I have to agree with the bolded sentence.

You did many things wrong with the snakes and communication with the seller. You should have contacted the seller after a regurge. When you did, you didn't follow his advice, that is on you.

Maybe the snakes were sick when Evan sold them. We'll never know, because the OP's bad husbandry and refusal to seek help or take advice has clouded the issue.

Seems more and more common these days where folks post "bad guy" threads and instead of ruining the other person/company's name they ruin their own....its getting to the point where we might need to change the name to Backfire Of Inquiry.

Not bad. I always thought POF. Wild guess? Anyone.

All I can think of is POOF (as in, poof, something disappears), Chris. I think my brain is tired lol.

I think the OP does honestly think the snakes were sick, and therefore this is a reasonable bad guy thread. And they may well have been - with something that wasn't obvious. As mentioned, the issue of the treatment of the regurg and the disregarding of the advice about the flagyl clouds the issue. So this could be an unfortunate situation where no one is really a bad guy. The snakes may have had something, or a predisposition to something, and the stress of shipping brought it out. Certainly if they looked fine on arrival it's hard to say the seller should have known something was up.

I think people have to remember that this is a relatively small community/hobby and reputation matters a lot. Posting a BOI bad guy thread that isn't fully justified rubs a lot of people the wrong way. If it's actually unfair and unreasonable, posters will definitely get a lot of pushback. And I think that's what the OP is getting here.

The fact is that I received the snakes and one died within a month.

I asked the Evan about it and he told me I should treat for disease with Flagyl right off the bat without seeing a vet or even acknowledging that the specimens were sick. He did not offer any other advice.

Evan also stated in this post that he had the animals for 2 months feeding weekly and that the breeder had them for some time before that. If that was the case they should have been larger than the other babies I purchased this year which were only 4 weeks old but they were as small as 2-week old hatchlings.

I should have done my homework on Evan Stahl Reptiles here and on facebook before purchasing them. His reputation in both places speaks for itself.

Tough situation. I can certainly see the frustration of losing a snake so soon after purchasing. As others have pointed out, I don't think either you, or Evan, are completely right, or completely wrong here.

Pine snakes are pretty sturdy critters, so I would be inclined to think there was something going on before you received them, and the stress of shipping weakened them further. However, since they were asymptomatic when you received them, Evan probably thought he was sending you healthy animals (I would too). For your part, you fed them too soon after the regurge, not allowing time for the gut flora to re-establish itself.

All of that said, if I were the seller, I would offer you a refund for the male, less shipping. Why? Because I don't think the animals were 100% healthy. Whose fault is that? Hard to say, as they appeared outwardly healthy. I personally feel that, if I sold you an animal that was dead in a few weeks, I would want to try to help you, even though you didn't treat the animal sooner. That's just how I would look at it, as a hobbyist. My thoughts; not necessarily others'.

Kathy

You needed some guy you never met to tell you take your animals to the vet? Should you even be keeping animals? Had his initial response to been to take them to the vet prompted you to do so? Why not do so on your own accord? How could he know what the conditions were 1 month after they were out of his possession? We aren't talking about a used car that the dealer won't honor a warranty on (mostly because most used cars don't come with a warranty). If the brakes were bad and weren't disclosed, that's one thing. But you can't let the brakes fail, not take it to the shop, and then blame the dealer.

Yep. So, who's at fault here?

I rarely respond here for this reason, and here I am twice in one thread...getting sucked in.

The OP made 2 mistakes as I see it: 1. Didn't communicate about concerns upon receipt. 2. Pushed animals too hard after regurge.

Other "mistakes" are not using flagyl, and not bringing snakes to the vet, both of which could be considered debatable.

As for the car analogy, if mechanics had the track record of most vets (when dealing with delicate exotics), I'd learn how to fix my own damn brakes.

Having said that, I don't see how berating the OP is helpful right now.

I can't think of any way to prove the condition of the snakes at shipping time. If other people had received snakes from the same clutch, from the same person, at the same time, perhaps we could have a better chance to draw a conclusion. Regarding exotic vets, I think the main reason people do not use them have little to do with competency and a lot to do with being cheap. With sick animals, the vet visit is not cheap, the medicines are not cheap, necropsy here costs 65$ but the bloodwork, trach washes, etc can add up. However, if you want to further the advancement of reptile medicine, we need to do these things to explain what has happened.