Be careful with COLOR CREATIONS.

My wife bought a " Female" giant day gecko form Color Creations (Foud him at KINGSNAKE), it turns out that he sent her a male instead of a female and he offered to give us the money back but he will not pay for shipping. If I do not want I would have to send it pack and loose $30 I paid to receive it and another $30 to send it back. This is ridiculous I would loose $60 and not have the female I wanted to purchase.

This is some of the correspondence with this BAD BREEDER.

My Wife's email: The "female" gecko that you sent us is in fact a male. You having been in the business for as long as you have, I know you would be able to see this as easily as we were due to the obvious open pre-anal pores that it is a male. We already own a male pm grandis and do not have room for another male. I need your address to mail it back to you. We expect a refund and reimbursement for the shipping prior to me shipping it back to you. If you do not comply, I will report this to Kingsnake.com and every other forum that I know of. We do not appreciate being taken advantage of.

COLOR CREATIONS RESPONSE:Hi,Send me pics. I have sexed the gecko and their is no hemipenes which indicates a females. Pores show up on males and females. Send me pics and I will show you. I have breed day geckos for 5 years, I know how to tell. If you dont want it send it back and I will issue a refund minus the shipping. I have done everything possible to make this work for you and do my best to ship it out to you in a timely manner. Thanks,Color Creations[/color]

Second Bad Indication:
My Wife's email:
I will gladly send you pictures. We took some yesterday. It is quite obvious that the pores are open, indicating a male. (PICTURE sent attached)
COLOR CREATIONS RESPONSE:[color="Black"] NO RESPONSE!!!!!
My Wife's email: I don't know if you received the pictures I sent you. In those pictures, it is quite noticeable that it is a male. We have sent the pictures to various expert breeders, and all agree that it is a male, so it is not just us. Below is a link which we also used to compare the gecko. What are we going to do about this. We would love to keep him, he is beautiful, but unfortunately we do not have space for another male. And seeing as to how we purchased a "female", something should be done about a refund including shipping. It does not make since for us to pay shipping since it'd be like purchasing a gecko without getting one.Please respond to this e-mail, we are willing to work this out with you. What would you suggest?
COLOR CREATIONS RESPONSE:[color="Black"] NO RESPONSE!!!!!
My wife's email:
I've tried my best to work this out with you. Your not repling to my e-mails since I sent the pictures of the gecko which prove it is a male is unprofessional. If you do not reply by tonight a 10:30, we will be reporting you to Kingsnake.com, as well as all the links on kingsnake.com including the FBI froude. We've tried working this out with you and it's pretty obvious you do not want to make this sale right. We purchased a female CB and got a male with a regenerated tale, of which there was no mention.
COLOR CREATIONS RESPONSE:[color="Black"] Finally responded:
Hi,Threats get nowhere. Everybody on Kingsnake knows me and so does the owner of the website. I have been in business for 7 years and I have had few problems. I went one day without sending an email and I am getting threatened you will report me to kingsnake. I have over 200 emails a day and very rarely do I get around to everyone. The FBI does not care about your gecko. I have always made things right when it was my fault or one of my employees, Legally I do not have to replace your gecko as far as kingsnake and paypal are concerned you got a gecko and it does not matter weather its male or female. Now that I have wasted my time with this email I will tell you what I will do. You can ship the gecko back and I will give a refund minus shipping, or I can send you a female gecko at cost. Thanks,Color Creations.

You tell me if you want to deal with this "breeder".

Adrian Valenzuela.

Originally Posted by advalenzuela

You tell me if you want to deal with this "breeder".

I'm sorry to tell you this, but I'm not really sure who would want to deal with YOU after reading that crap.

From the first to last email you were persistently rude and demanding.

And your threaten the guy with the FBI? Over a mis-sexed gecko?

Color Creations doesn't seem to have a great reputation from what I've gathered about them here on fauna. But in this instance he was making attempts to work this out with you. Even in the end, after you threatened him with the FBI, he he is still saying that he wants to work this out with you.

LOL....how bad can a bad guy be that wants to replace your order or refund your money?

I wouldn't do business with him until it was apparent his image has changed here on fauna. I wouldn't do business with you because you and your wife both came off like nut jobs.

Originally Posted by critical bill

I'm sorry to tell you this, but I'm not really sure who would want to deal with YOU after reading that crap.

From the first to last email you were persistently rude and demanding.

And your threaten the guy with the FBI? Over a mis-sexed gecko?

Color Creations doesn't seem to have a great reputation from what I've gathered about them here on fauna. But in this instance he was making attempts to work this out with you. Even in the end, after you threatened him with the FBI, he he is still saying that he wants to work this out with you.

LOL....how bad can a bad guy be that wants to replace your order or refund your money?

I wouldn't do business with him until it was apparent his image has changed here on fauna. I wouldn't do business with you because you and your wife both came off like nut jobs.

