Ricky Lewis-Deal gone bad.......

I recently acquired a female Amazon Tree Boa from Ricky Lewis of J-Ville Reptiles, Inc. All seemed to be going well with the snake until I noticed it was having frequent, abnormal bowel movements the past few days and regurgitated a meal......I consulted a few friends on-line and took the snake to the vet yesterday. The ATB had intestinal parasites, which thankfully can be treated. I notified Ricky of all of this and here is what he replied with:

Tuesday, October 07, 2003 11:19 PM
From: "Jville Reptiles Inc." <jville_reptiles_inc@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
To: dcbear01
Subject: RE: ATB update (not good)......
Status: Urgent New
<DIV>Dear Dave,</DIV>
<DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
<DIV>i cant understand why shes having these bad valve movements, cause the mother of her and the father had the same thing last week, and i had to go get them some medication, the doctor informed me that it was from improper cage conditions, food that was being fed to it, and somethin else. The doc has had me move my full adults down to a small frozen fuzzy (which is smaller than feeder mice) jsut to get them to eat again, and so far they have not regurged yet.&nbsp; Check the cage setup you have and all the conditions in it cause one slip up will cause them to get sick and need medication.&nbsp; The petstore said the changes in temp and water caused my problems, cause the temp was irregular cause someone had changed it. As for the documents ill dig through my software and see what all i can find for you.&nbsp; If anything else is needed let me know and ill see what i can do and when i get my next order of babies in ill send you a garden baby for free, jsut for all the trouble even
though its past the 7 day guarantee,&nbsp; thanks....<BR><BR></DIV>



There are some other things about him that bothered me......he claims the snake he sold me was Captive Bred. I highly doubt this now. It is also apparant to me that he knows practically nothing in terms of care for these animals. He has been ignoring my e-mails for 2 days now and I don't think I'll hear back from him. I have a full record of every e-mail correspondance with him, so if more details are needed, I can supply them. I paid $135 shipped for this snake and $89 at the vet yesterday if any of you are wondering. I just wanted to let you all know that I do not recommend doing business with this guy. Thanks for reading.

Well, I was surprised when Ricky e-mailed me back....here is what he had to say about the situation:

Thursday, October 09, 2003 2:17 PM
From: "Jville Reptiles Inc." <jville_reptiles_inc@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
To: dcbear01
Subject: Do what??
Status: Urgent New
<DIV>Look sorry i havent writtin back but i have been busier than hell with 2 jobs and tryin not to get fired from my cookin job. i have had no sleep in teh past 4 days cause of this. I found out y shes the way she is my employee put some freshly imported ones from miami into her cage with out havin them cleaned like he should have, when they first come in, second im not ignoring you but i havent had&nbsp; a chance to do much with my e-mail cause as soon as i get home i try to get a few minutes of sleep before i go back to work. But i asked my employees about your snake and told them im getting total hell from you and your going to post negavtive [bleep] about my business cause of them and thats gonna [bleep] me over for no reason, then one of them admitted he was in a hurry to get out of there and just threw the shipments into the same cage so that he could leave. Well hes gone alright cause i told him that was [bleep]ed and that now its costing me our business cause of this one lil mistake,
but dude look it was a simple mistake by my employee and i fixed it so lets jsut forget about it plz,&nbsp; thanks,,,i have to go back to workk now...<BR><BR><B




See, my dilemma is that he seems like a prettt good guy, just one who doesn't know what hes doing when it comes to the animals and his choice of employees. Should I give him another chance or write this off as him trying to cover his tracks?

Sniff Sniff Is that tuna I smell?

If you paid for captive bred and got an import then you should get the captive born animal you paid for. Period. If he does that, at no additional expense to you, then I would think it a simple mistake that got taken care of. Anything else is just BS.

Wes Pollock

You have a point, Wes....but I am not sure that he means he sent me an import.....I think he meant that his employee put the imports in the cage with my supposed CB snake, but I could be wrong.

WOW....well, some new stuff has come to light regarding the situation....I just got a couple of e-mails from someone who knows Ricky......check this out:

From: "herperus" <herperus@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu Oct 9, 2003 2:26:20 PM US/Eastern
To: dc_beard@bellsouth.net
Subject: Ricky Lewis

This is a message from herperus at FaunaClassifieds Forums ( http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/index.php ). The FaunaClassifieds Forums owners cannot accept any responsibility for the contents of the email.

To email herperus, you can use this online form:
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...rm&userid=2737

OR, by email:
mailto:herperus@yahoo.com

This is the message:

I know Ricky , he lives about 20 miles from me , he is an 18 year old kid who is buying WC stuff from wholesalers and trying to resell it , I have not seen how he keeps his amazons but i did get an albino burm from him that had nasty bite marks from a retic that he kept it with.
I can try to get his phone number if you want it ,and if i see him i will tell him about your post.
Thanks, David Jarvis



Heres another e-mail:

From: "herperus" <herperus@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu Oct 9, 2003 10:12:59 PM US/Eastern
To: dc_beard@bellsouth.net
Subject: Ricky

This is a message from herperus at FaunaClassifieds Forums ( http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/index.php ). The FaunaClassifieds Forums owners cannot accept any responsibility for the contents of the email.

To email herperus, you can use this online form:
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...rm&userid=2737

OR, by email:
mailto:herperus@yahoo.com

This is the message:

Ricky has no employees.I did get his cell phone number 910-381-5490.
I hope this helps.
Thanks,David

I just tried to call Ricky on his cell phone but it was temporarily out of service.

I also got this e-mail from Ricky earlier this evening by accident I think:

Thursday, October 09, 2003 9:35 PM
From: "Jville Reptiles Inc." <jville_reptiles_inc@yahoo.com> Add to Address Book
To: dcbear01
Subject: RE: Do what??
Status: Urgent New
Charles,

Yes the animals are treated as they come in by a friends of ours that works at the wilmingtion zoo and he does all teh vets stuff on our animals for us as they come in cause he is alot cheaper. all i have in stock is garden phase males but i will send one out as soon as i get a chance as hes done shedding thanks....




ANY info or advice that you guys could give as to what I should do regarding this situation would be greatly appreciated, as I have no experience with being screwed like this.

I thought that was tuna I smelled.

If he just put the imports in with the captives for a short time it is unlikely that the parasites came from a short term exposure. Not impossible, but not likely.

If you paid for captive bred and this isn't then you're owed captive bred or a refund.

Wes Pollock

i take it by the wilmington Zoo tag and the 910 area code . he is saying he has a buisness? and by the name if thats his its Incorporated ?? if this is so you should be able to call or do a search to see if there is a buisness by that name an incorperated buisness would have had filed papers on that company name. Sounds like to me that you did get subpar anaimals and should be entitled to a refund or a correct anaimal. i hope this guy makes your deal right ...

Well, I just got off the phone with David Jarvis, the guy who sent me the e-mails informing me of Ricky's true identity.....I doubt that I'll get a refund because from what Dave said, he is a broke kid who buys things he can't pay for (he'll write CODs that he knows won't clear for 32 days so he can buy animals he doesn't have the $ for and resell them). Hopefully David's local contact with Ricky will make enough of a difference to persuade Ricky to do the right thing and refund my $ or at least my vet bills. I guess I am happy to get his name out there so others do not get taken like I did and I made a pretty good contact with David, so I suppose some good will come of this whole thing.