DTS herps (Bad Experience)

However it worked out I'm glad things ended well. It speaks well of you.

I require photo documentation of dead animals. I've never had anyone recieve anything dead but if they said they did but had no pics, no refund/replacement from me. Put that in your TOS if it isn't there already.

I can see at least one problem with the 1 hour notification. I work during the day. My wife is home with the kids. She is there to accept all packages. She hates snakes, she hates frogs, and she will not open up a package that contains snakes or frogs. I don't get home from work until 5:30pm. If the frogs or snakes arrive at 10:00 am I won't know if any are dead until I get home. There is no way I could notify you within 1 hour. Personally I think its more than a bit unreasonable.

Note: I am not married, I don't have a wife or kids, I don't work until 5:30. the above was a hypothetical situation to point out one potential problem with the 1 hour notification.

Originally Posted by sschind

I can see at least one problem with the 1 hour notification. I work during the day. My wife is home with the kids. She is there to accept all packages. She hates snakes, she hates frogs, and she will not open up a package that contains snakes or frogs. I don't get home from work until 5:30pm. If the frogs or snakes arrive at 10:00 am I won't know if any are dead until I get home. There is no way I could notify you within 1 hour. Personally I think its more than a bit unreasonable.

Note: I am not married, I don't have a wife or kids, I don't work until 5:30. the above was a hypothetical situation to point out one potential problem with the 1 hour notification.

IF you read the TOS and still do business, you've agreed to abide by that TOS UNLESS you have something in writing saying otherwise, hypothetical or not.

IF you don't like the TOS, pass on the animal.

Originally Posted by Wilomn

IF you read the TOS and still do business, you've agreed to abide by that TOS UNLESS you have something in writing saying otherwise, hypothetical or not.

IF you don't like the TOS, pass on the animal.

have to agree with wess here..once animal is delivered should be checked within 1 hour..to many issues can be avoided if opened upon arrival...also i dont know of anyone that would have animals delivered if they did have some one that could open and check asap

tim

I dunno Dan, it sounds like you're still trying to justify your previous stance and defends your previous "screw you buyer" position.

The frogs do not belong to the buyer when you ship them. They belong to the buyer when they arrived at the destination. The time in transit is time during which you are assuming a certain inherent risk because the animals are in the hands of a delivery agent who you subcontracted to complete part of the services your buyer pair you for.

Your shipping agent delayed your frogs, the loss is yours to eat as part of doing good business. Having the audacity to quibble over a four hour email delay when the animals arrived twentyfour hours late is utterly unacceptable.

Some sellers will write up a set of terms that allows them do deny culpability in the event of carrier mishandling or delay. Usually the kinds of scumbags who will take any excuse to screw a customer out of every nickle and dime possible. Feel free, of course, to write up a set of terms like that, just understand that it will prevent some customers from purchasing from you.

So am I right in understanding that no refund has yet been issued? The buyer has just been waiting around for a week to find out if they'd be getting new frogs or cash back? And again- you have the audacity to try complaining that they didn't contact you for four hours after the package arrived late? You're hundreds of hours late in making this right, real classy way to do business.

Seamus, As a newcomer to the BOI, I just want to say that while others might be deserving of the title of "Best Detective "or "Best Counter Puncher" you would qualify in my opinon as the "Voice of Reason". I find your comments to always be fair,well thought out and well presented.Keep on swinging the devil by the tail.

Originally Posted by Wilomn

IF you read the TOS and still do business, you've agreed to abide by that TOS UNLESS you have something in writing saying otherwise, hypothetical or not.

IF you don't like the TOS, pass on the animal.

I agree 100%. That's why I said I could see a problem with it. I should have said I see a problem for Dan not me. I have no problem with it because if I read that in the TOS I will pass on the animal. That is where it could be a problem for Dan. I have passed on many animals that I really wanted simply because of what I consider to be unrealistic or unreasonable TOS. Everyone has to come up with TOS that they are comfortable with but you have to weigh the chances of turning off too many potential buyers with very strict TOS and the odds that you will have a problem covered by that specific TOS.

