Bad Guy Dav Kaufman - Beware

[MrTPlush]

He prefers to use the middleman excuse as the reason he isn't responsible, but then fails to say who really is responsible. Probably because there isn't another party involved. He really was just hoping someone would buy his excuse and he could sneak into the dark on the subject.

He claims to be contacting this third party, but funny thing I see no information about there take on the situation.

Dav has come off as a liar and shady yet has made little to no attempt to defend it with proof. Just adds more excuses. Doesn't look good from my angle.

 

[Lucille]

If one of those offspring "looked like a leopard" then there is absolutely nothing unethical about selling it as one. If it turned out not to be, as is claimed, that would be an unfortunate coincidence, not a misrepresentation.

I think that what happened is unfortunate, but I don't think Dav owes the op anything.

Consumer law does not agree with you, Dan. If you sell something and label it as an 'x', you are responsible if it is not an 'x'.
Parties may if they wish, in certain cases, contractually disclaim warranties. (There are specifics written into law that say when they may, and when they may not disclaim) No written contractual language has been offered by the seller to show that the buyer and seller chose to disclaimed warranty.

 

[AllisonLeigh]

Here here!

 

[Randy F]

all this going back and forth I think the main things here that needed answers are

1. If he only took 10% why does it say "all money will go to fund herpers3?" and the whole amount went to that account?

2. Why has the story changed to "trade" then "broker"?

3. Why did he never answer texts if he had a plan until his bluff was called and we are here?

4. What does he plan on doing?

I still say it was a mistake. I think the story has changed maybe in a way to deflect or avoid it. I was never asked for pictures at the time or I very well could have, just as I took a picture of the only offspring I have instantly, and had someone else do of the 3 sisters instantly. I did not try and give it time to come up with something to say unreasonable. I posted copies of texts and gave names ANYONE could check with about my claims of not having pictures and giving hets away instantly, not after calling people and asking them to lie for me. Its to a point of a moral issue now. I do not see people as standing up for me, its for whats right. I do give a bunch of snakes away to people who buy from me, as I am going to give away a het puzzle male as a normal. That's why a lot of people find their normal are really hets. To give them away as a normal does not over populate the market with a gene and hurt peoples projects as oppose to selling them very cheap to still make money. And all along the people that buy these normal love them as pets just the same. So I think we are back to the questions that are above and Dav waited 2 days to respond and he knows this is here so why are these questions not answered?

 

[leftycrane]

A lot of this could be settled if Dav actually contacted the supposed producer of the snake and got written genetics on it. The fact that we haven't heard the producers name or their side of the story (i.e what was the pairing that produced the snake) leaves it all up to Dav.
Dav himself guaranteed the genetics of the snake being sold. Therefor Dav is responsible for some sort of compensation. He needs to stop putting out the "Im the middle man, Im not responsible" and the "Show me 2 years worth of feeding and breeding photos, or I cant do anything" schtick. Dav has managed to pass the responsibility off on to two separate people. The producer and the buyer. Man up and take responsibility for yourself Dav.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

Am I understanding your train of thought correctly that you think it may be possible that the non existence of the leopard gene has NOT been proven out yet?
Basing it on an actual number of animals produced rather than a time factor of two seasons
Interesting thoughts if so....

My train of thought was to establish at which point the line had been drawn. Not to conclude one way or the other until I had more information. It is my attempt to be fair in consideration of the scenario before I make my own decision on how things appear to be.

Yes, the time is not relevant to the determination of a genetic label in my experience. I go by number of offspring rather than time. One could have three seasons of five babies each and find the seasons more important, but I would be more interested if there were, for example, twenty babies in one or more seasons. I have had ten+ offspring one-way streaks before and finally got the opposite through ensuing clutches. Sometimes it benefited me early on and sometimes it did not benefit me until much later. That is why I shoot for twenty. I simply have not seen a streak extend that far for a 50% probability type of result and I cannot practically wait for 100 babies or so to make a call on how I want to proceed. We all have to draw our own lines. I have called it earlier at thirteen or fifteen, too, but that was my impatience and I just dealt with the cards I had for personally practical reasons. Now that I have had a lot more experience with weird results, I stick to my twenty. I have sold off "hets"-as-normals after thirteen babies that proved out later and I have done the same with ones that never ended up proving out (sold as normals with the possibility of being hets, though, so no harm done). If I buy a het these days, I am particularly careful about this because I do not want to harm someone's reputation in the event that my line might be drawn too early and I would hope others would extend the same courtesy to me were I in their shoes.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

Well regardless your your belief of its relevance, there was a mutual agreement between them two.

That is nice, Milo.

 

[CwnAnnwn]

My train of thought was to establish at which point the line had been drawn. Not to conclude one way or the other until I had more information. It is my attempt to be fair in consideration of the scenario before I make my own decision on how things appear to be.