Color Creations options were only two: I would send the gecko back and loose $60 or I would pay full cost to buy a female, forcing me to buy from him again. I don't see how we were bad. We bought a female gecko and received a male.
My wife admits fault for having bought from Color creations to begin with after having read all the posts about him, but she tends to think the best in people and thought a few posts out of hundreds of sales, maybe they just had bad luck.
My wife was upset because this was an anniversary gift from her to me. We did not complain about receiving the gecko almost two weeks after it was ordered even though weather was not bad for the first few days after it was paid, and we would have gladly kept the gecko if we had room for it, but as the e-mails say, we had one enclosure, with a male already in it, and were not about to be out another $300-400 because Color Creations could not tell the difference between a male and a female after being in business for 7 years. The sex was obvious and what Color Creations was trying to do was take advantage of us, thinking we would not be able to sex the gecko.
And when my wife mentioned reporting this to the FBI Fraud, she did so because that is what Kingsnake.com says to do. How does it make sense to be out $60 and receive nothing or paying almost the same amount for receiving what we had ordered in the first place?
We have dealt with quite a few dealers before and had never had problems with them nor them with us. We are nice people, we just don't like being taken advantage of.

To add to this, my wife wrote the e-mail sending picture on Sunday with no reply until Wednesday. After we wrote him first when we thought it was a male he would not admit it was indeed a male.

You should get a refund credit to KEEP the male.

Acting so rudely in emails will get you nowhere, and very quickly.

You are owed at most, if you KEEP the gecko, a PARTIAL refund.

Originally Posted by critical bill

LOL....how bad can a bad guy be that wants to replace your order or refund your money?

Refund minus shipping. Which is BS. The guy sent the wrong gender. The customer should not have to pay for the sellers mistake. I really dont understand where you are coming from on this aspect, Chuck.

As far as how the customers handled it from the get go... yeah that part I understand. They (the buyers) never even considered that it was just an honest mistake and immediately treated the guy like crap from the very start. The buyers certainly have a lot to learn about how to resolve problems.

And I agree, I would not do biz with either.

I can assure you that if I would to do bussiness with you and you delivere what you advertise..you would not have complain about me. I undestand weather changes and differencess, I pay what you are selling and do not try to bargain. In fact I am still waiting for a couple of geckos that I bought 2 weeks ago because the selller has not received the shipping. All that I asked for was for a quick response... wich I waited 3 days in this case... honesty by admitting that some had a mistake.. I was even willing to cover shipping one day and Color Creation absorve the other shipping, but insted I am cornered to lose no mater what.

First email? -

The "female" gecko that you sent us is in fact a male. You having been in the business for as long as you have, I know you would be able to see this as easily as we were due to the obvious open pre-anal pores that it is a male. We already own a male pm grandis and do not have room for another male. I need your address to mail it back to you. We expect a refund and reimbursement for the shipping prior to me shipping it back to you. If you do not comply, I will report this to Kingsnake.com and every other forum that I know of. We do not appreciate being taken advantage of.

Wow! Not wanting to take the time to look at the seller's past threads at the moment but, WOW! You think that was a little over the top?

First email? Wouldn't something like this been better?

"Hello, the gecko arrived fine and it's very nice but unfortunately it's the wrong sex. We ordered a female and received a male. I know we all make mistakes sometimes but we can't keep the male. We specifically ordered a female. Look forward to getting this resolved with you.

Thank You, "

With that stated, The right thing to do is for the seller to replace the gecko at his expense because it was his mistake. Unfortunately, a lot of people will nickel and dime it to death afraid to loss any profit on a single transaction. They write TOS's to prevent losing any of their profit to repairing their errors and having to cover shipping to fix their mistakes takes away any profit on small transactions and they may actually loss money. With that worry, they fail to look at the bigger picture of satisfying a customer that did no wrong. They focus on the bottom-line of that one transaction.

The important thing is to know the terms of service ahead of time. If the seller has them stated, ( Even if I disagree with them) He hasn't done anything other than what he stated he would do ahead of time.

Now, even if the seller did agree to replace and ship at his expense, what makes you think that you can dictate the terms? Your very first email states you expect a full refund before you ship back. Unless the seller is a known thief and you didn't know this ahead of purchase, what gives you the right to dictate the terms? A refusal to send back the item takes away from your position that the seller will not replace. I think KS will see it the same way. You can't expect a refund without returning any product.

Who knows what the seller's first response would have been if your first email wasn't sent with all the threats.
Even so, If it was me, I would still state send the gecko back and I'll issue a full refund and cover shipping.

Next time try responding to a problem with a little more civility and know the terms ahead of time. Also, the quality of the individual you're dealing with. Then you would know what to expect when a problem occurs. There are those always willing to step outside their TOS to satisfy a customer. Less that are willing when threatened.

Have a good day.

I completly agree with you... I misssed two emails prior to all the ones posted:

# 1:
I received the gecko today. She looks active, healthy and beautiful. Thank you so much. I am really pleased with your delivery. Regards

#2:
Hi,I'm sorry to be writing again, but we hadn't gotten a chance to look at the gecko's underside until just know. To us, it looks like a male. Can you tell us how you went about sexing the gecko? Thank you.

--- On Fri, 1/23/09, Pepperquill1@aol.com <Pepperquill1@aol.com> wrote:

His response was to say that he know what he is doing and know how to sex a gecko, the i send picture and I do not get any responses, that is when I start getting irritated.

Have you even notified the seller of this thread?