Triple Moons Exotic

Okay, just to let everyone know, I am the original buyer. I'm currently deployed in Afghanistan and I have two months left in my tour. Stephanie and me have been partners for going on eight years now. One of our current projects right now is working with hypo ball pythons so naturally I was intrigued by Andrew's ad for a 1.0 Butter het hypo and a 0.1 het hypo. In the ad that I looked at prior to purchase, it stated that they male was 4xx and the female was 1xxx. I would also like to note that the female was said to have been hooked up with his hypo male. I paid $625 for both snakes. I had talked to Andrew several times from the transfer of the money to after shipping. Below is my correspondence with him through both pm's and emails.

First PM response from him on 4/10/11 @ 11:22 AM
Re: 1.0 Butter het Ghost

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Quote:
Originally Posted by charlene.dourty
I would love to buy this guy and the breeder size het ghost female. I can have the money to you today.

Thanks Charlene.

P.S. Im currently deployed in Afghanistan but my business partner is in PA. I can have the money to you asap but it would take a couple days to arrange shipping.

You and another buyer both made offers about the same time. If you send a payment that will beat the other offer first, the critters are yours.

Sorry this has to be such a pain. It's just I can't decide to made the offer first. So I need to settle it this way.

The current "deal" is $620 shipped. If you send $625 in paypal to andrew.gizinski@yahoo.com I will ship the snakes to you.

No worries on shipping. We'll figure it out.

Andrew

I replied and recieved another PM (second) on 4/10/11 @ 4:36 PM
Re: 1.0 Butter het Ghost

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Quote:
Originally Posted by charlene.dourty
Payment sent

Do you have an idea when/where I can ship? I have a bunch of stuff going out on Monday, so that would be best for me.

Let me know.

Andrew

I replied again and recieved a third PM on 4/11/11 @ 12:07 AM
Re: 1.0 Butter het Ghost

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Quote:
Originally Posted by charlene.dourty

her email is info@triplemoonsexotic.com or stef@triplemoonsdesign.com

Im not sure which one she uses but that is the address and contact info.

Can you tell me if the female just hooked up or is graid or laid?

Thanks Charlene

The female has hooked up with a male ghost. Not sure if she is gravid.

So I should arrange shipment with her?

I replied again and recieved a fourth PM on 4/11/11 @ 8:32 AM
Re: 1.0 Butter het Ghost

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Quote:
Originally Posted by charlene.dourty
Yes, instead of me playing middle man it would be easier and faster if you just talked directly to her. She knows that I purchased the pair and has homes waiting for them already. She is also a member on here and you contact her that way too. TripleMoonsExotic. I will shoot her an email and let her know that you will be contacting her to arrange shipping. Thank you so much. I am really excited to be adding these two to my breeding projects.

Thanks Charlene

Makes sense. I emailed her last night, and she is aware of them coming. I will try to get them out today!

I eager for you to see this butter! Really a cool animal.

Let me know if I can help in any other way.

Andrew

I replied and again recieved a PM on 4/11/11 @ 4:49 PM
Re: 1.0 Butter het Ghost

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Quote:
Originally Posted by charlene.dourty
I wont see him for a couple months but as you can tell by my fast payment I was really wanting him lol. I will definitely let you know if you can help me out. I am very happy with this transaction and glad that we could work it out in my benefit lol. I have a hypo male and my friend is going to back the het hypo female with my male. Hopefully Ill make my money back this year! Lol.

Thanks for the great service.

Charlene

Very true!

Well, it was a good deal. You benefit because the market is stagnant. Not a whole lot of people buying reptiles right now.

Gotta love getting your money back that quick!

I mentioned this to Stephanie, but I also have a cinny het albino, and 1.3 double het albinos pieds if you are at all interested. (if I am repeating myself, forgive me, I have been emailing so many people). I am asking $400 for the cinny (he has paperwork), and $4500 for the 1.3 double hets, but I will let them go for $3500 shipped to the PA address. They are a very cool project, considering albino pieds sell for right around $20,000.

Andrew

I replied for the last time and got my last PM on 4/12/11 @ 11:21 AM
Re: 1.0 Butter het Ghost

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Quote:
Originally Posted by charlene.dourty
I might be interested in the Cinny male. But I dont have the $3500 for the whole group. Me and Steph have been talking a lot about what projects we want to tackle. I am in need of an unrelated male cinny from what we have already. And him being het for albino is a plus. I will have to think on it for a little bit. As you know, Im waiting to see if I get full pay or not with the whole govt shutdown and all. Its not very fun being over here in Afghanistan not knowing whether Im getting full pay or not.

