Mike @ Outback Reptiles

Originally Posted by PoconoBlueTongues

I'm not going through 8 pages of bickering so haven't the foggiest whats transpired here in this thread and am only speaking of the actual issue that had taken place.

Maybe if you bothered to READ the thread you would understand it better. And if you think a Bad Guy title to a thread really and truly makes everyone think the subject is a bad guy, you haven't bothered to read very many threads at all. Check out some recent threads about garter snakes; you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, It's not a "Bad Guy" thread; it's an info thread. It's a feedback forum. The seller dropped the ball on letting the buyer know the snake was already sold, causing her to think the snake was coming when it wasn't. Had he not dropped the ball on communicating with her, she would not have missed a day of work waiting for the snake which never arrived. I highly doubt this would have gotten posted at all had the seller let her know of the error and not to expect the snake. And no, it's certainly not the worst thing that's ever happened to someone, and she doesn't say that it is. He did what he could to make it right. He apologized and refunded the money. She posted her experience just like anyone has a right to do.

My personal opinion, some people are jumping on the OP and trying to make out that she has no right to be frustrated by the transaction and that she shouldn't have posted the thread. I don't see her attacking him. She simply shared her experience. Other people (most, from the looks of it) have shared good experiences with that seller. That's good news, and informational for all as well. No seller will have a perfect track record. What puts me off the seller a bit is his attitude, otherwise I agree he's not a bad guy in that sense. And that's just my personal opinion.

Regardless, I support the OP in posting her experience. I hate to see an OP who has thought about the issue and posts a thread in good faith stating their experience get attacked for doing so. There are posters whose agenda is just to bash someone unfairly and this is not one of them.

Originally Posted by nickolasanastasiou

People are supposed to form opinions based on as much information as they can gather. If people want to skip or haphazardly skim, they are making themselves situationally illiterate. This medium for information exchange is written/typed, so choosing to be literate is kind of, you know, key to constructing an informed opinion. As for being either/or (strictly dichotomous) for info threads, that is untrue. Plenty of mid-spectrum mixed experiences with both good and bad aspects to experiences may be (and often are) included in an info-titled thread. It is up to us as readers to invest our time in gaining the knowledge to determine where we fall on such things.

The OP has made it clear for those not skimming that it is the normal procedure for the OP to aim to create a BOI thread or post (good/bad/info as applicable) for each transaction the OP has engaged in. Standard practice for the OP.

If you think this situation had a good ending and casts the selling party here in a positive light, then the thread is not negative to you regardless of your perception of the intention and speaks positively of the outcome.

The things I did like:

Admission of the mistake and rapid refunding. After the mistake, it really was all I would expect from a good businessman. I liked the future discount offer as well. That was a matter of good will. For clarity due to this having been disputed as being effectively meager, he said 10% off of any future order. Not only of a relatively inexpensive order. That can be very significant or very insignificant depending on what one's order total comes to and could easily range from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars.

The things I did not like:

The response (with photo of the pizza box) after the pizza offer was rejected and the matter was brought here in an info thread format (so part of post number five of this thread). There really was no need for that and could not have resulted in a positive impression for the person it was intended to affect. The offer itself was a little different (unusual), but I will give that offer itself the benefit of the doubt. I have done business with Mike before and I was perfectly happy with my experience. If the pizza photo nonsense was posted in response to my rejection of an offered pizza over an imperfect experience I could have had, I doubt I would perceive that as professional or decent. The deal for the OP turned a touch sour, so no need to add some sting to it as well.

