I saw something in an ad that rubbed me the wrong way. I thought I would place it here, to get some opinions. Sometimes I think maybe my standards are to high, or maybe my ethics alarm is hard wired to high, and this is a perfectly acceptable "tactic".
here it is.
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1.2 EASTERN HOGNOSE SNAKES (Long-term captive adults. Male is bright yellow with pattern and white belly, females are charcoal camouflage (proven) and gold with light pattern (Cleveland, TX locale).Great animals. Feeding on f/t toads every five days.)- male is 175.00, proven charcoal camouflage female is 150.00, gold female is 125.00 or all three for 300.00. If you would like to purchase this group for 400.00, I will add 2.0 captive-bred (FL) 2003 normal phase Western Hognose. We cannot sell these snakes in Colorado, so they will be a gift for purchasing the Eastern Hognose at a higher price
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3 snakes are listed separately, the price comes to $450 (I personally would never pay near that for WC Easterns, especially toad eaters, but for the sake of this argument I'll assume this is a good price) if you purchase all three they are offered at $300, if you pay another $100 they will throw in some "free" Westerns. Now even though that is still less than the single listed prices (by $50) to me it just doesn't seem right. Maybe it's just this wording
so they will be a gift for purchasing the Eastern Hognose at a higher price.
I know retail places have specials all the time......
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"buy this pair of animals for $??? and we'll throw in a free cage."
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but in this case the "free" object (cage) is not something technically illegal. I put "free" in quotations because many times the free item is actually built into the price of the item you have to buy. Someone might argue that is the case here.
So what are your opinions on this one?
Is this;
1.an acceptable legal advertising ploy?
2.Unethical, but legal? or,
3.A G&F person could press charges if they bought them.
AD?
My own personal opinion is, even though it could be argued that they are free because the single price totals $450, and this is $50 "off", the fact that you can get the trio for $300 means they are not free, and therefor, semantics aside this fits #3.
the seller has some nice animals and I've never heard anything bad about them, so didn't want to make this an official "bad ethics" BOI post, rather just wondering if my own train of thoughts are on base or off base.
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