Kalico Gecko / Jeremy Heikel - Bad Business ; Leopard Geckos

Well 007 are you aware that PayPal really frowns upon collecting the fee you are obligated in paying in order to have the use of using PayPal. They will shut you down if they find out that this is how you do business. Its fee for using THEIR services and should not be incurred by the buyer. I do hope the buyer as well as others complain.

He admitted his mistakes, apologized and gave options to make it right. Making a "Public warning" and somewhat smearing his name without attempting to find a solution seems a bit unreasonable...

Originally Posted by Fireballs007

Good evening all. Thank you all for responding. Admittedly this has bot been our greatest hour. We are going through a period of expansion and ultimatly I dropped the ball on this one. Per our policies we offered Ashleigh a full refund and because it was our mistake a free shipping label back to us. At Kalico Gecko we focus on our Customer Service and would like to make her happy but the temper tantrums and name smearing has sort of tied our hands in this situation. The “Cursing” she is referring to is towards a group of individuals that constantly barrate and harrass me. The got words that were fitting of the treatment I received. There has never been anything but compassion in this situation towards Ashleigh but the demands are unreasonable. Its posted on my page that refunds are only given when an animal is returned. Again I appologize that you are upset. Frankly I would be 2. We messed up. But you have been offered what you are going to be offered.

Jeremy,don't you think your requests unreasonable?

You are asking your customer to ship back to you a tiny gecko that would probably not make it alive.after all she probably has no shipping experience and it has been a hot summer.

You admit that you dropped the ball,you screwed up big time.here's a simple solution. go to paypal and hit the refund button then email your customer and tell her you are sorry for your screw up and to keep the undersized gecko.you might not recognize what I am saying here, it's called good customer service.

Jeremy time to stand up and be a man!

FAT FROG, i am sure he has collected the PayPal surcharge from other customers who used that service to conduct business. This is not isolated in this herp community who uses the service and pass on the expense to the customer. The fee is the obligation of the the seller. That , also became part of the sellers agreement before the transaction even occurred. I am sure that is done with everyone he has dealt with. What do you think PayPal would do if they found out that the seller was recouping the service fee from the buyer. You sign an agreement with PayPal when you use there service. They are very clear about charges.

Originally Posted by elena

Can one of fauna's more experienced leopard gecko breeders please weigh in as to whether it is safe to ship a 5g animal? It makes a really big difference in this case. I'd say that if it is generally considered unsafe, that the OP deserves a partial refund without returning the animal. However, if 5g hatchlings can be safely shipped, the OP should have to return the animal to receive a refund.

I agree that the safety of the critter comes first, and would also like to know whether experienced sellers would consider it safe to return a 5 g critter and the return request should be based on these answers.

Originally Posted by Lucille

I agree that the safety of the critter comes first, and would also like to know whether experienced sellers would consider it safe to return a 5 g critter and the return request should be based on these answers.

I've shipped 100s of geckos but I've never shipped any below around 15g. That's kind of the standard as far as I'm aware. Could they be fine younger than that? Probably, but I've never wanted to find out.

Originally Posted by Fireballs007

Its posted on my page that refunds are only given when an animal is returned. Again I appologize that you are upset. Frankly I would be 2. We messed up. But you have been offered what you are going to be offered.

The gecko made it through the first shipment, but I have read that shipping places a lot of stress on a critter. I think if shipping this little gecko back will endanger its life, if the seller persists in requiring its return one might draw the conclusion that $ come before critters for this seller.
How is the buyer going to feel if she ships it off, and it doesn't make it? And what is to stop the seller from refusing the refund if it dies in shipping?

There is a 'failure to thrive' comment in post #13 by the buyer. It may be that this is not even a Giant.

The buyer has bought what amounts to a palace for this little critter. If she chooses, for the sake of the critter's health, to keep it and it does not grow like one might expect a Giant to grow, readers can draw their own conclusions about what they themselves could expect of the validity of their purchases, dealing with this seller. If she keeps this tiny baby for the sake of its health and the seller refuses any kind of refund, that says a lot about both buyer and seller, I think.