---------------------------------

Side matter that has been brought up - I have had more than a few instances with various sellers where I had to ask for the tracking information in the late evening on the day of shipment and only received a response with that information on the morning slated for arrival. With the weather being what it was, it could have resulted in death for the animals if I had not elected to wait at that point. Updates in the system are not flawless and errors do get made. I have had things delivered to the incorrect house. I have had a hold-at-hub/facility selection ignored. This can and does happen (albeit rarely). I do generally select a hold-at-hub delivery these days for the safety that comes with it, as my "new" local delivery route is very rural and often delayed with many of those delays occurring in rather hot weather due to the climate in my region. If I did not receive adequate and timely communication after a shipment date had been scheduled, I absolutely would have waited if it was supposed to be delivered to my home. A person can drop off packages or have a pickup performed and then have an issue preventing communication. I was smashed into by another vehicle right after dropping off an outbound package in 2015 and, had the accident been worse, I might have been incapacitated without having yet forwarded the recipient the tracking link (which I tend to do right before or soon after I hand over the package). Since I know these things can happen, I will favor avoiding the potential risk to the animal's health and life and wait if I am expecting a delivery at home for which communication has been insufficient. Is that my choice? Yes. Would I have had to make that choice for a non-delivery if I had been properly informed? No. The wasted day or morning has a precipitating event here.

All of that said, Mike apologized multiple times after admitting the error, refunded promptly, and offered some compensatory bonuses that could be seen as above-and-beyond action by some people (and perhaps not by others).

Well said. I will say the whole pizza thing was a huge turn off for me. And anyone who has observed the antics of mike at outback on facebook and a little bit on the Boi will see this type of behavior is representative of his character.
Mistakes are made. Even if the snake had shipped there's no guarantee that next day delivery is 100% I have had many many shipments where packages got bumped for multiple reasons. So I don't fault outback too much as I feel it was an honest mistake. It sucks for the op but there is no definite in overnight shipping. I would urge folks to have packages held for pick up and not take days off work.
The pizza issue... Enough of a problem for me to not ever order from outback.had that not happened my position would be different.

Originally Posted by tlmoon

Anyway, It's not a "Bad Guy" thread; it's an info thread. It's a feedback forum. The seller dropped the ball on letting the buyer know the snake was already sold, causing her to think the snake was coming when it wasn't. Had he not dropped the ball on communicating with her, she would not have missed a day of work waiting for the snake which never arrived. I highly doubt this would have gotten posted at all had the seller let her know of the error and not to expect the snake. And no, it's certainly not the worst thing that's ever happened to someone, and she doesn't say that it is. He did what he could to make it right. He apologized and refunded the money. She posted her experience just like anyone has a right to do.

I agree. Mike is not a Bad Guy.
But the ball was dropped twice, once when the already sold critter was sold again, and then by not notifying the buyer sooner.
He apologized and refunded.
But the particulars of how the incident was handled created some friction and I empathize with the buyer's feelings. I do think that a method put in place to see that this can't happen again would be a good idea. Not everyone agrees, they are entitled to their opinions just as I am entitled to mine.

Originally Posted by tlmoon

Regardless, I support the OP in posting her experience. I hate to see an OP who has thought about the issue and posts a thread in good faith stating their experience get attacked for doing so.

I agree with this. The OP presented her experience, did not call Mike a bad guy, and shared her own feelings about how the situation was handled.

Originally Posted by Mike Schultz

We keep, manage and sell thousands of animals. I would say we have a pretty good track record as this situation rarely, rarely happens. And when it does, I fix it immediately like I did here.

I am really not sure what the purpose of this constant back and forth is. We can continue to reinvent the wheel here figuring out how "Mike made a mistake on one of the 29 orders he took last week" or we can move on with our lives as the problem was rectified before this thread even existed.

This is the real issue here. If you want to be sure you are getting the snake you ordered, don't order from a wholesale flipper like Outback who keeps "thousands of animals" in warehouses stretched across such a large area that no one can answer phones because of the time it takes to drive from one locale to the next.

Support your small scale local breeders, folks!

I don't think that's fair. Mike has a really good rep, and this incident was unusual. I think he could have taken care of it better, I think the very fact that it was unusual meant he could have been a little more generous (and I empathize with his buyer and in no way am I discounting her valid reaction at what happened after she didn't get her snake) and the pizza issue wasn't him at the top of his game, but he refunded right away, and if you look back, there are few complaints about him.
The inventory issue is an issue, I hope he will give some thought to a system that will prevent and already sold critter from getting resold, in the future.
But it isn't fair to tar his whole operation, because it works the way it is supposed to, most of the time.

