About two months ago I purchased an 8lb. female Amazon basin emerald from Tim Bowles. The animal was shipped UPS next day delivery and she arrived early in the morning. While talking to another individual on the phone I preceded to open the box to kind of bust his chops about the animal I was receiving. To my horror the 8lb., six foot animal was packed in a 16 quart sterilite container with wet paper towels as substrate. Way too small for an animal of that size! She looked like she was dead and when I pulled her out and she stayed in the twisted up position as she was in the container for about two minutes before she started moving. The guy on the other end of the phone was screaming 'what's going on' as I was repeatedly yelling 'I can't believe it'! The animal had a respitory infection, one tooth was obviously broken and the tissue in the mouth was so swollen that it was sticking out of the mouth. I called Tim Bowles and explained the situation of the poor packing job and I insisted on shipping the animal back and told him I wanted a full refund. He blamed it on UPS but I finally got it across to him that his packing method was the problem not UPS.
About a month ago Tim offered to sell me a 5' New Locale female that I had sold to him last october but I was not interested in her at the time. On July first Tony Nicoli produced baby emeralds from the first 'New Locale' to 'New Locale' breeding (New Locale animals have a certain look that enthusiasts often look for). All of the babies came out with similar traits, which was awesome! After seeing the NL babies I inquired about buying the animal Tim previously offered me and we settled on what he paid for her, which was $2,500.00. He is a customer and from what I thought, a friend so I gave him the same as he paid. I told Tim I wanted her sent UPS and we agreed on that but only after his insistence that there would be a stipulation that he was not responsible for the animal if there were any shipping problems. I had no problem with this as I have a friend that works as the driver for my area. I give him a call when I am expecting a delivery and he comes to my house very early. I received the animal along with another shipment at 9:01 am yesterday morning. When I opened the box I noticed the bag she was in was soaking wet and so was the newspaper substrate. I assumed he sprayed the bag and substrate with water in hopes of keeping her cool. This was not the case as Tim Bowles later informed me they were dry when he packed her. When I pulled her out of the bag I was shocked to see that she had a puffy throat and the lower half of the body was a complete mess! She was obviously very uncomfortable and very, very bloated in places. Even though she was bloated in places in others her skin was baggy and pinched in and she had what appeared to be lumps and dents in her. The snake obviously has some major problems that in my opinion had zero to do with shipping and I would never even consider selling an animal like this to anyone. I assessed the situation and made the call to Tim and when I finally got a hold of him at about 10:30 wednesday night he informed me that since we shipped UPS and he didn’t want to, there was NO GUARANTEE because of the mishandling by UPS. Now the deal was if something happened to the animal because of shipping he wasn’t responsible. I agreed to that and no problem here. You could throw the box off a three story building and the animal wouldn’t look like this. In my opinion and about ten other professionals in the business including two exotic animal vets, none of this was a result of shipping and I am looking for a full refund. I have discussed this and shown pictures, to whom I would term ‘experts’ in the Corallus field and they all agreed 100% and in their opinions are that this was not a shipping issue.
Now check this out! During our conversation wednesday night Tim informed me that he had a witness listening there for our agreement that was done over the phone. He said he thought I would pull some **** like this and so he wanted a witness. Now one question I have is why would you need a witness for a deal with a friend if the snake is100%? To me that just seems like covering tracks. A friend of Tim’s told me he asked Tim if he had any recent pics of the animal and Tim said no he didn’t. Now if you didn’t trust me to the point that you needed a witness to hear our deal wouldn’t someone be able to snap some quick pics of the pristine animal that was being shipped so I wouldn’t pull a fast one? I was also told wednesday night that the snake was never really for sale and I pressured him into selling her so his guarantee of ‘a healthy animal upon arrival’ didn’t apply. I wanted to return the animal yesterday but wednesday night I was told she belongs to me and I am not getting any refund and if I return her he wouldn’t accept the package. This is in an e-mail from yesterday morning , “You are shipping your animal at your own risk and negligence”.
I think just about all of the deals I have done with Tim where I have sold him animals, he was given terms sometimes taking many, many months to pay. I had no problem with this because I considered him a friend. I would send thousands of dollars worth of animals with no initial payment at all. For some reason he wanted full payment up front before sending the animal to me. She was going to be shipped last week and he asked if I had used paypal yet to pay him and I said no.
Well I was told she didn’t get shipped because of thunderstorms two nights in a row. I did check the weather there and it did say thunderstorms. He asked if I sent payment on wednesday for thursday shipment and when I said no but I would send money thursday and he could ship thursday he said he wouldn’t ship because of potential delays over the weekend. I wired the money into his account early this week and he shipped Tuesday but only after full payment.
I took her to the vet yesterday morning (who actually does a lot of exotics) and after examining her and the shipping box and bag, his opinion was that she was literally pumped full of fluids to try and get her hydrated. He said that in his opinion the liquid matter in the bag was what the animal couldn’t handle in her body because of being forcibly overhydrated and she had to ‘viod’ it. Her mouth was white which he said wasn’t great and she was a bit sluggish. I will do everything I can to save this animal but I feel ‘set up, betrayed, and I feel a full refund is necessary.
There was NO problem with shipping at all. The box was completely unharmed and the animal arrived earlier than expected and was immediately placed inside my home. Since the opinion of one professional vet and many professional Corallus enthusiasts is, there is no way this happened during shipping, aren’t I entitled to be able to return the animal and get a FULL refund? Here are some picks of her that I took wednesday. Keep in mind I paid $2,500.00 for a perfectly healthy animal!
Now in the first pics you can see the bloating and dents in the animal. You can also see the 'pinched' areas in a row down by the tail. They almost look like injection sites. The scales on the nose are amazingly concave and the skin on the neck is very, very loose. The last two pics show the amount of fluid that was still in the animal upon receipt.
Here is two pics of her before being sold to Tim.
I am looking for opinions from all whether you are friends of mine, friends of Tim's, or both. I have heard about 10 opinions from friends of both already and they side with me 100%. I am looking for what I think is right...a full refund of $2,500.00. Tim previously owed me $1,300.00 for the balance on a male 'Basin' and I had to wire transfer him $1,200.00 before he shipped the animal. I am willing to eat the $500.00 or so this will cost me to do all the lab work.
Thanks!
Matt Lerer