Understood. And yes, I FULLY understand the fear related to the shutdown. Take your time, let the dust settle, and shoot me a message if you are interested.

Stay safe over there! And thanks for whatever service you are doing! (military, contracting, other...)

All these were prior to shipping. And the following emails are after shipping...
Here was my first email to him:
From: Charlene Dourty <charlenedourty@yahoo.com>
To: andrew.gizinski@yahoo.com
Cc: stef@triplemoonsdesign.com
Sent: Thu, April 14, 2011 4:54:12 AM
Subject: Ball Python Pair


Hey Andrew,
After thinking it over for some time, I wanted to discuss a couple things with you. Though I am very much please that I got the chance to buy this pair, I feel that they were misrepresented. Though the weight on the male is not so much of an issue as the het hypo female, Im still not happy that he is about 130 g under the weight that he was advertised for. Im also not happy that the female is in the 900 g range and not over 1000 like advertised. I think that a credit/refund is not unreasonable in this situation. I talked to Stephanie and we went over some of the issues and felt that 75-100 was reasonable. Now, I know that I have expressed some interest in your male Cinny het hypo. Im still waiting to see if I get full pay this month so Im not in a position to make a decision on him yet. But I would be fine with taking a credit towards him if I decide that I want him and can afford him.

But, I wont feel comfortable purchasing him until we come to agreement and Stephanie recieves the paperwork on the two I have already purchased.

Thank Charlene

His reply:

Charlene, sorry to hear you are not satisfied with our transaction. For record's sake, I'd like to clarify a few things.


All weights were advertised in rough numbers. I believe the male was advertised at "~3xx g". What did he weigh in at? I make it a practice to delete ads after things sell (maybe I will not do that in the future) but here is another ad that had the butter in it: http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...d.php?t=237191


On the female, I fully understand. Again, for record's sake, I advertised the female weight at ~1xxx g. I never weighed her after I received her from Matthew. He advertised her at around 1200 g (if I recall correctly).


Finally, no papers were advertised on the ad, nor were they requested. I have papers for the female het, and will get around to sending them out. The Butter did not come with papers


On top of all of this, I included the female for "free". So it's near impossible to pin an accurate figure on how much is reasonable for a refund.


All that said, I am fully committed to satisfied customers, and so I agree to meet you in the middle on a refund. Your paypal should have a $90 refund in it as of 9:34 AM.


Because of this unfavorable outcome, I have to kindly withdraw my offer to sell the cinnamon het albino male.


I wish you all the best in your breeding pursuits, and am sorry your purchase was sub satisfactory


Regards,


Andrew.

I responded:
Andrew,
I understand fully. The two ads that you had up had two different weights for the butter het hypo male. The one that I purchased him from said 4XX. The other ad that is still up does say 3XX but I didnt see that ad until after you deleted the first one. Its not a huge deal as I am still glad that I got them. I was just expecting more than I got. I was just asking about the papers because Stephanie said that she had asked. It was my mistake that I didn't ask if they had any. Ive been out of the loop a little on snakes and I apologize for not asking more before I bought them. But as you remember, it was a race to get them and I really didnt have the time to think everything out. I was more interested in the male anyways but was excited to get the female from the deal too. I am pleased with how easy you were to work with and even how you continue to be easy to work with and reasonable. Other than the weights being off, I have no complaints about the transaction whatsoever.

Thanks again
Charlene

Here is my receipt for payment...

Here is my refund

Hello Charlene Dourty,
Andrew Gizinski just sent you a refund

Andrew Gizinski just sent you a partial refund of $90.00 USD for your purchase. If you have any questions about this refund, please contact Andrew Gizinski.
The refund will go to the card you paid with.

Merchant information
Andrew Gizinski
Andrew.Gizinski@yahoo.com
Note from merchant
Female less weight than expected
Original transaction details
Description Amount
Purchase from Andrew Gizinski

Total: $625.00 USD

Refund to Visa Card XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-2682: $90.00 USD


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Nice - so, when Andrew posts a price, a prospective buyer can expect a behind the back auction? How many people did it take to bring the price up to $625? That bit of news is rather disheartening, and may skew more than a few opinions....

Originally Posted by hhmoore

Nice - so, when Andrew posts a price, a prospective buyer can expect a behind the back auction? How many people did it take to bring the price up to $625? That bit of news is rather disheartening, and may skew more than a few opinions....

