jnewsome26

Well folks, here is the end of the road for us.

Just got off the phone with the CC company for the final time. They have told us that because we have not attempted to ship the animal back, and cannot prove that we expressed our desire to exercise the garauntee within the initial 30 days there is nothing to be done. Never mind that it's a live animal and no breeder in the world would ship one without the certain knowledge that there was someone on the other end waiting for it. Not to mention that Fire and Ice's garauntee is contingent upon the receipt of a healthy animal, and moreover we don't want the animal to die! Since Terri cut off contact with us, and used phone as the primary form of communication with us before that we have no documentary proof that we requested the refund within the alotted amount of time. Never mind that we notified the CC company of our desire early in our dispute, telling them the breeder had cut off contact with us, they seem to have no record of that, and our 2nd time talking to them that was STILL within 30 days of receipt, which they DO have a record of, apparently does not constitute proof of desire to return the animal.

We're out $560, 500 for the animal and the 60 she charged us for shipping. My girlfriend's so upset about this she even canceled her account with Discover. So yeah, it seems someone went down to the hardware store and bought a nice shiny screw just for us. Anyway, for those of you still doing business with Terri, she was really nice to us, up until we used that magic word "refund". Be warned, and use e-mail or signed snail mail to communicate anything important that way you can prove what you said to her. Otherwise you end up like us, she told us she preferred to communicate by phone since she gets hundreds of e-mails a day and we foolishly believed her, never realizing that if a dispute came up, all she would have to do is refuse to communicate with us and it would come down to our word against hers.

I know several of you are going to point out the obvious mistakes I made, like trusting her in the first place. I should have required photos, I should have saved every e-mail that ever went back and forth between us, I should have done a lot of things. All I can do is plead ignorance and admit to the fault of a trusting nature. It's gotten me in trouble before, but I just never learn, or maybe I just refuse to approach people from an immediately suspicious point of view. I don't know, I'm just burned by this whole thing, and now have to figure out what to do with an animal we bought as a pet that doesn't seem to like anyone. Hope this helps someone else,

Jonathan Newsome