.
After the box is airborne, he informs us that he expects a few geckos to be DOA, and that since he hasn’t been able to get crickets, he’s been chopping up worms, and buying a few hundred crickets from petco when he can. (We’ll ignore that if he can afford a few hundred petco crickets, he could afford shipping). WHAT? Worms. For Pachydactylus? Are you serious? He also tells me that all of his cages are already in storage, and he can’t take any of the geckos back, but it’s OK, we’ll work out a good wholesale price for the group of them. No we will not, and how long have these geckos been cupped up? With business practices like this, I do not believe there were cupped up yesterday, and all the cages put in storage, the same day.
So, the box arrives, and there are, as expected, DOA animals. What was not mentioned is the deplorable condition of the rest of the animals. Animals missing feet, animals that tried to regenerate tails but did not have the nutrients to do so, animals that cannot walk. Some of the cups had old feces in them, but even worse, many did not. These geckos, in my opinion, were obviously living in these cups a while. I had a 1.3 group of tigrinus sitting in the palm of my hand (one died before he shipped, but he ‘forgot’ to tell me.), and I was poking them with my finger. None even tried to run away, and anyone who knows these geckos knows that is BAD. I call Kyle, no answer, I text Kyle, no answer. I send him a picture of a handful of dead Pachydactylus, no answer. I cannot and will not offer these geckos for sale, and only by telling Kyle that do I get a response. He informs me that we had a deal, and that I agreed to sell his stuff and put it on my table. I ask him if he remembers our conversation when I asked what condition the animals were in, and he says yes. I ask him what rating he had given them on the phone. He says B (on the phone he had said B+). Maybe there is a disconnect somewhere, but I don’t consider a gecko with a broken spine that drags its back legs around a B grade animal. To me, that is an F grade animal that I would euthanize if I owned it.
So, my 1.4 P. tigrinus and 1.2 ‘bonus’ P. ressei arrive as a 1.3 P. tigrinus and a 1.2 P. ressei, and maybe 10 out of the 50+ animals look decent. None look good. I tell him I don’t think the tigrinus are going to live, and that I absolutely do not consider them to be worth the $300. He says we’ll work it out later, after we see what sells. I tell him nothing will sell because nothing is going out on my table in this condition.
I vend Tinley, with none of Kyle’s geckos on the table. I offer them to other vendors and experiences Pachydactylus keepers, with full disclosure on what the story on them is, and with a 100% guarantee of no guarantee, with 100% buyer beware. I sell nothing. As the show goes on, Kyle calls me constantly. When I make a post online ‘incorrectly,’ he calls me within 20 minutes. I tell him I want to complete the deal, send his stuff back, and be done with him.
No answer from Kyle, no date on when to send his stuff back, or where to send it to. I was supposed to stay in Chicago for a week, and vacation in my home town. I left my vacation early so I could get these geckos home, set up, warmed up, and fed. Surprise, surprise, most won’t eat. Every animal that has died has been left on Kyle’s voicemail as soon as I find it (While he calls me, he doesn’t answer any of my calls). I have another show the next weekend, and it’s the same deal. I bring them, under the table, buyer beware, all that jazz. I sell one pair of geckos for Kyle, to someone fully aware of the risks in these geckos, even at half off retail (I sold them at what Kyle wanted out of them and made $0). I tell Kyle I need an address, that I want the animals to go back to him. No answer. I go to set the animals up in cages, wondering how long I’ll be holding them before he takes them back. A mite is on my hand. I move those geckos to another room. I unpack more geckos. Another mite. Then, another.
