Inquiry Derek mayhew (Inked Dragons)

[MK-Reptiles]

Has anyone done business with him? And your experience?

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/search.php?searchid=4460300

Around the bottom right of ads posted by members, there is a soft key or button that says "BOI" on it. If you click that and then click search on the following page, it searches for the member on the BOI using the person's name and the person's username. Of course, this does not catch everything that may have been posted thanks to incorrect spellings and other factors (and is not exhaustive), but it can provide a helpful start. Just FYI.

 

[juliasara]

There is a post on fb about him sending the wrong dragon to someone and also using hot hands not the right heat packs. There was a second post by Katie pencil on fb about a dragon he sold having internal bleeding and dying but that post was deleted. I'll contact both girls who posted those reviews and ask them to come here and share their experiences. I'm including a screen shot of the post that hasn't been deleted. There are hundreds of comments so I'm not going to include all of those. The owner of inked dragons and his wife were both very unprofessional in their responses on the fb post, the post here they never bothered responding to even tho myself and others notified them of the thread.

 

[AbsoluteApril]

I'll contact both girls who posted those reviews and ask them to come here and share their experiences.

Yes, please have them come post their own stories here under their own accounts. Better to do that than post screenshots off FB, as they can be considered 'anonymous'. There are reasons we have full name rules for posting here on Fauna.
thank you

 

[juliasara]

Yes, please have them come post their own stories here under their own accounts. Better to do that than post screenshots off FB, as they can be considered 'anonymous'. There are reasons we have full name rules for posting here on Fauna.
thank you

I sent them both a pm with a link to this thread. Hopefully they both come and share their experience with inked dragons.

 

[Mistyck]

Yep, there was a thread from October that got interesting about him:

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1857216

 

[Sininan]

Inked Dragons/Derek mayhew and Racheal mayhew

I just bought a dragon from these 2, which was supposed to be a male hypo translucent (color-wise I'm told a coral) bearded dragon. The shipping was horrible and the animal was half frozen when it got to my door, fed ex just dropped and left which means there was no insurance which means you have to sign. He told me me that he has that problem a lot. Well luckily I was up and waiting and I grabbed the box before they were even back to their truck. When I was inside and tried opening the box, there were NO holes anywhere in the box (it is stated in the guidelines you have to have a few air holes that go through box and styrofoam to allow air exchange for heat packs to work and allow the animal to breath). There was also a zip lock type bag with the shipping info tapped down over the entire top half of the box completely sealing it. There was no way for any kind of air exchange and even opening this box was much more tedious than it should have been. When I did finally get the box open, there were 2 UNACTIVATED hot hands in the box, 1 on top and 1 on bottom (hot hands use a lot more oxygen and burn out very quickly. Lickily they DIDNT activate otherwise I would have had a dragon that was suffocated from the hot hands using all the oxygen to heat up, as well as a half cooked dragon because just how hot Hot Hands get, and there were TWO) the dragon itself was freezing cold.
No, I know full well if a dragon is stressed their color can do this and that, usually dark. I expected this and gave the dragon days to settle in with food and all proper heating lighting and caging, only going in to replace food. The dragon settled and colored up (though BARELY eating) and the dragon was NOT the animal I was supposed to receive. I'm not even talking about COLOR, that was nothing the same, but I mean there were MARKING differences on the head. I tried being civil and talking it out with Derek, he got rather nasty once he knew I wasn't going to just accept the dragon was the same. Between him and his wife I was accused of buying one and decided I wanted another they had for sale and started this whole thing, or that I had improper lighting (this seems to be a habit with them I've seen) or that I was looking at 4 different dragon and they weren't sure what dragon I actually meant (why would you ship an animal if you didn't know which one a customer was asking about?) but that's not true at all because I posted the pics where I was arranging the purchase and said 'i believe he is the only male you have like him for sale but just to be sure, I want this guy' and his wife tried saying that I wanted a dragon LIKE the one in the pictured ad (it was the only male they had advertised...) I posted pictures showing differences in their markings and they always tried claiming it was the angle of the picture. When someone tried pointing out obvious differences, the admin deleted her posts and then I MYSELF had to repost them, and his wife told me 'oh well these markings are the same, and there's more similarities than differences, the similarities make it the same dragon' last I checked THE DIFFERENCES MAKE IT ANDIFFERENT ANIMAL. markings take time to change, they don't change overnight, and it's even unlikely to change in a week. Also the entire time they were referring to me as a MAN when and her husband took down my name and shipping info, HE knew I was a woman, it was highly disrespectful and they were nothing but rude once they were confronted on what they pulled. I have many screenshots of this conversation, as well as the messenger ones. Like was stated before, the BOI group debate was a LONG thread. Also later I was going through pictures of other babies they had and found the one they sent me, as its head markings and color match PERFECTLY.

