Bad Guy Dillon and Rick Wascher, www.safedartfrogs.com

[yeloowtang]

I don't know Mike nor do I the wascher,
I can't comment on the rules about posting or if this belongs in a bad guy thread.. I think it would be more a fair warning thread.
BUT
I did read the two links and know some of the guys who replied by reputation..
one thing i can say is after reading all that, I WOULD NEVER buy from them or give them as a reference.. sketchy does not even describe things right..
that eery feeling i had when i first saw his pictures, was confirmed after reading their "who we are section"..

the links are worth the read if you want a good idea about them..
the post may not have grounds to a bad guy thread, it does raise red flags regarding irresponsible mass breeders.

the best simple short way of explaining what i read is.
EX: having a newbie sell his car and use his sons college funds, go out and buy 10000's $$ in pyhtons from different localities:royal,retic,green tree,carpets etc etc, mass breed them and mix match. Then instead of using common names say a butter he would use (lactancia gold) pied would be (artic snow) then trash well known products and invent his own food lines. call himself a scientist then claim all others to be false.
not only does he invent his own names on pre existing morphs but claims his are safe. just like if someone were to claim my pythons are safe because they are bread by me and they only constrict enough to kill a mouse.
trade mark and patent things that others have been doing for years (probably to try and take to court in the future) and it goes on and on..

not saying mike was right to post this here ??? but glad he did because in my opinion , these people are why our hobby in general is seen in a negative eye most of times... the faster they leave the hobby the better we will all be..

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

If they are not (especially if purposefully not) describing their wares accurately, then that would be a problem. However, I am not about to spend my time on that because it is not within one of my specific spheres of interest. Dendrobatid enthusiasts should investigate any claims and labels made, though, and judge presented information critically. If an inaccurate label is being applied, that is poor conduct.

Again, though, if this is really about crosses, it is more a matter of preferential flavor.

 

[Lucille]

Stephane,

I saw no misrepresentation when I went to the Wascher website. It is what it is. I'm sorry you are having eerie feelings, I did not get any such feelings after looking at their site.

If would-be detractors cannot in a few sentences summarize exactly what their beef is and instead has to direct people to over a hundred posts (one of the links closed by a mod because it was getting too confusing) it seems to me that they are either part of a vague but invalid smear campaign or they cannot think for themselves.

 

[yeloowtang]

Lucille,

I totaly agree with you and what all others have said regarding the reason this is posted here..
since i do have dart frogs as an interest , it got my attention so i decided to look into it, spent time (too much of it ) reading the posts and then some by being routed to others from within.
no where have i seen negative reports of them not respecting their sales..or bad sales..

It is more about their ways (ethics)of doing things, still going trough their web site and many things are so so and are sketchy at best. but this is from my opinion with the experience and research that i have done regarding frogs.
newbies will be informed in this web sites way of thinking and this is where many others are worried because lots of that info is wrong (again according to them).

what gets me the most are frogs being called fancy names like saphire, ice blue,coral and their claims of scientific experience creating them goes from a 60$ frog to a 210$ one...
I've been in salt water reefs for over 25 years and saw the same thing happen with corals... people started giving them stupid names like thors hammer, red blood cherry poppers, purple monster people eaters !!!! and instead of the 20$ colonies you can get, they were selling them for 25$ a head or tinny little frags for 60$ when you used to get softball size colonies for the same price... it's all about the $$$$$
whe someone sits there and thinks,, hey if i call it such and such say how rare it is i can get 10 times what it's worth..many including myself kept trading or selling at the actual prices or even just give them away, but their will always be the ones who think ... hey if it's selling for 300$ surely it's worth that and i want it !!!! the price something sells for is always determined at the price one is ready to pay..

but this is a different debate and don't want to side track this post that may not have any bisiness being here...

I for one would have researched about them anyways before buying, witch i can't even do from Canada
still glad i got to find out a little more about them be it good or bad

the links there are not as well managed as BOI is, so for sure things get side tracked and hard to follow, the only way to do it is to read it all and most won't have time or interest in doing so... even if someone does.... it's not easy to follow..

I still agree with all of you about this, but because of their ethics, now i know that if someone wants to sell me a Wascher frog !!! i will turn away.