I call Kyle and leave a voicemail saying I am shipping his stuff back to his mothers house (the original sending address, and I am shipping them on Monday for Tuesday arrival. I tell him they have mites, and that I will not risk keeping them at my house any longer than I have to. I also tell him that we need to work out what I am keeping, as the tigrinus are now a 0.2 group, which is worth about $60. When I wake up Monday morning, I have a voicemail from Kyle saying he got the mites when he bought geckos from my friend at the supershow we met at. So, you’ve known about mites since June 2009, it’s now October 2010, and there still an issue? I call him and tell him we need to work out what I am keeping, and he says, ‘Whatever.’ I say, “Well, if it’s whatever, I’m keeping the 1.1 rangei, the species you promised me when the deal was made.” He says there not a fair trade, that the rangei are worth $450. I say that $450 is top dollar for an A+ pair or rangei, not a pair where when I told him the male was thin, he said the male is the easy one to replace anyway. He knew the rangei male was thin, and told me he’d thrown more crickets to the female to make sure she lived. I say fine, then I’ll just keep the female. He agrees to that, then says, “You know what, just keep the male, he probably won’t survive shipping back anyways.” What a great keeper.
I get the box shipped, and Kyle now what’s to change things. He says he can’t take all these animals back, and that he feels like I cheated HIM, and that he wants me to next day ship him all of the dead animals. When I tell him I don’t have them, and that he’d told me to throw them away when I told him about them, he tells me he changed his mind. I cannot go back in time and un-throw them away, so we are at an impasse. Then, he hangs up on me. I leave the house with my GF to take the dog for a walk, and I come back inside to 3 missed calls from Kyle, with crazy demands on my voicemail. My favorite being that I killed the tigrinus on purpose, so those were my trade, I gave the ressei back when he’d given them to me (as an unwanted gift), and that was my ‘bonus,’ but I gave those back too, so he wanted me to pay $450 for the rangei. “Kyle, you agreed this morning that the rangei were a fair trade when we were on the phone.” “Dude, I need the money.” I need the money does not mean you can screw someone over.
I am so disgusted with this whole deal, and one of the hardest things to do was send back animals I know are sentenced to death in this guys care.
Anyway, fast forward to July, 2009 (15 months ago, for those of you keeping track). No rangei. Also, no Kyle. First, he didn’t answer his phone. Then, it was off. Then, temporarily disconnected. Back on, and so on and so fourth. Kyle also did not respond to emails, private messages on forums, or facebook messages. To be honest, I thought something bad had happened to him, I did not think he was scamming me. Previously, he had been a regular poster of for sale adds on the Pangea forum, and he wasn’t doing that either.
Fast forward to September 2009 (13 months ago for those keeping track). Kyle starts posting adds on Pangea, and he’s has rangei in the adds. I keep PMing him, asking for my rangei. He keeps telling me that he doesn’t have the money to ship them, but if I’ll send him $50 for shipping, he’ll get my animals out. I tell him, you send me the animals, and when they arrive, I’ll send you the shipping costs, if he provided me with the receipt. He did not have the money for that, apparently, nor could he borrow it for the one day it takes to send a shipment. So, when he starts marking adds as sold, I instantly PM him and say, you just sold animals, you have money, send me my stuff. This goes back and fourth, until August 2010. That’s 11 months of the same song and dance, and I know I should have come here much, much sooner, but Kyle was giving me the sob story of how he had no money, and was moving, and as someone who has been broke, I felt for him, He was very, very convincing.
August, 2010. I finally get Kyle on the phone after the treat of BOI posting and calling the police. Again, I hear the story of no money, moving, etc.. No one moves for 11 months. He also told me he was having a hard time finding crickets, because of the cricket disease going around. Then, he tells me he is getting out of geckos. So, Kyle and I agree he will send me the geckos he owes me, the geckos he owes my friend John, and another 40+ geckos, so I can help him out in selling them. The agreement was, send me my stuff (which is now 1.4 tigrinus, not 0.0.3 rangei), Johns stuff, and extra stuff you want to sell, and I will house it, feed it, and care for it for the next 7 weeks until the NARBC Tinley show. Once again, I understand being down on your luck, and I am trying to help Kyle out.
