Reasonable length of time for a warranty period?

Just want to clear up a misconception on the insurance policy thing. Premiums are not made by 'betting' that nothing is going to happen. Premiums are figured by the likelihood of a loss and charged as such. The premiums then become part of a 'pool' that losses are paid out of.

That said, the price of an animal should be static. If you sell boas for $100 each, it should be that price regardless of whether you offer a 48 hour guaranty or a 30 day guaranty. As for Rich's animals, IMO his price is based on the quality of his stock and what he feels he should earn for the work he's put into producing them - not how long a guaranty he provides. For myself, I would never purchase from someone who has variable pricing such as you are suggesting. The market price of the animal is what most people are willing to pay, nothing more. If you want to sell a $10 animal for $40, that is your perogative, but it's the customers' perogative to make the choice of who they purchase from.

Just my thoughts on it.

Dianne

OK Richard, then lets use the snow corn example. How much cheaper does my snow corn have to be than Rich's, if mine comes w/ no guarantee? Let's say his is $30 and comes w/ the 30 guarantee.

Who says you HAVE to charge less? If you feel your animals are worth $30 regardless of the guarantee you offer, then by all means charge $30.

For some reason, it appears you have the idea that guarantees are something that is costing Rich a bunch of money and therefore he has to charge higher prices to recoup his guarantee cost. Rich charges for the quality of his animals, the time he's invested in producing them, and of course, what he feels is a reasonable price. And hopefully, I don't put words in Rich's mouth here, but I feel the 30 day guarantee reflects his confidence in the quality of his animals. That is not something you really charge extra for. That is a service that not only shows your confidence in your animals, but also makes your customer feel good and confident they bought a good animal, and if something DOES go wrong in a few days after getting it home and set up, they won't be stuck with a dead animal and no help.

Dianne, you echoed my sentiments exactly:

That said, the price of an animal should be static. If you sell boas for $100 each, it should be that price regardless of whether you offer a 48 hour guaranty or a 30 day guaranty.

For myself, I would never purchase from someone who has variable pricing such as you are suggesting.

She also summed up my feelings nicely here, too.

That is exactly the case Rob. The whole point is people are not setting their prices based on the guarantee they provide, they are setting the guarantee based on their faith in the quality of what they are selling.
I offer a 7 day health guarantee. If I don't think the animal is going to live
If Brian or anyone else does not have faith that their cornsnake will live 7 days, then limit your guarantee to what you feel comfortable with.
Price your animals at what you want to sell them for and set your guarantee to what you feel is acceptable based on the quality of the animal being sold. There is no reason to suggest that one has to depend on the other, because it doesn't.

The price I ask for my animals has nothing whatsoever to do with the length of guarantee I offer. I offer the guarantee because I know I am selling a healthy animal. There is no need to charge extra for that guarantee because I am fully confident that the purchaser will not need to use it, and to date no one ever has.
If I thought there was a possibility that an animal I sold would die at any point, as a result of something that was wrong at the time of sale, I simply would not sell it, regardless of the length of the guarantee.
To suggest that I offer a 7 day guarantee because I'm betting the animal will live at least a week is rediculous.

I offer a 7 day health guarantee. If I don't think the animal is going to live

Something was lost during the posting of my last message.
I can't edit the post, so just scratch that sentence. The rest of the post completes the thought anyway.

Guys and Gals, this is what I'm asking. I don't want $40 for a ten dollar animal. In fact, want I want is to sell the "market priced" animal, below market price and not give any warranty. $30 for for a guaranteed snow corn is a fair price. I don't trust Joe customer enough to guarantee he can't kill my animal for 30 days. So what I want to do is sell him the snake, answer all his questions about how to take care of it, and then send him on his way, never to be seen again until he wants to buys something else. I'm willing to take $10 less for the snow corn just so I don't have to determine 20 days from now (or how ever long it happens to be) whether it was Joe customer who killed the snake or if it something that happened on my end.

Dianne, insurance companies absolutely bet on the odds of disaster. Why do you think they charge different rates to different 35 year old males for the same insurance. They know that the 35 year old who weighes 350 lbs and smokes 3 packs a day is MUCH more likely to have a heart attack than the 35 year who weighes 145 lbs and runs marathons on the weekend. The odds are shown on those charts we see when they sell us insurance. The greater the odds that you might drop dead tomorrow the more you pay. You can call it whatever you want, but they are playing the odds.

When they lose, like when hurricane Andrew came through, they simply start charging more for the same or even less coverage to make up for their mistake. This can be translated to reptiles. I would have no problem offering a 7 day guarantee on my cornsnakes, but there's no way I'd offer that guarantee on more delicate animals like frogs or chameleons w/o marking those animals up to cover my losses.

I guess what I'm really trying to determine here is this:
Do you, the customer, really want me to mark up my animals to "market level" and give you a guarantee or would you rather have an outlet let mine where you can buy animals based on how the look/act right now, and save yourself 10%-50%?

Do you, the customer, really want me to mark up my animals to "market level" and give you a guarantee or would you rather have an outlet let mine where you can buy animals based on how the look/act right now, and save yourself 10%-50%?

In all honesty, NO. That is how fly-by-night operations sell their animals. You want to undercut the other people at the show to move your animals and outside of the initial sale, have NO further contact, concern, or responsibility for what happens to them or the animals. You want the people to hand you their money, give them a quick blurb on care, and be done with it. You don't want to have ANYTHING to do with your customers post-sale, but yet you hope they will come back and buy again? I can understand not offering a guarantee(well, sort of), but the way you've described how you want to do things at shows sounds like you just want the following:

1)Take money
2)Give them snakes
3)Not give a crap

Sorry if I'm getting it all wrong, but if THIS is your business plan...