I didn't know about the "bidding" until after Char had already purchased them. I too was confused by the higher then listed price, but gave Andrew the benefit of the doubt on it. At the time their was no reason to doubt him.

You and another buyer both made offers about the same time. If you send a payment that will beat the other offer first, the critters are yours.

Sorry this has to be such a pain. It's just I can't decide to made the offer first. So I need to settle it this way.

The current "deal" is $620 shipped. If you send $625 in paypal to andrew.gizinski@yahoo.com I will ship the snakes to you.

No worries on shipping. We'll figure it out.

Andrew

I replied and recieved another PM (second) on 4/10/11 @ 4:36 PM
Re: 1.0 Butter het Ghost

how could you not tell who made offer first? thats the lousiest excuse I've ever heard to raise the price. The hits keep coming for Andrew, that looks so shady for you to up the price because somebody already bid on the snake. I didn't read anything about this being an auction!

Originally Posted by dustinNMpythons

eggbound maybe wasn't a good word of choice for breeding an underweight female but there are medical complications that can come from this practice which may/may not have changed Charlene's mind about recieving the het ghost female. But at this point it doesn't matter anymore because Steph already said she would take care of the snake should the need arrise so there's no reason to argue about what weight a ball python can be bred. As far as this thread goes, this is all pretty retarded now because it keeps going around and around in circles. I really don't understand you purpose in this thread anymore Andrew, you originally said you it was because the phantom breeder but then I got that you just didn't want Stephanie giving wrong details of the transaction so you put up the thread to just lay it all out there. It still seems like this could have all been settled between the two of you. Also Andrew you asked me why I said you were mad, ok maybe your not mad but I get the hint in all of your posts that you are irritated. All in all the fact of the matter still stands that if you would have weighted your snakes right before they went out it never would have came down like this.

The bold ones crack me up !!! So by your reasoning the 1,000 gm one is ok but ince it gets down to 900 it becomes a concern that it might be gravid (that's a reach) The second bold statement was settled immediately as well. The difference in weight is no more then a meal and a crap All this other "ETHICS ST is neither here nor there. The buyer was buying knowing this, if you have as many years in the business as stated then your comment about asking about complications from the size and if bred make me go hmmmm as well. Not sure what Op is trying to do at this point either, but he did make right on a 100 gm error and IMO 100 gm error on a few hundred dollar animal is NOT a $100 error. Just look back thru the e-mails, the buyer was happy with the purchase (which included the fact the female was possbile bred) so all the ethics question coming up after is just BS and would make the OP more the justified in refusing a sale IMO.

Originally Posted by jdshscja

I think Andrew was replying to this comment by mikeyt, not to your statements, hhmoore.

As for this thread, it amazes me that it's turned into this sort of back and forth nonsense. Someone asked what the OP wanted from this, well seeing as it's an info thread, I would assume he wanted to inform the community about this particular deal and subsequent events.

No matter how much people want to make this thread about misrepresented animals, it just simply isn't. Even if it was, the OP made good on that to both parties approval.

The issue is giving out someones private email without permission, whether it was done intentionally or not. In some situations this can be illegal(not saying it is here) but at the very least it's somewhat unethical from a business standpoint. Is it really that big of a deal? Probably not to most people but I can see where it would bother someone especially when it's not shown in the best of light.

It seems to me that most likely the email address was shared unintentionally. However when this "reputable breeder" got it and the information that the OP had refused another deal, he decided he would try and throw a little weight into getting the OP to reconsider. Although I don't think they realized all the name dropping means nothing when you can't even give out your own name.

All in all I think the only person that looks bad from this whole situation is this reputable breeder. It's just too bad they aren't man or woman enough to admit to it. Then I would actually have someone to add to my list of people to not do business with.

I am glad to see there are a couple voices of reason.

I do not possibly have time to respond to all of this. The thread is not about weights, auctions, "my shady practices". The buyers were 100% satisfied. To the point that they wanted to buy from me again.

Those of you repeatedly attacking my position, you've made your point clear. I am not sure I see the point. The purpose of this post was information. It is NOT a self stroke. I FAILED as a seller. Not even remotely sure how someone could interpret this as a self-stroke.

As far as the auction, and not knowing who bid first... I received an offer from a member here on Fauna. He then balked (as I recall). Charlene made an offer, and then I believe I received a general inquiry. My statement referred to the fact that I was not sure who had the "right" to the animal. So I told Charlene, if you pay a certain amount, then the animal is yours.

