UPS, FedEx, Airborne Express, USPS - bad guys.

This petition is designed to run for 90 Days. I figured that 90 days would be plenty of time for people to get the word out, and let others know about the petition.

I have already been contacted by a couple people who have very strong feelings as to why we shouldn't do this. The main concern is that the shipping company has the right to refuse service to anyone, and they may not bend on this issue.

The second thing is that many people believe that if you jump through enough hoops, you can get a permit to ship harmless snakes with each individual company. Personally I only see this as the case with those who do enough shipping with a company to warrant an exception permit.

Since this is not applied the same ven from shipping location to shipping location, I believe the argument in the petition to be valid. The point is that without showing a sort of resolve in numbers, we will never be able to get shipping companies to listen to us as a group.

I was just on petitiononline.com and saw a response from Microsoft to it's WebTV users who had signed a petition denouncing the quality of its service. Guess how many people it took to sign the petition to get one of the largest corporations in the world to take notice? Only 6500!!!!

I took this as a positive sign that we could get enough signatures to get at least ONE of the major shipping companies to change its policies.

ok, lets not go into fantasy land guys.

A boycott is not going to work. As Rich said, how would that work better then a pettition.

The pettition is just a tool to show them the amount of revenue they could gain by working with us on this issue.

Look at it this way, if everyone calls on their own and contacts one rep, then we have a hodge podge group of people saying different things to different people.

But with the pettition we have a easy to understand explination of our sitation that can be sent to one person or groups of people. Hopefully with numbers we can get them to listen.

As Rich has said, this well could backfire. But thoose of us allready dealing with the situation have nothing to loose. To everyone else, its your decision to get in or not. I dont look down on anyone who doesnt join in the effort. I also dont expect we will ever get a unified voice on the issue, thats america.

As to the "indecent magazine or catalog" whatever it was. Thats like compairing apples and oranges. Few people care about herps, let alone the issues involved with shipping them.

On the other hand many religious people have nothing better to do then legislate morality. As such you can always find a group at your local planned parenthood, adult book store, ect.

If we actually contacted tv stations and the like and said "we are calling for the boycott of ALL the shippers, and ANYONE WHO USES THEM on the grounds that they do not ship live animals for everyone, ect, ect" we would be laughed at. In fact if you do try,make sure you record the conversation, I bet it woudl be funny.

Mickey Hinkle
The Lizard King Reptiles

Stealing is immoral, adultery is immoral.

Without morality how can you have laws ie: right and wrong which is no longer taught in our public schools. Just how to put on a condom. And we have illiterate gang bangers killing each other. no wonder they send our jobs overseas. at least in India they can read, write and spell properly. hard to find here these days.
Some countries are just a little harsher on their penalties. Aghanistan Kills homosexuals, adulters, many countries chop of your hand for stealing, not many repeat offenders I presume. otherwise they would have no hands left to steal with. I laughed when Jesse Jackson said he a known adulterer was going to Afghanistan/ Iraq and negotiate with those guys. He might have been executed. and definitely not taken seriously.

Maybe CNN the communist news network. in my humble opinion has brainwashed you.
Those were merely boycott examples; and the effectiveness nothing more.

Slight spelling correction. Public school education, what can I say.

Im not going to get into a morality argument with you here. I was just stating something that you post soo elequently pointed out.

The vast majority of this world could careless about reptiles, and problems involved with shipping reptiles. Do you disagree with this statement?

However when it comes to issues of morality, the world will stand up and take notice. A boycott performed by such groups, on issues that are EASY to get MOST people to choose one side or another are far more likely to be effective.

As for me being brainwashed, I disagree. However gotta love america, where your free to make choices in life, and should you make a mistake you dont loose your hands or worse.

Mickey Hinkle
The Lizard King Reptiles

That's why this is still the greatest country in the world despite. what the loonies are doing to our School systems etc.

Most people could care less about animals that don't have fur on them. I can agree on this. and agree to disagree on the other points.

Nothing personal against you. I always say. If I am wrong I will change. But when I am right I make the point. and it's not about me personally being right or wrong. I would just prefer to be on the right side of the equation whenever possible. Being on the wrong side doesn't get you to far in this life, and especially not thereafter.

Originally posted by WebSlave
As far as a private company is concerned, yes this is true, but even private companies can be legally liable if their actions knowingly does harm to one person, or a group of persons. All that is needed to be shown are damages incurred by their unfair actions.

In the world of business, making decisions on the basis of money of who to do business with, or how to do business with them, is not considered unfair. It's just "good" business. If certain members of management make exceptions to certain policies for certain individuals or businesses, IMO it is not "harming" those who are not given exceptions.

Rich, how many times have you thrown extra snakes into an order for someone? Is that harming the rest of us who order from you because we don't get free snakes? IMO that isn't unfair, nor is it an issue that belongs in the courts. Call it "customer relations" or something, but I fully support your right to do that because it's your business and you run it how you see fit.

By the same token, I have to "support" a shipping company's right to make those types of decisions, even if I think the decisions they make are stupid and annoying.

Originally posted by WebSlave
Serpwidgets - sorry, but I don't understand. If we don't have enough clout with a petition, then how in the world are we going to be anywhere near effective using a boycott? We can't be too small for one and not the other at the same time.

That's a good point, and I'm not sure how to answer that. I just don't believe something like this belongs in court, and I don't like the way it is being presented. My response to claims of "unfair" is "where is it written that life is supposed to be fair?"

Either way is a roll of the dice. But if you try to get the attention of other companies who can affect the outcome, you are rolling more dice.

Charles Pritzel

I worked for a company that was purchased by a large shipping comapny three years ago. This large shipping company made many changes in the business philosophy of the acquired company. The main one being that small and medium sized businesses are expendable. Their target companies were Sears, WalMart, Ford, General Motors, etc. When the smaller companies tried to puch this shipping company they were basically told that their business did not matter.

I just don't think pushing is the way to handle it. The petition may seem like the way to go but in seeing there response to an established, paying account I don't see any positive outcome.

It sounds like FedEx is on the verge of allowing anyone to ship if they are willing to do a small amount of work by providing examples of their boxes and doing some paperwork. If it doesn't work out, maybe a petition can't hurt as a last resort. But if it does start to work, a demanding type petition could possibly cause them to rethink their cooperation.

As for trying to get them to change regulations to allow anyone to just walk up to the counter with a reptile shipment and without an account, that will sooner or later backfire. When the inevitable shoddy packing jobs allow escapes, it will end it for everyone. It doesn't sound like it will be that difficult at FedEx if it goes according to what the "pioneers" are telling us. For shippers who do so little shipping that it is not worthwhile for them to get an account, they should ship with another person who has an account, use the airlines, or do whatever they do now. At least requiring an account will help keep most of the packing professional. If unauthorized shippers are the ones making the mistakes, it may not reflect as badly on us as if an account holder is causing problems.

So maybe the petition is good as a last resort, once we give up on more cooperative efforts. At that point, it couldn't do as much harm as it can at this early stage in negotiations.