Kyle and I sit down on the phone to discuss what he is going to send me, and, counting my geckos, the geckos for my friend, and the geckos I am going to bring to the show, we hit 53 geckos. I tell Kyle it’s no problem, I have enough cages to house all of them, as long as they’re desert species. We go down the list of what he’s sending me, and guess what’s on the list of stuff he wants me to sell? Rangei. I question him on this, and he says it’s 1.1.1, and that an adult pair is worth more than what he owes me. This is true, but for all I know, this 1.1 came from the babies I was supposed to get almost a year and a half prior. However, I am a man of my word, I agreed to take the tigrinus (which basically means I paid $300+ for 1.0 tigrinus, because females are a dime a dozen), and he was imploring me to try and sell the rangei, since they were the most likely species to sell, and he was really hurting for cash. He then tells me I should keep the trio of P. ressei if I want to balance out the deal, a species I have no interest in. We work out what the retail price of the geckos should be, and what he wants out of them. It comes out to about half or retail, which I think is a fair price, considering I will be housing and feeding these animals for over 6 weeks. We also agree that I will either A) pay for the return shipping out of his money, or B) pay for the return shipping out of pocket, and he will give me gecko credit from the box.
Then, the weeks start to go by.
Kyle, where are the animals?
Kyle, where are you?
Nick, why haven’t you posted adds like you said you were going to when I gave you the list of animals I was going to send?
Kyle, I cannot and will not post animals for sale I do not have in my possession. I need to see them and know they are healthy before I stamp my name on them by selling them.
12 days before Tinley, Kyle asks when he can ship, after another threat of BOI and police. I say you can ship for Tuesday or Wednesday arrival. He commits to Tuesday. No box. He commits to Wednesday, something came up. No box. He calls and says he’s going to ship them now. I won’t be home Thursday, so he ships them to a friends house (the same friend he owes geckos to), someone whose been keeping geckos longer than I have, and who I have literally trusted with my entire collection while I have been gone, sometimes for weeks at a time.
After the box is airborne, he informs us that he expects a few geckos to be DOA, and that since he hasn’t been able to get crickets, he’s been chopping up worms, and buying a few hundred crickets from petco when he can. (We’ll ignore that if he can afford a few hundred petco crickets, he could afford shipping). WHAT? Worms. For Pachydactylus? Are you serious? He also tells me that all of his cages are already in storage, and he can’t take any of the geckos back, but it’s OK, we’ll work out a good wholesale price for the group of them. No we will not, and how long have these geckos been cupped up? With business practices like this, I do not believe there were cupped up yesterday, and all the cages put in storage, the same day.
So, the box arrives, and there are, as expected, DOA animals. What was not mentioned is the deplorable condition of the rest of the animals. Animals missing feet, animals that tried to regenerate tails but did not have the nutrients to do so, animals that cannot walk. Some of the cups had old feces in them, but even worse, many did not. These geckos, in my opinion, were obviously living in these cups a while. I had a 1.3 group of tigrinus sitting in the palm of my hand (one died before he shipped, but he ‘forgot’ to tell me.), and I was poking them with my finger. None even tried to run away, and anyone who knows these geckos knows that is BAD. I call Kyle, no answer, I text Kyle, no answer. I send him a picture of a handful of dead Pachydactylus, no answer. I cannot and will not offer these geckos for sale, and only by telling Kyle that do I get a response. He informs me that we had a deal, and that I agreed to sell his stuff and put it on my table. I ask him if he remembers our conversation when I asked what condition the animals were in, and he says yes. I ask him what rating he had given them on the phone. He says B (on the phone he had said B+). Maybe there is a disconnect somewhere, but I don’t consider a gecko with a broken spine that drags its back legs around a B grade animal. To me, that is an F grade animal that I would euthanize if I owned it.