So what I want to do is sell him the snake, answer all his questions about how to take care of it, and then send him on his way, never to be seen again until he wants to buys something else.

...then I know one table I WON'T buy from.

Believe me, I know how insurance works - I'm an agent. It isn't odds exactly that they figure, it's the likelihood of a loss. Rates increase not because they want a profit alone but because the pool of money needs to be recouped for future disasters. Enough about insurance.

I want to pair a fair market price for an animal. If an animal is seriously low in price for the market value, I probably will have concerns about buying it in the first place. As the old saying goes, "if it looks too good to be true.........." There are plenty of others, however, that go to shows or breeders online looking for a deal. My concern is with quality. I will spend a little more money with someone I trust versus someone offering low prices that is an unknown or that won't stand behind their product. All of my animals are pets first. I've done enough rehab and have nursed enough animals to know what I don't want to go through from something I've purchased.

If you aren't comfortable offering a guaranty, don't offer it. There's no written or unwritten code saying you have to offer one. If you only want to offer a day or two, or in shipping - live arrival only, that's also fine and within market standards. I've only done a couple of shows selling animals, not even my own for that matter, and neither myself or the owner of the snakes being sold posted any particular guaranty. Even so, if someone called us withing the first few days after a purchase with a problem, we'd do our best to help out or replace the animal. I know that's never going to happen because I know the kind of care she and I both give our animals. As for shipping or selling online, neither of us have gone that route at this time.

It boils down to you have to do what you feel is right as far as your personal policies go. The assumption that people price their animals based on the guaranty that they offer is simply wrong. They're basing it on the quality of the animals they sell and their confidence in those animals. As I said, I'll spend more for an animal from a breeder I have confidence in than to get a good deal on one that the breeder isn't willing to stand behind.

Dianne

Guys, I really wish I could give you some of the insite I have in this area to prove my point, but to do so might damage some people's reputation. So, I will try to do so w/o using names. There are people advertising on this site, and talked about in the forums who buy the exact same animals I buy (from the same source) or even buy animals from me. Take them back to their beautiful pet stores and charge 3 times what I do. There are others who take them home and take nice pictures on them, post them on the web, and sell them at 100-200% profit. That extra profit isn't because they have taken any better care of the animals than I have (hell sometimes they only got them an hour before) it's because they are willing to bet they can offer a nice guarantee and sell the animal or because people will pay more for their guarantee or will pay more because they can then say "it's __________ stock." NO IT'S NOT!!!

Let me qualify one thing real quick, I am not talking about Rich. As far as I know and everything I have ever heard lends me to believe he breeds all his own animals. But their are several others out there BIG NAMES, who buy hundreds of animals every year from other breeders and then sell them as their own stock. And I guess if you consider "stock" as something a person has for sale then that would work. But I believe most people believe when they pay and extra 20% for a python from some big name breeder they are getting a snake that actually hatched at his facility. The same way most people believe c.b. ball means it was c.b. in this country. Most of us who have been doing this for awhile know that c.b. ball means c.b. in Africa.

Rob, it's not so much that I "don't give a crap." It's, I don't trust Joe customer, and I don't have time to determine what Joe customer did to kill the animals. I teach full time, have two kids, 200 breeder animals, and many wholesale accounts on top of that to take care of. So it's worth it to me to charge a little less and not have to worry about how Joe customer listened to everything I said about the corn snake, forgot it, and then listened to everything the idiot at the pet store told him about it, followed those incorrect directions, killed the snake, and wants to whine to me about how I should replace it.

Can't you, Rob Hill, look at a gecko, ask a few questions of the person selling it, and make a determination as to how you think this animal will fair in your collection. I know I can look at a corn snake and make that determination. And, in the few cases where I've been wrong and the animal has had a parasite problem that was unseen at the show, if I talked to the person selling it and was comfortable enough with what I saw and heard to buy the animal, why should I hold them responsible for that problem? They are no more a pet physic than I am.

I think the Guarantee on the Animals should be based on the type of animal that is being sold.. For Example.. I mostly sell Lizards and occasionally sell Snakes... I give a 48 hour Guarantee on the Lizards and generally give a 7 Day + Guarantee on the Snakes... My thought is that Lizards tend to acclimize faster and are usually ready and raring to eat within two days of being placed in a new enclosure.. I actually chose the 3 days on here because that's usually how long I stay in contact with the person to make sure that they are completely satisfied with their purchase... Snakes on the other hand tend to not want to eat within the first week of arrival and I extend the guarantee up to 7 days Minimum.. If the snake does not eat within that time period I will keep in contact with the buyer constantly and extend the Warranty on the animal until the time that it takes it's first meal successfully.. so far this has worked in my favor and has brought a few people back to purchase from me again!! It makes me feel good when someone is surprised to hear that if the snake doesn't eat and it's been a month.. I will either Replace it or Refund them as long as they send the original snake back to me.. I will also pay return shipping! I am Generally confident in the Animals that I sell and am willing to take on the responsibility of any problems that may arrive unless it takes someone 2 Months plus to contact me and say that there is a problem.. then I would be skeptical... Anyhow.. that's my .02 and I hope it is valuable to someone out there! Thanks for reading!

Catharine Smith