 

[Lucille]

what gets me the most are frogs being called fancy names like saphire, ice blue,coral and their claims of scientific experience creating them goes from a 60$ frog to a 210$ one...
I've been in salt water reefs for over 25 years and saw the same thing happen with corals... people started giving them stupid names like thors hammer, red blood cherry poppers, purple monster people eaters !!!! and instead of the 20$ colonies you can get, they were selling them for 25$ a head or tinny little frags for 60$ when you used to get softball size colonies for the same price... it's all about the $$$$$

Seems to me that imaginative naming is marketing, not ethics. (And I love the name purple monster people eaters). And marketing and making more money can be a good thing, and in no way an evil action unless there is misrepresentation, and I saw none on their site. After all, one is under no obligation to purchase a people eater.

An ethics violation is a serious charge.
The word sketchy is a dodge and a smear, it doesn't say anything yet serves to harm the reputation of another. What exactly was the ethics violation you are claiming?

 

[Lucille]

Stephane you are new here. Welcome. I am not trying to get on you, I want you to see that and I want you to stay and be happy here. But this site is important, and MY ethics claim is that to me, telling the world someone is a bad guy when it is just a matter of selling preferences is wrong.
There appears to be nothing misleading on the Wascher site. No one is forced into buying their frogs. I'll not stand by and see an innocent person smeared and that is what I see is happening.

If you just prefer to buy elsewhere that is OK, more than OK, you have every right to spend your money where you see fit. But I think that everyone should be afforded the same opportunities and rights that you have, to spend their money where they wish.

 

[yeloowtang]

I don't want to get in an arguement about them because my opinion is based on the information i got from reading about them..
but i will at least answer your questions

the imaginative naming can be seen as you state.. BUT
take for exemple a butter ball python, as i mentioned earlier.

if i name it the lactancia gold and claim it to be rare then sell it for 1200$ to a newbie !!! all good , he gets a healty snake that he's in love with... then one day he wants to sell it or breed.. he then realizes it's just a butter worth 150$... that's not good selling ethics for me
the same for that people eater ypu like you can get a 4"x6" piece for 50$
then came the LED actinics to makle the colors pop and a cool name, so they chop it up in 1x1" pieces and sell them 50$ each to unkowing buyers.

as for sketchy on their part...here's one i've come upon in one of the posts.
while reading all that (still am by the way) in one case the question of quarentine pops up. you can find it on their info too. they claim that you absolutly do not quarentine their frogs because nothing comes in ...ever
YET earlier elswhere they were asking for breeder loans from customers and willing to share profits with the babies in the projects they have.

so reading this!!!, to whom are they lying to ?? they abviously do get outside live stock, in one post they claim to never do, yet if you look long enough you find them asking for breeder loans.

again , i agree with you about all this and don't want to argue about the feeling i have regarding ever doing business with them..
in the end i made my opinion after reading about them and came to find enough information to not want to deal with them..
haven't seen anyting about bad deals form unsatsfied clients... if others are ok with their ways of doing things it's their choice.

 

[yeloowtang]

all good lucille,

I'm new here as a member but been visiting for years, not much of a forum guy, i'm only a member on a few and always use the same username everywhere.. i decided to become a member after a while to try and help others..

I always enjoy your replies and stay amazed at how you can investigate BOI posts and help people out.

I agree and would never bash someone on a mear here say. figured i would at least explain why i see it the way i do, I decided to read the posts to form my idea about them and understand , well try to understand why Mike put this here.. what i found out is, i don't agree with certain things they do..

i also see no wrong doing in their dealings, and the fact i'm not supportive of their ways of breeding is what i think Mike wanted to warn us about.
they could be perfect for others and not so much to some...

these are only the reasons why i wouldn't deal with them, and to not keep this from going on , i will leave at this...

however feel free to email me or PM if you wish for more answers, i don't want to side track this post and make it longer while keeping it bumped up

 

[markpulawski]