So, my 1.4 P. tigrinus and 1.2 ‘bonus’ P. ressei arrive as a 1.3 P. tigrinus and a 1.2 P. ressei, and maybe 10 out of the 50+ animals look decent. None look good. I tell him I don’t think the tigrinus are going to live, and that I absolutely do not consider them to be worth the $300. He says we’ll work it out later, after we see what sells. I tell him nothing will sell because nothing is going out on my table in this condition.
I vend Tinley, with none of Kyle’s geckos on the table. I offer them to other vendors and experiences Pachydactylus keepers, with full disclosure on what the story on them is, and with a 100% guarantee of no guarantee, with 100% buyer beware. I sell nothing. As the show goes on, Kyle calls me constantly. When I make a post online ‘incorrectly,’ he calls me within 20 minutes. I tell him I want to complete the deal, send his stuff back, and be done with him.
No answer from Kyle, no date on when to send his stuff back, or where to send it to. I was supposed to stay in Chicago for a week, and vacation in my home town. I left my vacation early so I could get these geckos home, set up, warmed up, and fed. Surprise, surprise, most won’t eat. Every animal that has died has been left on Kyle’s voicemail as soon as I find it (While he calls me, he doesn’t answer any of my calls). I have another show the next weekend, and it’s the same deal. I bring them, under the table, buyer beware, all that jazz. I sell one pair of geckos for Kyle, to someone fully aware of the risks in these geckos, even at half off retail (I sold them at what Kyle wanted out of them and made $0). I tell Kyle I need an address, that I want the animals to go back to him. No answer. I go to set the animals up in cages, wondering how long I’ll be holding them before he takes them back. A mite is on my hand. I move those geckos to another room. I unpack more geckos. Another mite. Then, another.
I call Kyle and leave a voicemail saying I am shipping his stuff back to his mothers house (the original sending address, and I am shipping them on Monday for Tuesday arrival. I tell him they have mites, and that I will not risk keeping them at my house any longer than I have to. I also tell him that we need to work out what I am keeping, as the tigrinus are now a 0.2 group, which is worth about $60. When I wake up Monday morning, I have a voicemail from Kyle saying he got the mites when he bought geckos from my friend at the supershow we met at. So, you’ve known about mites since June 2009, it’s now October 2010, and there still an issue? I call him and tell him we need to work out what I am keeping, and he says, ‘Whatever.’ I say, “Well, if it’s whatever, I’m keeping the 1.1 rangei, the species you promised me when the deal was made.” He says there not a fair trade, that the rangei are worth $450. I say that $450 is top dollar for an A+ pair or rangei, not a pair where when I told him the male was thin, he said the male is the easy one to replace anyway. He knew the rangei male was thin, and told me he’d thrown more crickets to the female to make sure she lived. I say fine, then I’ll just keep the female. He agrees to that, then says, “You know what, just keep the male, he probably won’t survive shipping back anyways.” What a great keeper.
I get the box shipped, and Kyle now what’s to change things. He says he can’t take all these animals back, and that he feels like I cheated HIM, and that he wants me to next day ship him all of the dead animals. When I tell him I don’t have them, and that he’d told me to throw them away when I told him about them, he tells me he changed his mind. I cannot go back in time and un-throw them away, so we are at an impasse. Then, he hangs up on me. I leave the house with my GF to take the dog for a walk, and I come back inside to 3 missed calls from Kyle, with crazy demands on my voicemail. My favorite being that I killed the tigrinus on purpose, so those were my trade, I gave the ressei back when he’d given them to me (as an unwanted gift), and that was my ‘bonus,’ but I gave those back too, so he wanted me to pay $450 for the rangei. “Kyle, you agreed this morning that the rangei were a fair trade when we were on the phone.” “Dude, I need the money.” I need the money does not mean you can screw someone over.
I am so disgusted with this whole deal, and one of the hardest things to do was send back animals I know are sentenced to death in this guys care.
If there's a tutorial link, I'll gladly put the picture up.
