Here I want to explain what happened between me and Alex. It is pretty long. Thanks to everyone for your patient and time to read this.
It was May 2006 when I had the first transaction with Alex. I knew a couple of people who had done business with him before and I did not hear anything bad about him. The transaction went smooth and I was happy with what I got. I continued business with him thereafter. I have at least one shipment to Japan every month and I think I had the animals from Alex in almost every shipment. I did get all animals that I ordered and all transactions were good. I was quite happy with him. I bought only NON-CITES animals from him until October 2006.
In October 2006, I ordered our first CITES animals from Alex. I ordered ball pythons and woma pythons, which values were about $22,000. I paid for these animals up front as I did for other non-CITES animals. Alex told me that he applied for CITES. I continued shipping non-CITES animals from Alex to Japan. I placed additional orders for CITES animals, paid for them and Alex told me that he applied for CITES for the additional order. The additional orders include an about $96,000 order of ball pythons in March 2007.
In April 2007, I had NOT received the CITES permit that Alex told me he applied in October 2006. Since it’d taken so long, Ayumi applied for another CITES with Alex’s breeders statement. I and Alex were going to use either CITES permit that comes first.
In June 2007, Ayumi got the CITES permit. I asked him to ship the ball pythons to Japan. I created the list of ball pythons that should be included in the shipment, because the permit couldn’t cover all animals we had ordered. The value of the ball pythons for this shipment was about $55,500. When I received the ball pythons, I found that several ball pythons were not what I ordered. When I placed the order, I requested him to provide their pictures, sex ratio, and their weight. When I compared with these information he provided me with the received animals, some of them looked different from the pictures. Some of them were smaller size. Some of them were wrong sexes. I immediately contacted him to clarify these mixed-up. He responded and told me that he would exchange the pythons that I was not happy with. I chose to keep them because it is too much work to export back the CITES animals from Japan to the US and it will take another few months for CITES permit. This mixed-up caused me troubles with my customers. My customers were not happy that they did not get the right animals and started a rumor that I was trying to rip-off my customers, which was not true. Even though I explained what happened, some of my customers were not comfortable so that they canceled their orders. I told this to Alex and asked if I could cancel some of my order and Alex accept it. I also requested him to go through all of the rest of animals in my order to ensure there will be no more mixed-up. My cancellation was about $28,000, which remained as the credit. In the meanwhile, I placed several small orders with Alex. He sometimes gave me the pricing of the animals and sometimes didn’t. I was not sure how much was the balance in my account. Ayumi applied CITES for all of the rest of animals in my order.
In November 2007, Ayumi received the CITES permit. Around the same time, Alex sent me the balance sheet of my account, which showed the due of a little less than $20,000. However, he included the animals that I did not order, so that I asked to remove them from the sheet. I asked Alex to ship all of the pythons (CITES) and some non-CITES animals. I was going to pay him when Alex tells me exactly how much was the total due. I sent the list of all animals to ensure there would be no mistakes. He was not very responsive to coordinate the shipment. I asked him to ship on 11/19/07 (Tue). He told me that he could ship only the partials, because he had the animals at other breeders, as shown below:
On Nov 19, 2007, at 5:02 AM, sales @ AHR wrote:
Ayumi,
We wont be able to ship everything today because we dont have everything here yet. We we have shipments coming in the next few days. We can ship some of the order today, let me know if this is what you want. But there is no way we can get everything out today, we have animals coming in from Brian, John, and another breeder in Florida....they wont all be here today.
*Brian here is Brian of BHB.
John is John Mac.
As you can see, he emailed in the last minutes, but he did not mention anything about the balance due. I was not sure, but I thought he did not worry because I had paid well.