If Charlene had an issue with my practice, she could have declined.

And for what it is worth, the original buyer came back later interested, so had I waited for his response, Charlene would not have gotten the animals.

To my knowledge it is not against the rules to sell on a "Best Offer" basis. If so, I will be sure to not do it again, and follow any procedure necessary to remedy the violation.

Can someone point to a specific instance I've been childish or unprofessional? I've been subject to numerous attacks, even by moderators, and yet have not retaliated. How is it that I am being childish?

Stephanie, what food item did you feed her?

Harold, I have not directed any of my statements at you. I do find it disappointing that you are so quick to conclude things about me when I have been a faithful "good-guy" member on here for so long. Not saying I get a free pass however.

Bob,

Tell me where I implied that a 100 gram difference is ok. I merely said egg bound wasn't a good word because any ball python has a chance of getting egg bound but being 1000 grams or less its going to be EXTREMELY skinny and has a chance of dieing. My 1500 gram female was super skinny when she finally laid this year so being 500 grams smaller the risk is substantially increased. Question how long I've been in this all you want I really don't care, I made this account shortly after getting my first ball python so yeah you make me laugh when you say I've been in the business that many years because I wouldn't consider myself a "pro" by no means but I would say I have enough knowledge and common sense not to breed at 1000 grams! I learn something new at this all the time but the 1200 gram mark being the cutoff and 1500 grams being ideal I learned when I first started. Just like anyone else is entitled to their opinion in the matter so am I and in turn your entitled to your opinion on my thought process. I'm not even going to argue with you because your right but your wrong at the same time. You said the buyer was happy with the purchase and yes in a sense they were happy with it but they felt that the animals were mis-represented. All I was saying is if he would have weighted the animals before they went out there wouldn't have been any of this. Am I wrong? Would he have refused to sell to them had it went smoothly? He openly admits to not weighting the female the entire time he had her but was under the impression she was 1200 grams based on word of the previous owner.

Originally Posted by dustinNMpythons

Bob,

Tell me where I implied that a 100 gram difference is ok. I merely said egg bound wasn't a good word because any ball python has a chance of getting egg bound but being 1000 grams or less its going to be EXTREMELY skinny and has a chance of dieing. My 1500 gram female was super skinny when she finally laid this year so being 500 grams smaller the risk is substantially increased. Question how long I've been in this all you want I really don't care, I made this account shortly after getting my first ball python so yeah you make me laugh when you say I've been in the business that many years because I wouldn't consider myself a "pro" by no means but I would say I have enough knowledge and common sense not to breed at 1000 grams! I learn something new at this all the time but the 1200 gram mark being the cutoff and 1500 grams being ideal I learned when I first started. Just like anyone else is entitled to their opinion in the matter so am I and in turn your entitled to your opinion on my thought process. I'm not even going to argue with you because your right but your wrong at the same time. You said the buyer was happy with the purchase and yes in a sense they were happy with it but they felt that the animals were mis-represented. All I was saying is if he would have weighted the animals before they went out there wouldn't have been any of this. Am I wrong? Would he have refused to sell to them had it went smoothly? He openly admits to not weighting the female the entire time he had her but was under the impression she was 1200 grams based on word of the previous owner.

Where did you get this info?

Originally Posted by dustinNMpythons

All I was saying is if he would have weighted the animals before they went out there wouldn't have been any of this. Am I wrong?

The poster's point, as has been my point, is not that you are wrong. It is the fact that your point is irrelevant. That is not the point of the post. The buyer was content. The fact that Stephanie continues to bring this up, in my opinion, reflects poorly on her. This thread has totally diverted from its purpose, this is informational. This is informational, not an unresolved case. You are welcome to come to any conclusion you wish. Even if it is to not do business with me.

Andrew - if you read the two posts I made after the "self stroke" comment, you'll have your explanation for it...and see that I later realized that you weren't addressing me with that post.
As has been said many times in the past - moderators are not restricted to that role...we are members of this site, entitled to opinions, and allowed to express them, just like everybody else. I certainly have not attacked you as a moderator. As far as my comment about the behind the back auction - that is the impression it gave...You posted a price, and stated that if purchased at the asking price you would include the female for free. I don't know if your posted price was "or best offer"; but most people initially read that as similar to reasonable offers may be considered....but, I guess it does leave the option for trying to get a higher than advertised price. While "first pay" is not a rule, it is a fairly common policy with sales...but, as you stated, as long as your customer was accepting of the price, then it doesn't really matter what anybody else thinks.