I would agree that Mike should not have brought this problem to the BOI, has this family/company taken people's money and not shipped animals...no, have they sent out sickly or on death's door animals....no. Those 2 things have been done by quite a few others in the dart frog hobby, we know all too well, but as far as most have heard the Wascher family has not. Mike brought a very emotional issue for the frog community here, which was a mistake. I saw mentioned 159 pages sounds more controversial than a slam dunk admittance to a problem but their thread on the frog forum is 159 pages due to hobbyists wanting to keep it alive and in the forefront of what people may see when they try to gather information about who to do business with. That 159 page thread is now approx. 20 pages long in the General Discussion forum so it has been closed in one area and continued in another in an effort to get maximum exposure to froggers and those seeking out info regarding our hobby.
And for those interested let me try and condense what the frog communities problems are with them. They have made numerous contradictory statements about husbandry and their scientific research and findings (which has all occurred in 2 years), most of which gets shot through and then it gets changed on their web site...or least a lot of it has.
The great majority of the frog community (easily 95%) has taken great pains to keep morphs and locality types in species pure and here is where the 2 big problems lie, they changed the locality name frogs to TM'd names in an effort to market their animals. It does not seem like a big deal however it will create a lot more confusion as these frogs and their offspring get dispersed. The much bigger problem the frog community has is that they are now mixing localities within species and as these get sold there is great concern these animals will get mixed into populations as people get in and out of the hobby. Having to propagate live food for our animals probably gives the dart frog hobby the highest turn over rate of most herpers. Mixed morph animals will very likely put greater pressure on WC imports so that keepers can be sure in what they have.
So should this thread have been brought here, no absolutely not as it relates to scamming and ripping people off. Will this company damage the dart frog hobby and populations of WC dart frogs...most likely, but that is up to the dart frog community to police, clean up and warn about. If you want more details, click on the link Mike provided and then check out 10 or 15 pages of the thread, it can get pretty redundant but there are a lot of before and after screen shots of their web page as the problems were pointed out. Definitely not a BOI topic but definitely some one interested in dart frogs should be aware of...hoping this clears things up a bit.

 

[Magic]

I think the bottom line here remains that some people have no issue with mutt mixes and some do. You might want a fluffy Peke-a doxie-poo puppy and I'll just stick with the Pekingese. It's all in preference.

However, this company that is breeding dendrobates indeterminately isn't doing anything wrong or illegal or even unethical. Unorthodox, certainly. But morally wrong? Not so much.

Yes, in the herp community we always try to educate people that their mistakes can (and often do) jeopardize the entire community. However, let's not crucify "possible mistakes" of things like future inbreeding down the line and future taxonomic nightmares on this business just yet.

For all we know, this company might just accept back darts or dartlets from customers who no longer want them, and they won't end up muddying the pond down the line. We don't know.

But I'm not about to grab a torch and join the march to the castle gates, even if I don't personally like mixes either.

 

[hhmoore]

Have they been notified of this thread?
Perhaps some minds would be changed (or opened) if they actually responded here.

 

[ZooKeeperDoug]

Have they been notified of this thread?
Perhaps some minds would be changed (or opened) if they actually responded here.

I certainly hope they do! No one is better at revealing their true colors than they are. If history is any indication, They won't. Rick and Dillion are cowards and ran from the hard questions on all the dart frog specific forums. I suspect they'll be content to hide behind their website where they can change things every few minutes when their lies are exposed.

FWIW - I've been one of the most outspoken detractors against these frauds, and even I don't think this belongs in the BOI(and I expressed that to mike privately). Certainly they have nefarious and fraudulent business practices, but if they're not scamming and stealing from someone, the BOI is not the forum for that debate. I have mixed feelings about it being here. On the one hand, it is one more search result that is going to at least make people think twice and do more research, which is good. On the other hand, the herp hobby with its affinity for flavor of the month "morphs" of super hyper spider this, and het albino micro scale that, is probably sympathetic to what these guys are doing.

I debating wether or not to really get much more involved here. I've done enough in the Dart frog forums. I think most of the concerns of the dart frog community would fall on deaf ears here.

Let's see where this goes shall we?

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

I certainly hope they do! No one is better at revealing their true colors than they are. If history is any indication, They won't. Rick and Dillion are cowards and ran from the hard questions on all the dart frog specific forums. I suspect they'll be content to hide behind their website where they can change things every few minutes when their lies are exposed.

FWIW - I've been one of the most outspoken detractors against these frauds, and even I don't think this belongs in the BOI(and I expressed that to mike privately). Certainly they have nefarious and fraudulent business practices, but if they're not scamming and stealing from someone, the BOI is not the forum for that debate. I have mixed feelings about it being here. On the one hand, it is one more search result that is going to at least make people think twice and do more research, which is good. On the other hand, the herp hobby with its affinity for flavor of the month "morphs" of super hyper spider this, and het albino micro scale that, is probably sympathetic to what these guys are doing.

I debating wether or not to really get much more involved here. I've done enough in the Dart frog forums. I think most of the concerns of the dart frog community would fall on deaf ears here.

Let's see where this goes shall we?