Yes, the time is not relevant to the determination of a genetic label in my experience. I go by number of offspring rather than time. One could have three seasons of five babies each and find the seasons more important, but I would be more interested if there were, for example, twenty babies in one or more seasons. I have had ten+ offspring one-way streaks before and finally got the opposite through ensuing clutches. Sometimes it benefited me early on and sometimes it did not benefit me until much later. That is why I shoot for twenty. I simply have not seen a streak extend that far for a 50% probability type of result and I cannot practically wait for 100 babies or so to make a call on how I want to proceed. We all have to draw our own lines. I have called it earlier at thirteen or fifteen, too, but that was my impatience and I just dealt with the cards I had for personally practical reasons. Now that I have had a lot more experience with weird results, I stick to my twenty. I have sold off "hets"-as-normals after thirteen babies that proved out later and I have done the same with ones that never ended up proving out (sold as normals with the possibility of being hets, though, so no harm done). If I buy a het these days, I am particularly careful about this because I do not want to harm someone's reputation in the event that my line might be drawn too early and I would hope others would extend the same courtesy to me were I in their shoes.

According to randy, there has been 16 or 17 babies not show on a dominate gene. In the real world, 1/2 would be dominate.

 

[btmansfi]

I think this says it all. 125+ posts and we have only heard from Dave 1 time...yes, 1 time.

If Dave was so proud of his 20 year history in the hobby, don't you think he'd be willing to address the issues on this forum rather than let everyone else make judgments against him? To me this either means that he really doesn't have or care about the reputation of which he speaks. Or he knows that he's wrong and he's hoping this issue will go away.

I work in corporate finance so my background may be different than many others, but in my opinion this is what happens a lot of times when people start out with a hobby and then try to make a business out of it. Not just ball pythons...look at landscaping businesses, home remodeling businesses, etc. How often do new ones appear and then go out of business a year later? Why? Most of the time it's not because they're terrible at their profession. More often than not it's because they thought they could do what they loved and make a living off it but they didn't have the financial acumen to do it. So they tried anyway and realized they couldn't manage the financial side of things.

I say this because I think it is a parallel to a lot of people that sell reptiles. They love the hobby and are enthusiastic about it but they may have zero finance background. What you end up with is situations such as this. What do you think Amazon would do if you bought something and it wasn't what it was advertised to be? Would they give you the run-around, telling you they simply sold it for someone else? No, they'd refund your money and then go after the 3rd party themselves. That's what a sound business would do. When you have individuals with limited finances and even more limited financial common sense, you end up with what happened between Randy and Dave.

Dave, seriously, stop monkeying around and reimburse Randy for the snake that you sold him, at a minimum. If I were Randy I would have asked for way more than $1,545. To think you owe him less than that is ridiculous.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

off the top of my head I would say about 16 or 17 including the 4 this season. Now being a biologist you know way more about genetics than most of us here and I do not question this, so you can say how feasible it is that it is still a leopard? I know from what I have seen others do and I have adopted is when a animal does not produce what it was suppose to by a certain point, then it goes to the quality of our animal and compensation comes in to play for something else (as me and you have spoken about). I am willing if people want me to keep and breed this male again this season to specified animals should we come to an agreement on what further compensation for those clutches based one what I would breed to them going off odds hit. For example, should I breed to a champagne instead of breeding my bamboo to her, 6 eggs, I get reimbursed for a bamboo champagne, 2 bamboo, 2 champagne, and a normal.....going off odds as I said.

Thank you for the give-or-take number, Randy. Like in our discussion in the discussion thread you posted preceding this, I set my limit at twenty before I decide which side of the fork in the road I am going to take. However, that is merely my personal line I draw.

As before, that is not a matter of quality, but of identity.

There is nothing low-quality about the animal, as that is a matter of degree. If there was differential expression of a morph (high or low) or physical robustness, it would be a matter of quality. I would not apply the quality term here. The situation of genetic identity is technically dichotomous. It either is something or is not something. Kind of like a colored pencil versus a typical graphite pencil. Not a matter of quality so much as a matter of identity. A pastel pied is not a low quality version of a leopard pastel pied. The former is simply other than the latter and you deserve the latter if you paid for the latter and and only received the former.

I do not think any of us should tell you where you should draw your line. Your sixteen or seventeen is very close to my personal twenty and, were I making a monetary wager on the matter, I would be willing to put money down against it being a leopard at this point in all likelihood.

I just needed your piece of information to be willing to make that sort of bet with some measure of confidence, so I appreciate the information share.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

According to randy, there has been 16 or 17 babies not show on a dominate gene. In the real world, 1/2 would be dominate.

In the real world, it is still probability per egg and one does not always get an even 50/50 split among a group of offspring that is not massive. One should not expect cleanly 50% dominant offspring as a matter of course, but getting some is not unreasonable and having things even out over a greater number of offspring would likewise not be unreasonable.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

I understand what you are doing, but there is three problems with that.