For example. Would it really make that much more of a difference to Dan's potential loss if I had 6 or 8 hours to provide picture evidence instead of 1. He has evidence that the package was signed for on the first attempt at delivery (which is a TOS I can live with) what are the chances someone who might not open the package immediately would sign for it and leave it in a compromising situation (on the front porch in the middle of winter) A properly packaged shipment of animals should suffer no ill effects sitting on a kitchen counter for 3 or 4 or even 8 hours in a climate controlled situation. If I had 8 hours or even 5 or 6 I might consider buying but 1, no way.

Originally Posted by tim8dena

have to agree with wess here..once animal is delivered should be checked within 1 hour..to many issues can be avoided if opened upon arrival...also i dont know of anyone that would have animals delivered if they did have some one that could open and check asap

tim

I assume you mean "didn't have someone that could open the package ASAP"

Perhaps, perhaps not. I can think of at least a few reasons why it might be so that I couldn't open the package right away. I might have a spouse that is deathly afraid of the animals and refuses. (although she probably would have been gone a long time ago) I may have the package delivered to my place of employment so I don't have to take time off work to accept the package. (although if they will allow that they probably wouldn't have a problem with letting me know it was there and letting me check but I may be in a meeting or out of the office for the day) The seller might not have warned me that he was shipping, and even though the package arrived on time, was signed for by a roommate, it wasn't opened because it wasn't addressed to him and he did not know I was expecting live animals and even if he did he wouldn't have known to open the package to inspect the contents anyway (as you can probably tell this was not a hypothetical situation)

I agree that the sooner you can open a package the better, but I also feel that if the animal is in such bad shape that it will be dead within an hour several more won't make a difference. Or, that if the animal will die in 6 or 8 hours opening the box a few hours earlier won't make a difference either.

the point is unreasonable TOS will turn off potential customers. It is up to the seller to balance the risk/benefits of all aspects of his TOS. You can put anything you want in your TOS, and if someone knows about them, buys from you and tries to make claims that go against them they will get no support from me. However, if they are too unreasonable or unrealistic IMO I will not buy from you, and chances are many others will not either. Its up to you.

Originally Posted by sschind

I agree 100%. That's why I said I could see a problem with it. I should have said I see a problem for Dan not me. I have no problem with it because if I read that in the TOS I will pass on the animal. That is where it could be a problem for Dan. I have passed on many animals that I really wanted simply because of what I consider to be unrealistic or unreasonable TOS. Everyone has to come up with TOS that they are comfortable with but you have to weigh the chances of turning off too many potential buyers with very strict TOS and the odds that you will have a problem covered by that specific TOS.

I'd pass on anything that had the one hour guideline as well. Depending on what gets shipped when, an hour isn't nearly enough time for a buyer to get it unpacked and completely checked over healthwise. Warming them up, dropping them in a quaranteen enclosure and observing them, an hour is very cursory.

Add to that the inherent possibility of different email severs applying funny timestamps, the possibility for communication to dissapear into the aether and so on...

A dealer's terms of service, especially their guarantee policies, are a direct reflection of the confidence the dealer has in the quality of their stock, their ability to honestly represent their stock and their packing and shipping methods. The length of a health guarantee is directly proportional to the quality of the animals the dealer is working with, with individual species that tend to be hardier or more delicate obviously operating on independant scales. A one hour communication window would tell me, as a buyer, that the dealer expects some of their animals might drop dead sixty one minutes after arriving at their destination and that they don't want to take the loss when that happens. It does not show confidence in the quality of the animals involved, confidence in the ability of the dealer to properly package and ship them or confidence that the buyer will be satisfied and recieve a healthy, living animal exactly as described when they paid for it.

It would keep me from making a purchase, if for no other reason than the simple fact that the clocks in my house might be five minutes behind the ones USPS uses for their electronic signatures.

The flipside to that is, of course, that at some point the buyer needs to assume full responsibility for the condition of the animals now in their care and a dealer should not be responsible for an animal that they no longer own past a reasonable period of time. That said- even Petco will guarantee green tree frogs for two weeks, it's a sad dealer of low grade crap who gives them sixty minutes.

Myself personally, I do require my customers to call me within an hour of arrival as proof they were home to accept it. I do that because far too often Fed Ex will say "left on porch" when in fact the person was there to accept the package and did in fact signed for it.

Under no circumstances am I asking my customers to make a complete determination of the health of the animal or their satisfaction with the animal in one hour. But just to cover both our backsides that they were indeed there to accept the animal. Health and satisfaction can be communicated at a later time.