 

[Sininan]

There is also a post on here (fauna) about him literally shipping a dragon in a box with just a crumpled piece of newspaper. No passing, no bag or deli cup, NOTHING. I'll see if I can locate it and link it

 

[Sininan]

This is another post that shows some of his bad shipping. And the person who posted, mentions his response when told it was done inappropriately. He gave me essentially the same kind of reaction. I said you can't use hot hands because of high temps and short lifespans, he brushed it off like he didn't do anything wrong

http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=549273


Oh! I should also post that he tried accusing ME for his poor shipping practices when my boyfriend finally got involved. On multiple occasions they tried turning it back on me and making it MY fault. It is VERY unprofessional. They could not even admit that they did ANYTHING wrong. This is including the shipping or the wrong animal.

 

[juliasara]

This is the dragon Eleesha recieved on the right and the one she bought on the left

 

[jusmebabee]

When I was inside and tried opening the box, there were NO holes anywhere in the box (it is stated in the guidelines you have to have a few air holes that go through box and styrofoam to allow air exchange for heat packs to work and allow the animal to breath).

In approx 15 years I've never shipped with airholes in the box nor have i ever received a package with airholes from anyone.
Just putting that out as people seem to take stuff like that as a rule/requirement/ which it isn't.

 

[Black Adder]

In approx 15 years I've never shipped with airholes in the box nor have i ever received a package with airholes from anyone.
Just putting that out as people seem to take stuff like that as a rule/requirement/ which it isn't.

It may not be a rule or requirement but it does not take a rocket scientist to work out IF the package includes any heat packs then there is a very good chance the animal could suffocate due to the heat packs using up the small reserve of oxygen.

I have always shipped all of my snakes with air holes and to best of my knowledge every shipment I have received of live snakes has had air holes punched in.

 

[senusenu]

It's been a while since I had a snake shipped- September os 2014 I believe- so I honestly can't recall if there were air holes or not. They didn't need heatpacks, which probably means they didn't need air holes. The point about heatpacks is a good one though, as I definitely recall reading that they use up oxygen to generate their heat.

The dragon that was shipped free in the box is very concerning, though. There's so many injuries she could have sustained bouncing around with nothing but a couple shreds of newspaper

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

In reference to post number seven:

The usage of holes versus no holes can depend upon the temperature of the environment at the time of shipment (sometimes there is a balance to be struck with certain patterns of weather; typically, the point is two-fold in terms of insulation and crush resistance with the former being of somewhat reduced effectiveness if perforated significantly). A box insulated with six separate panels of Styrofoam sans deliberately made holes is not impermeable to air, so the consumption of oxygen in a properly selected and implemented heat pack is not going to exceed the needs of the reptile within when considering the slow (but present) ingress and egress of air through what is not an airtight system. This is especially the case when not all seams have been taped over, as those are sources of slow air exchange leaks. This can be different for a unibody shell inner system (which was not used here), but that also varies with several involved factors.

If the plastic adhesive envelope (which is normal for many FedEx labels) was placed on a box where some seams elsewhere on the box still had gaps post-placement, again, there would still be sources of slow air exchange leaks, so that would not (necessarily) worry me.

The holes versus no holes issue is not (necessarily) key to me. The use of hand warmers is an issue. They lack the endurance of function to provide sustained heat for the duration of a Priority Overnight shipping event. That still is the lesser danger compared to what concerns me more. That which concerns me more is the peak temperature achieved by hand warmers. Depending on the brand, it may be something in the neighborhood of 130-160F. I have even heard of some brands going higher. On the other hand, a safer short-duration option is a boot/toe warmer. Since they are designed for an enclosed space, they reach a lower peak. Depending on the brand, around 115F. For reference, a proper 40-hour UniHeat pack (which is appropriate for shipping reptiles) also has a peak around 115F. Unlike a 40-hour UniHeat pack, though, a boot/toe warmer typically dies out by around eight hours (and probably earlier than this) and it also is suboptimal for any margin for error in terms of shipping delays during colder weather.

I am not a heat pack product engineer, but if I were, then two ways I would control the nature of a heat pack product is through reactant (iron compound) control (amount) and membrane pore control (size and/or number). I would imagine, for the sake of simplicity, that pore size and/or number are/is the simplest way(s) to differentiate products via process, as it would mean the production line would only need one augmented component or step overall with less concern of something like a fill error or a reactant proportion error when it comes to quality of the process and uniform product within a line.

