Excuse me?
This is NOT the BOI (as has been pointed out) and no transaction has occurred in which one member was scammed.
None of you are scammed, in fact, some of you seem ticked off that Rich did not:
1. Give the snakes away for free
2. Put them up for auction (so that some of them can be had for a "song"
3. Adopt them out (still gotten for free)
In fact, some of you just seem very ticked because he did get out early and are hiding your real anger under a more seemingly legitimate gripe. Did he perhaps trump someone else's plans? Was someone perhaps planning to get his snakes at a rock bottom price?
From what I gather from this post and others that have attacked the owner of the site for apparently getting out of business, selling his snakes at lower prices, flooding the market, etc..., it appears that some of you have a very big boner for him and that's just pathetic.
Rich has harmed no one that I can see, and perhaps some people may enjoy herping farther down the line and pick up a few treasures. I would not and do not condone releasing captive bred animals into the wild, but those NATIVE to the area seem less problematic than it's being implied in this thread.
I take it by the many posts of those that apparently don't support the BOI (and the inferences of what happens there) that they may have an alternate motive and it may be that they hope they tick Rich off enough to close the site? Is this perhaps what you want to happen?
***Please do not lump me with any that use the BOI for anything other than what it was designed for.
I do not believe that I have "lynched" or acted in any manner but how I would like to be treated if I ended up there..(well perhaps I did a funny once in a while
).
Actually that is an interesting perspective in all this. I have to admit that never in my life have I come under attack from so many directions. So possibly people are just PISSED that I was able to exit this business with my skin intact? So they want to change that after the fact? Why would it bother people that I decided to retire? Did they just want me to continue doing this until it put me or Connie into our death beds? Then they would have felt better about it?
Interestingly enough, Mark Bell told me that he got inundated with calls from people after I posted the notice on my site that he had bought out all of my remaining animals. Personally, I believe a LOT of people were waiting for me to go into panic mode and have to dump those animals at drastically reduced prices to meet my goal of having them all gone by January 1, 2010. I had killed off my mouse colony, so I was pretty much committed to make that happen. Mark said that from the comments he got from some people, he believes that I just yanked the rug out from under a lot of them when they all got sold off suddenly to him. Matter of fact I had several people contact me about buying those animals after the fact, but I told them they had to deal with Mark as they were now his animals even though they were still in my possession. I believe some got pissed that I wouldn't break my word to Mark and sell to them instead. And to add further insult to injury, Mark stated that he was so impressed with the animals that MOST of them are not going to be sold, but instead will be kept as his own breeding stock. Ouch, sorry, guess maybe that is just rubbing salt into the wounds for some people, but that is the simple fact of the matter. Some people just waited too long and the boat left the dock without them. Seriously Mark got some VERY nice snakes. He was constantly commenting so when we were bagging them up for him at our place to take back to Naples. Yeah, it was a bit traumatic for me, but in some things, there just can't be any compromises. It was an "all or nothing" time in my life.
As for me dumping animals, yeah, right..... If anyone believes that selling corn snakes for $100 a pop at Expo is "dumping", well I sure wish I had had YOUR customer list this past year...
Yeah, some people got some deals, but nothing I sold was at prices like I heard other people have been offering. I heard people couldn't even sell their corns at 3 for $10. So yeah, perhaps people choosing to buy MY stuff instead of theirs pissed them off as well. I think many people would have liked me to keep my prices higher then theirs until they sold out all of their animals, but sorry about that. I had people actually come out and tell me that they would check out my prices and then charge $25 less because they felt they couldn't compete with me otherwise. Like I was supposed to feel complimented enough to ignore that they were purposely undercutting my prices?
Well guys, sorry that I did well at Expo and maybe you didn't. But tell me, if my prices were so cheap, who put the ball and chain around YOUR ankles to keep you from snatching up all those deals that were undercutting your prices?
At the end of the show, Mark bought everything that I wasn't able to sell at my asked for prices on the tables. And there were a LOT of them, like maybe 800, so yeah, if I was dumping cornsnakes so cheaply, how come I had to sell so many to Mark at the end of the show? Had ANYONE come to my tables to make me an offer, perhaps they would have gotten that great deal as well. But did they? Nope. So whose fault is that? Yeah, Mark definitely got a good deal, but he deserved it, and I'm glad it worked out that way.
Actually this is an interesting perspective to this whole thing. Thank you for that thought..... Certainly all taking potshots at me aren't part of this sort of aspect, but I have to think perhaps some are.
Yeah, perhaps I did piss off some vultures...........
That sure would explain things, now wouldn't it?
Darn, this was supposed to be a short note. Definitely have too much time on my hands lately.....