I told him that I had to wait because all CITES animals had to go in one shipment with the CITES permit. The following week, I could not get hold of him to confirm the shipment. In the later night, he sent me the email below:
On Nov 27, 2007, at 10:18 PM, sales @ AHR wrote:
Hi Ayumi,
I am embarassed to send this email, I had a problem with Brian tonight and
he basically told me to "fuck off". He wanted me to pay him much more money
because he feels like he's been taking care of the animals for so long that
it cost him more money...so I should pay him more money. Anyways, I feel
like I lose a lot of face with you and Yusuke so I am very embarassed to
send this email. I cant think straight right now because I am so mad. I
decided not to pay him more money, so now I may have to sue him in order to
get back the money I already paid him. That is not your or Yusuke's problem,
but I just wanted to let you know what happened. Please please please, do
not ever do any business with him...I feel like he treated me very unfairly
and also doesn’t care about this problem. I shipped you everything that I
have at my place which is listed below.......after this shipment, I owe
Yusuke approx. $30,000.00 , I can refund him this balance or I can give him
credit / more animals. Whatever he wants, I will do, just let me know...I
can send a complete list of animals we currently have here now.
Here is everything that has been shipped to you by my employees........
6.1 pastels
4.0 cinnamons
3.3 yellow bellys
1.2 albinos
1.1 axanthic
0.2 lessers
1.1 mojaves
2.0 large spiders ( breedable )
0.2 het albinos
0.2 het piebalds
1.0 super pastel
I'm probably forgetting a few things, but I really cant concentrate right
now because I am just so mad and agitated. Please let me know if you have
any questions.
I was a bit panicked when he sent me this, because I worried what my customers would say about my business this time. The rumor in the summer already hurt me and I did not want to ruin my reputations any more. I told him he should get the replacements of the missing pythons and to ship to me. My order was not filled and I ended up shipping incomplete package. This shipment value was about $25,000. I also have to mention that I got a blue eye Lucistic instead of a Superfire from him. I also immediately contacted him and sent him pictures:
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Ayumi Shimada" <
[email protected]>
Date: December 21, 2007 7:01:47 AM PST
To: "Alex @ AHR" <
[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Superfire ball python
Alex,
I thought the exactly the same thing when Yusuke told me about it. Don't tell me that.
The pictures are attached. You have 5 pictures of the same animal. You can see it has blue eyes, not all black eyes. It also has grayish color on the head.
Let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Ayumi
On Dec 20, 2007 11:45 PM, Alex @ AHR <
[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Ayumi,
Don't tell me that :-(
Ask Yusuke to send me pictures as soon as possible. I have to call the
seller and verify.
What about the Retics? Were they both supers?
Have a good trip and vacation.
Alex
-----Original Message-----
From: Ayumi Shimada [mailto:
[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2007 8:03 AM
To: Alex @ AHR
Subject: Superfire ball python
Hello Alex,
Yusuke picked up the animals yesterday. When I talked to him this
morning (or yesterday morning, I've been up whole night...), he told
me the superfire ball python was not superfire... Both of us didn't
have enough time to talked about it, but what he told me was that the
eyes are different. He said it is supposed to be black, but they
were blue.. And some head pattern are different... He thinks it is
supermojave or something...
I kind of remember you said it is actually blue eyes before? I am
not sure it was about superfire though... I will find out what he is
talking about, after I arrive in Japan. Yusuke wanted me to tell you
that he is not sure if it is a superfire.
I will talk to you soon.
Thanks,
Ayumi
He responded he would confirm with the seller, but I never heard back from him since December 27, 2007. I called and emailed him many many many times, but he never replied.
As for the cages from ARScaging, we placed our order in October 2007 and wired the payment of about $40,000 to Alex. Alex was supposed to forward the payment to Brian Hahn. I was told that it would take 1-2 months to fulfill my order and I decided to wait until then. When the cages were ready, Brian contacted me so that I and Brian arranged a container shipment. Then, I found out that Brian never received the payment from Alex. It was in January 2008. I called him right away. I never get in touch with Alex though I tried by many many calls and emails.
After we found about the cages, I wanted to have my money back in my account. There still should be about $30,000 credit for the animals. With the $40,000, Alex owes me about $70,000.
I hope this post straitens up my claim better.
I have some other episodes that I want to share. But I will post it later…