1.) RandyF is convinced that it is not there. (I honestly think randy would rather have a tooth pulled by a drunken sumo wrestler then post this thread)
2.) Dav is convinced that it is not there. ( He said he would do something the first year it did not produce. He said he would do something the second year it did not produce.) All dav wanted to do is kick the can to the person he bought it from.
3.) RandyF already produce 5 babys from a pastel het-pied x leopard pied that should have been 50/50. There was zero out of 5. Leopard being a dominate trait, it would be clear from the start.

I do have to say, I am basing this information off this calculator. I don't deal with morphs or pythons. http://www.owalreptiles.com/genetics.php

Both parties agreed that it was not what it was sold as.

Regarding 1, that is important for making the personal call, but has no actual influence on the genetics of the snake. The belief does not influence the outcome. The outcome should influence the belief and that is Randy's call.

Regarding 2, Dav could have been selling himself short. I do not believe so, but I entertained the possibility because I prefer to consider multiple possibilities.

Regarding 3, please do not try to define genetic status of an animal based on 5 babies which result from eggs with a 50% probability. Breed homozygous recessive to heterozygous recessive or heterozygous dominant to wild type a lot of times and you will find that sample size it much too low in most instances. When you get the same size up much higher, it tends to conform.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

Ya what Nick says makes sense, but how many offspring is enough to determine the lack of the leopard gene? How many seasons need to go buy? Time is money and I don't see why someone would bother taking him to two or three rack full of females to see if the leopard gene exists. The way I see it, if both parties agreed to run him to a few females and that was enough, well then that was enough.

I only wanted the clarity that Randy's answers could provide. I think he helped a lot by providing them.

 

[btmansfi]

Thank you for the give-or-take number, Randy. Like in our discussion in the discussion thread you posted preceding this, I set my limit at twenty before I decide which side of the fork in the road I am going to take. However, that is merely my personal line I draw.

At that point its moot. If you produced 16 offspring with a 50% of each egg being leopard there is a 0.00152% chance that every single one would be a non-leopard. I think it's safe to say that the leopard pied that Randy purchased was in fact not a leopard at all.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

I understand your position. I was offer a quick way out.

If you want. We can modify the terms.

The snake in question will be returned to Mr. Kaufman overnight with insurance. Paid by Mr. Kaufman

Mr. Kaufman would then return the 1545 dollars back to RandyF.

That would put both parties back to square one.

The only reason this was not mention before, is in negations that have turned this sour, it is better for both parties to walk away with out excessive contact. IF something should happen to the snake in transit, it would make this problem a lot worst.

As for your offer of price Randy has paid minus reasonable price of for a pied python, what is your offer?

I am negotiating this as a person that has not connection with either party.

It is better to have a 3rd party in the mix to defuse the topic and find a middle ground.

I personally agree with this. Still up to the two parties, but I find it reasonable.

 

[CwnAnnwn]

In the real world, it is still probability per egg and one does not always get an even 50/50 split among a group of offspring that is not massive. One should not expect cleanly 50% dominant offspring as a matter of course, but getting some is not unreasonable and having things even out over a greater number of offspring would likewise not be unreasonable.

I understand that. But, at this point. Mr Kaufman has accepted that it is not a leopard. Mr Foster has accepted it is not a leopard. The only disagreement would be who has to pay Mr Foster back.

Mr. Kaufman says that Mr. Foster needs to be paid back by a third party that is not in the business and is not willing to pay back Mr. Foster.

Mr. Foster just wants to get paid back.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

I also agree with Dennis on the apparent story change, FWIW. That does not sit well.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

At that point its moot. If you produced 16 offspring with a 50% of each egg being leopard there is a 0.00152% chance that every single one would be a non-leopard. I think it's safe to say that the leopard pied that Randy purchased was in fact not a leopard at all.

The fourth paragraph in the post you partially quoted addressed this aspect.

 

[MrTPlush]

It is probably to the point where he has no point to pay him back. He doesn't care or even want to pay him back...that looks quite obvious. The only point in which he was motivated to make it right is when he was getting a BOI thread threat. He doesn't care about his costumers he just cares about his image.

Who would honestly deal with Mr. Kaufman after this no matter what he does? I sure as heck wouldn't. If it takes this much to get a deserving refund that is just pathetic. Hopefully his image will be tarnished enough to cost him even more money in the long run.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

I understand that. But, at this point. Mr Kaufman has accepted that it is not a leopard. Mr Foster has accepted it is not a leopard. The only disagreement would be who has to pay Mr Foster back.

Mr. Kaufman says that Mr. Foster needs to be paid back by a third party that is not in the business and is not willing to pay back Mr. Foster.

Mr. Foster just wants to get paid back.

I understand the above, but what you just quoted was in response to your third enumerated point that you raised. You brought it up and I responded accordingly. Separate parts of the discussion. All relevant.