• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Bad Guy Ben Siegel Reptiles

stxjoe

stxjoe

New member
Joined
May 31, 2006
Messages
20
Reaction score
1
Points
0
Age
48
Location
Terrell Texas
I own a small pet store and was needing to order some yellow belly sliders. I've been getting siegel's wholesale list for a while now and notice that yellow belly sliders were on this weeks list - so I give them a call. A guy answers and I tell him I want to place a wholesale order - he says okay and puts me on hold - which is no big deal because I know they are busy. A girl answers and asks me what I need. I ask what their minimum is - she tells me. So I tell her I'd like to order 50 yellow belly sliders (I was going to add some chameleons to my order after that) She stops me and says "wait wait wait I don't have that many right now" so I ask her how many she could spare. She tells me that they hardly make any money off of yellow bellys and that they sell them mainly to their regulars. So I ask her if I could order 20 - I couldn't understand her at that point - so I repeat my request and add that I would order other animals to make up the difference. She asks me what else would I want - so I just ask her if they had any baby balls in stock - and she goes ballistic asking me if I am looking at the pricelist etc. So I start to tell okay I'll call you back - and she hangs up on me in midsentence. If I repeated myself at any time - it was due to not being able to hear her not out of belligerence - which is how they interpreted it.


Here is a screen shot of a message I sent via FB
Notice his initiall response: all caps. excessive exclamation etc.
 

Attachments

  • screen1.jpg
    screen1.jpg
    110.6 KB · Views: 3,501
  • screen2.jpg
    screen2.jpg
    101.1 KB · Views: 3,479
Wow, two poor customer reviews on the first page! I don't care how "aggitated" my employees get, I don't pay you to vent.
 
he has it about right- Just left one important part---THE ENTIRE PHONE CONVERSATION BEFORE HAND. I mean it started out cordially. My wife repeatedly explained to him about our wholesale minimums and that we cannot just wholesale baby turtles. We carry them as a courtesy for our wholesale pet stores that place orders. We do not make a bunch on them and explained that to him. He proceeded to badger my wife, and many of you know her--she is a pretty sweet person and it takes a bit to get her upset, and even saying all that she was still not rude to this customer. Someone asks you three times to buy ball pythons after you tell him you have none, gets pretty old. He emailed me on fb almost immediately after and you can read my responses. He tried to belittle me by saying, well I will just continue to by from Scott. I told him awesome!!!---Scott is great guy--keep on buying from him!-- Have to say--getting a little bit tired of having boi posts coming up from people I have never even done any business with--especially with bad guy in the heading.
 
I wasn't badgering anyone by any stretch of the imagination. I was just inquiring about placing a turtle order. Like I stated before I couldn't understand her that is why I repeated myself a few times. And as far as ordering from Vista - I didn't intend to belittle you (didn't know you were that sensitive) I was just trying to make a point about treating potential customers with dignity. Look, I work with my wife also and she is a sweet nice person and all but sometimes we have to remind each other to take it easy on customers sometimes.

As far as playing the popularity game - I know many people know you and your wife and have had good experiences with you, but I refuse to let people like you treat me like garbage whether your the great Ben Siegal or some unknown person. Furthermore, I didn't leave out the entire phone conversation if you read my entire post.

Lastly, I would encourage nobodys like me who get mistreated undeservedly to speak out and not be intimidated by these big name dealers who think they can mistreat people with impunity.
 
I understand the OP being frustrated, but I don't think it constitutes a BOI bad guy thread. I would called back a different day, who knows if their day is just sucking bigtime. Or I would have just let it go and bought from somebody else, thereby expressing my distaste with my checkbook.
 
OH--just wanted to add, that I was not being sarcastic about the Scott and vista thing. If you read my responses to him you will see I was sincere. I think scott and loren are good people and I have done alot of business with them in the past with out any issues. We are a SMALL company, a fraction of the size of LLL---we are a family owned business with mostly family working. That is why I recomended he stay with who he was happy with.

Just reread his post---My wife went Ballistic?? Dude---she was in the care next to me and a friend ours??? Ballistic? She didnt even raise her voice. The only indication that she was even mildly annoyed was that she was repeating the same answer to the same question 3 times. So if maybe the third time she raised her voice and spoke more slowly so you could understand it better---that is ballistic?
 
Ben, Not trying to be hard here, you are compiling a record of sarcastic replies, and this is a small community, I may be missing somesthing, but why are you advertising the turtles if they are only for regulars? Maybe you should take them off the list.
 