While I sympathize with the buyer, the seller admitted his mistake, that's no small thing and neither is refunding promptly. That shows a good seller, he was then presented with a third party saying he should give her a free snake for her time, if he's not the owner how can he make that call for one and two the buyer saying she would never order from them again (was this forgotten by all?)

So what other course was mike supposed to take when the buyer basically refused any offer before it was made other than full refund and a discount. If someone offers to buy me dinner, a pizza, for my troubles I would have jumped all over it, extra cheese and pepperoni for me from pizza hut! (Sorry for the little joke) but he really had his hands tied as to what to do.

From what I see is this was a ONE time mistake. So why would a system need overhauled (that's most likely not even HIS system but his bosses) when ONE mistake was made after a busy show and running around taking care of animals and bouncing from facility to facility. Again I do feel for the frustration the buyer went threw but harping at an EMPLOYEE to change a system that's not his to cage isn't going to fix anything. And no I've never ordered from them and probably never will because I like to buy directly from the breeder. Just my .02.

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Originally Posted by Mike Schultz

You keep saying you want me to "rectify" the situation

Let's lay it out here....

As soon as I got into the shop tuesday morning I emailed you explaining:
-Why I hadnt answered your calls to the shop phone (I was not there)
-That we did not have the snake and I was immediately issuing a refund (Which I did)
-That I had made a mistake and forgotten to call you the day before, (and apologized)
-And that I would be happy to give you a future discount to make up for the mistake (a token of good faith that I was not really obligated to offer)

I even offered to buy you a pizza after you told me you weren't going to order from me ever again, so I really had no motivator to do that besides me trying to be helpful... But you're right, I guess some people are never happy.

This could have been yours but instead i'm eating it while replying to BOI threads. /shrug

Mike when you come to NY with Ryan holla at me bro and I got a Pizza, Wing and Beer deal comin to ya 👍🏼
Chris

Originally Posted by ElexisOrtiz

While I sympathize with the buyer, the seller admitted his mistake, that's no small thing and neither is refunding promptly. That shows a good seller, he was then presented with a third party saying he should give her a free snake for her time, if he's not the owner how can he make that call for one and two the buyer saying she would never order from them again (was this forgotten by all?)

So what other course was mike supposed to take when the buyer basically refused any offer before it was made other than full refund and a discount. If someone offers to buy me dinner, a pizza, for my troubles I would have jumped all over it, extra cheese and pepperoni for me from pizza hut! (Sorry for the little joke) but he really had his hands tied as to what to do.

From what I see is this was a ONE time mistake. So why would a system need overhauled (that's most likely not even HIS system but his bosses) when ONE mistake was made after a busy show and running around taking care of animals and bouncing from facility to facility. Again I do feel for the frustration the buyer went threw but harping at an EMPLOYEE to change a system that's not his to cage isn't going to fix anything. And no I've never ordered from them and probably never will because I like to buy directly from the breeder. Just my .02.

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No doubt. I mean I don't know what people expect to happen here. When you order anything, from anywhere, if a mistake happens the most you are going to get is a refund and maybe a small discount for a future purchase. You are not going to get compensation because you took off from work, you are not going to get the retailer to track down that item/product/doodad from another retailer, you aren't even going to get a pizza. A mistake happened and was corrected. Just because it wasn't to the OP's satisfaction doesn't mean it was wrong. And its no one's business how Mike's inventory system is configured. Or how he is going to to fix it. Or anything really.

Originally Posted by Mr Sully

Mike when you come to NY with Ryan holla at me bro and I got a Pizza, Wing and Beer deal comin to ya 👍🏼
Chris

Just a question for ya. Why would you resurrect a less than flattering thread about mike to tell him to holla at you when he comes to NY. I see you have a brand new join date so maybe you didn't realize by replying to any thread it doesn't matter how old it is it's drug back to the front page automatically.
I'm guessing it was an honest mistake. Next time I suggest sending a pm or just giving him a call

Haha no worries, only problem is now everybody will want pizza from me until this thread goes away again