All of that is to say that my main issue in the packaging failure (described in post number seven of this thread) was the use of hand warmers rather than the holes or lack thereof in the box. Sometimes holes may be appropriate and sometimes holes may not be appropriate. Hand warmers are basically never appropriate. Putting two in there shows a fundamental lack of understanding (on the part of the seller) of how the warmers work, as increasing the number of them does not add duration of function and, given their higher peak maxima, it creates a much greater risk of exposing the animal within to hyperthermic conditions (which could result in much more stress and sometimes a greater likelihood of a fatal outcome).

The above commentary from me does not even touch upon any instances of packaging insufficiency via such things as too little filler to remove negative space so as to prevent jostling and within-box impact-based trauma.

 

[nickolasanastasiou]

In case it was unclear, a boot/toe warmer is still not the appropriate selection. It was just being compared (in superior terms) to a hand warmer in terms of peak heat and was being compared (in inferior terms) to a 40-hour UniHeat pack in terms of functional duration of output.

 

[Dennis Hultman]

In approx 15 years I've never shipped with airholes in the box nor have i ever received a package with airholes from anyone.
Just putting that out as people seem to take stuff like that as a rule/requirement/ which it isn't.

I agree with Joel. That I don't put holes. I have received packages with and without.

Here is a post several years ago that I made in response to someone who stated you must put ventilation holes.

I agree with everything in your post minus this point.

Packing a live animal in a sealed box with no ventilation holes, this was enough to kill it.

It was never a standard to put ventilation holes in the shipping boxes for reptiles. There are many threads here that discuss why people do and don't.

When I first starting shipping about ten years ago I looked to those who have been doing this for years. Those that had twenty years in this business.

I have never put a single ventilation hole in a package. I have yet to have a DOA (knock on wood) and pray I never do. I have shipped and received hundreds of packages without incident.

The whole ventilation stuff started when a now defunct shipping company put forth a video on how to package live reptiles. It was done by one breeder who stated it was necessary. When more and more of the general hobbyist (not breeders) started shipping they looked to that video for guidance and now all of sudden you have people stating that it is a must.

It's garbage and factually not true. Go and look at any shipping thread dating back more than five years and you will not find people ventilating boxes in their tutorial.

I don't do it but also don't seal the box up like fort Knox with tape.

 

[Dennis Hultman]

The holes versus no holes issue is not (necessarily) key to me. The use of hand warmers is an issue. They lack the endurance of function to provide sustained heat for the duration of a Priority Overnight shipping event. That still is the lesser danger compared to what concerns me more.

The above commentary from me does not even touch upon any instances of packaging insufficiency via such things as too little filler to remove negative space so as to prevent jostling and within-box impact-based trauma.

 

[zovick]

Just FYI, I have actually had a large number of Delta cargo agents insist upon air holes being put into boxes before they would accept them for shipment. A couple of them have even gotten out their huge binders of rules and shown me the section where it states that air holes are required. One particular agent also religiously enforced a paragraph which required that "spacers" be attached on all 4 vertical outer surfaces of the box so that another piece of freight could not lay flat right up against it and thus obliterate the air holes on that side.

Obviously the above scenarios apply to boxes labeled as "Live Animals" rather than simply "FRAGILE" or "PERISHABLE" and to an airline (which requires stating what is actually in the box in order to ship) rather than to an overnight service such as FEDEX or UPS but I thought it might be of interest to a number of readers since air holes are in discussion.

Delta shippers are quite frequently required to open the box as well to show the cargo agent that the animal inside is actually packed properly (and, since 9/11/01, not accompanied by an explosive device) when shipping via Delta, but that is a story for another day..........

 

[Beyond GenetiX]

This is the dragon Eleesha recieved on the right and the one she bought on the left

That is definitely a different dragon.

I have sold dragons to inked dragons before but never had a comfort level high enough to buy from them. That being said, I don't use air holes in my boxes either. I do not completely tape all the seems and have never had an issue.

 

[juliasara]

That is definitely a different dragon.

I have sold dragons to inked dragons before but never had a comfort level high enough to buy from them. That being said, I don't use air holes in my boxes either. I do not completely tape all the seems and have never had an issue.

the markings definitely don't match which to me is a bigger issue then the subpar shipping. On the fb thread they argued it was the same dragon and refused to do anything to fix that issue other then the buyer paying return shipping and only getting back the price of the dragon. I don't think it's fair at all for the buyer to have to lose the cost of shipping both ways for their mistake (if it was even a mistake, they very well may have purposely sent the wrong one). The buyer opened a paypal claim but paypal told her the only way to get what she paid back was to first ship the dragon back and if inked dragons agreed it was in good health they would refund what she paid. Either way the buyer is out of about $50. She stated that she was fearful they would say it wasn't healthy and she would not get her money back. Also the dragon is still stressed from being shipped without heat since the hot hands weren't activated and still isn't eating so it's not really In any shape to be shipped again. I wish Derek would come here and comment on this thread. I dobut he will, he refused to comment on the other thread about him.