I think there is something to be said about the type of person who would make a bad guy post about something so trivial. Your personalities clashed, that's a bummer but that's life... move on. I am sure Ben along with a lot of other vendors could write a book about bad dealings, part of being a business is taking things in stride and worrying about things when they're important.

Just my $0.02
Jordan Russell
 
California Breeders Union said:
I think there is something to be said about the type of person who would make a bad guy post about something so trivial. Your personalities clashed, that's a bummer but that's life... move on. I am sure Ben along with a lot of other vendors could write a book about bad dealings, part of being a business is taking things in stride and worrying about things when they're important.

Just my $0.02
Jordan Russell
Click to expand...


It might not be so "trivial" if it had been YOU on the line. Also, does it sound from the recent threads as if Ben is "taking things in stride"?
 
Hi David,

Not trying to pick an argument with you, but share a different point of view as you have done.

I have been treated MUCH worse than that, and yes it is still pretty trivial.

I can't speak for Ben, but I would imagine it gets old to have to deal with people who are problematic day in and day out (clearly taking care of them for YEARS with ZERO bad guy posts), and then to catch grief over such nonsense. Your average vendor wouldn't be so calm. If you have an axe to grind, out with it.

Cheers
Jordan
 
California Breeders Union said:
Hi David,

Not trying to pick an argument with you, but share a different point of view as you have done.

I have been treated MUCH worse than that, and yes it is still pretty trivial.

I can't speak for Ben, but I would imagine it gets old to have to deal with people who are problematic day in and day out (clearly taking care of them for YEARS with ZERO bad guy posts), and then to catch grief over such nonsense. Your average vendor wouldn't be so calm. If you have an axe to grind, out with it.

Cheers
Jordan
Click to expand...

I appreciate your point of view. I have never done business with Ben, so I do not really know. You said he was taking it in stride, but now say as an excuse that it gets old to deal with problematic people. Ben has had a number of bad guy posts, so I don't know where you got that from. Do a search?
 
Just from a customer service point of view, "the customer is always right". If you are a business owner, regardless of how much of an a-hole your customer may or may not be, you shouldn't really dispute back. More or less just need to say "okay thank you anyways". I've had customers at my jobs over the years I would have liked to punch in the face, but that probably wouldn't have been a good idea :eek:
 
I'm not sure what it is lately seeing posts about people getting upset over mixed words, but there was no business transaction. I spoke with Stacey a couple of times about some shipping stuff and she was extremely helpful.

I will definitely be doing business with Ben and Stacey again.
 
I don't know about you but if that had happened to me i would have shrugged it off and gone with someone else, or since you have a regular supplier stick with them.

It was a bad phone call whatever had happened there was no exchange of money or anything. I think it would have been best as an informative thread rather than a bad guy thread. that way you could have given your experience and not all of the other stuff.

Sorry you had a bad call and all.
 
stxjoe said:
I didn't intend to belittle you (didn't know you were that sensitive) I was just trying to make a point about treating potential
customers with
Click to expand...




Isn't that what you started this thread about? You feeling belittled and getting your feelings hurt by Stacey being mean and Ben using all caps?


I've known Ben and Stacey and I have never seen Stacey go ballistic as you state. If anything this should of been a info thread or continued on the other thread where the kid had his feelings hurt as well.
 
garweft said:
Another bad guy post because someone got their little feelings hurt?

Wow, what a joke. Look, unless your getting ripped off or lied to your really wasting peoples time and bandwidth.
Click to expand...

I agree.

This is not BOI worthy at all. Honestly, garbage threads like this are the reason BOI is sometimes seen as a joke.

If I made a BOI thread for every single sarcastic comment, mildly heated exchange, or conversation that did not go exactly how I thought it should, we would be here all day.

Crap happens, people are short sometimes, and we all move on with our lives. Do you think I call the Better Business Bureau every time someone is less than perfect with me on phone? NO! Why? Because we all might have an off moment, or something catches us the wrong way.

Welcome to life. I suggest you put your big boy panties on and get some thicker skin.

Ben is top notch all the way around and these petty useless threads are just ridiculous.

Save the BOI for a real issue.
 
I have to agree with everyone that this doesn't warrant a "bad guy" thread. Those should be reserved for people that sell sick/low quality animals, misrepresent their animals, or blatantly rip off people.

Anyone dealing with large volumes of sales (like Ben) are going to be more curt than a small breeder with only a few animals. If you didn't like their attitude, you should simply have shopped elsewhere.
 
Back
Top