I used to be deep into leopard gecko breeding. The weight at which it is deemed safe to ship is arbitrary and most often about a seller's comfort level. 10g, 15g, and 20g are commonly cited collective "standards" in the hobbindustry.

I would find it pretty uncommon for an experienced seller to be comfortable with shipping a 5g gecko unless maybe we are talking about two exceptionally experienced keepers shipping to one another because of multiple factors being coordinated that tipped the scales towards doing it, but even then it would not be anywhere close to typical.

In terms of things like temperatures, it would be no more safe to ship a 10/15/20g gecko than a 5g gecko, but the one factor that is going to be worse at smaller size is concussive force. When an entire vital organ is built at the thickness of a hair or a single ply of tissue paper, the force of a hard impact has potentially greater consequences. While it is an extreme example, I was once t-boned while driving and taking a very young tortoise with me from point A to point B rather than leaving it alone while in a fragile state for a week or so (so much for trying). It was to my right side and cushioned in a well-packed container. The force of the impact transmitted through my body from left to right and the tortoise was in the path of horizontal transmission even after the wave would lose energy through my body. I was fine, although slightly pissed off. It died while waiting for an officer to arrive at the scene. I opened it up and its internals, paper thin, had been shredded. It is an extreme example, but illustrative.

Would I ship animals that small? Under a collection of multifactorial specific circumstances, I might. As a standard, I probably would elect to wait until the animal was larger for this kind of reason and also to be sure the feeding and passage of waste were where I wanted them to be, but we all have our own thresholds.

I understand hesitation to ship back. I do. Still, it is an expected part of a refund process. There can be a good faith gesture here of waiting until the animal achieves a higher weight, but that means time, work, and risk for the buyer that it might fail in the process. From a business perspective, I would not recommend waiting. The bad event is the seller's responsibility, but practical solutions that may not be feel-good solutions have been proposed (or stipulated).

As for the giant genetics, they are not a guarantee even when legitimately involved. Contrary to all of the original junk information put out there regarding giants and "super" giants, it seems to be more about lineage and individuals within a lineage than a single allele (as was originally the assertion). One can have "super" giants produce geckos that grow up to be normal size. Or on the smaller side of adulthood. Big geckos tend to make more big geckos, but sometimes not. And what is interesting is you can have a normal or smallish animal of a giant lineage then produce giant (or so-called "super" giant) offspring and grandoffspring down the line. Sometimes a giant lineage animal plainly does not blow up. Especially during the first year. If that happens, its frame seems to be set at a normal size even though it can still pass on desirable genetics to the next generation. I had an amazing male leopard gecko that I produced like this from "super" giant parents. The "super" term is a bastardization of the genetic idea at this point since it is more about size and weight class these days than the function of the super form of a single allele that appears not to really be at play here anyway.

The seller is normal to expect a return prior to refund. The buyer is normal to care about the welfare of the animal at this small size. It would have to be a return-for-refund or some kind of compromise between the two parties at this point. While the seller could just say hey, free gecko because of his "bad" and refund, that is not expected practice. Some would do it. Some would not. He would not be obligated to make that choice. They could wait until it is a little bigger to send it back like I mentioned earlier, but that comes with risks as I also mentioned earlier. They have to figure out what they are willing to accept and then try to move forward one way or another.

The seller should get his operation under control, though. This should not have happened.

Originally Posted by nickolasanastasiou

While the seller could just say hey, free gecko because of his "bad" and refund, that is not expected practice.

Perhaps each side could agree to 'give' a little and a partial refund offered with the buyer keeping the baby. That would decrease the risk in re-shipping, and the nightmare of finger pointing bound to occur if the baby is shipped and dies on the way back. No one would be happy if a death in shipping occurred.

Originally Posted by tlmoon

I don't see where the seller was cursing, is that in one of the screen shots?