That was certainly persuasive.

 

[Lucille]

I certainly hope they do! No one is better at revealing their true colors than they are. If history is any indication, They won't. Rick and Dillion are cowards and ran from the hard questions on all the dart frog specific forums. I suspect they'll be content to hide behind their website where they can change things every few minutes when their lies are exposed.

FWIW - I've been one of the most outspoken detractors against these frauds, and even I don't think this belongs in the BOI(and I expressed that to mike privately). Certainly they have nefarious and fraudulent business practices, but if they're not scamming and stealing from someone, the BOI is not the forum for that debate. I have mixed feelings about it being here. On the one hand, it is one more search result that is going to at least make people think twice and do more research, which is good. On the other hand, the herp hobby with its affinity for flavor of the month "morphs" of super hyper spider this, and het albino micro scale that, is probably sympathetic to what these guys are doing.

I debating wether or not to really get much more involved here. I've done enough in the Dart frog forums. I think most of the concerns of the dart frog community would fall on deaf ears here.

Let's see where this goes shall we?

You obviously have concerns, but perhaps it would be better to spell them out than to only use the words 'fraud' and 'lies' . Saying something doesn't make it so.
Can you describe the specifics which led to your allegations please?

 

[tkevan]

Certainly they have nefarious and fraudulent business practices, but if they're not scamming and stealing from someone, the BOI is not the forum for that debate.

Speaking of contradictory. If they are commiting fraud ( Something I hope you could prove, given you're attempting to damage their business.), then they are stealing.

 

[Lucille]

Have they been notified of this thread?

I notified them via a message through their site some days ago.

 

[ZooKeeperDoug]

You obviously have concerns, but perhaps it would be better to spell them out than to only use the words 'fraud' and 'lies' . Saying something doesn't make it so.
Can you describe the specifics which led to your allegations please?

Yes I can. Wether I chose to bother to do so here, remains to be seen. As I've said, I'm not entirely sure it is worth the effort.

 

[ZooKeeperDoug]

Yes I can. Wether I chose to bother to do so here, remains to be seen. As I've said, I'm not entirely sure it is worth the effort.

Lemme attempt to put it more diplomatically.

I'm really sick and tired of carrying the torch on this and I'm hoping others will make the effort.

 

[Lucille]

I need not cater to you

Wether I chose to bother to do so here, remains to be seen. As I've said, I'm not entirely sure it is worth the effort.

Sounds to me like there is a group, hopefully small, that expects they can just arrive , smear someone's business, not have to provide facts, and harm that person's business.

I am beginning to think this thread says more about those people and the way they operate, than the Waschers.

 

[EdwardK]

Seems to me that imaginative naming is marketing, not ethics. (And I love the name purple monster people eaters). And marketing and making more money can be a good thing, and in no way an evil action unless there is misrepresentation, and I saw none on their site.

There are at least a couple of areas that draw up red flags for me. The first is the whole "safe" trademark and explanation.

Our SAFE brand frogs ARE completely and totally harmless, perfectly healthy, 100% non-toxic, absolutely beautiful, fun, and they live for 15 years or more! In addition, our SAFE brand is your assurance that none of our captive bred dart frogs have ever been fed feeder fruit flies raised on methylparaben (MP) laced media

from http://safedartfrogs.com/safe.aspx

While it is true that dendrobatid frogs in captivity do not produce alkaloid toxins, this does not mean that they are non-toxic. The frogs continue to produce non-alkaloid peptides that are can make a person ill. The fact that they are advertising their frogs as being totally harmless is a problem particularly when they are also claiming that handling the frogs is enjoyable for both the person and the frog. This is before we get to the whole issue that amphibians as with reptiles are carriers of salmonella. (references to handling are found here http://safedartfrogs.com/myths-and-fact.aspx). Handling amphibians without taking some precautions for the health of the amphibian isn't supported in literature like Amphibian Medicine and Captive Husbandry (2001, Krieger Press) as it can damage the skin of the amphibian.

The second issue here is that they are making an explicit claim that methyl paraben harms frogs when this is not supported by the literature. They have made a problematic extrapolation from a paper on fruit flies. They are using this to infer claims about safety of other people's fruit fly media and/or their frogs.

There are some other potential issues but the ones I enumerated above are to me the bigger red flags. These were raised to the Washer's when they announced their trademarking of the word "Safe" and the risks were promptly dismissed by them.

Some comments

Ed