Beware of Garrett Smith

We recently bought 3 breeding groups of various phases of Tremper albino leopard geckos from one Garrett Smith, and have several complaint

Firstly, they shipped via USPS (anyone who ships herps should know that they do not guarantee live arrival, nor delivery within 24 hours for overnight shipping) which means that they were over a day late. But more importantly, 5 of the females appear immaciated (two of them are pretty severe, and possibly sick) and one of the males has a wound on his snout.

These animals were NOT represented accurately, and I would be VERY cautious about doing business with this individual.

His information is as follows:

[email protected]

Garrett Smith
HC 15 Box 135
Smithville,OK 74957

Do you have any pictures of the geckos available to post for us?

What

shipping arrangements did you make with the shipper? Shipping USPS, is not a major problem on overnights for lizards, but your description seems to indicate that these geckos had some earlier problems that you were unaware of or not told about. How did you pay this person? JERRY TRESSER, PS why did you not just go to Ron Tremper for the geckos?

Do you have pictures of these geckos when you received them? I saw his ads on kingsnake and thought that the leopard geckos pictured looked mighty rough, and the deals seemed too good to be true IMO.

I can understand why you may have purchased these albinos from him, as Tremper does not sell adult breeding groups that I am aware of BUT we must be very careful when buying leopard geckos though, only buying from reputable breeders or those that can provide good references. One sick gecko can wipe out a huge collection of healthy ones.

Have you taken them to a vet? Have they had fecal testing done? Have you contacted the seller about this?

You can see a few pictures here
These geckos are currently with my business partner, since I am out of state. I will send him a message asking him to come here and answer your questions, but it is still apparent that some of these animals were in deplorable condition, at best. I wouldn't even GIVE away an animal that looks like that, much less put it through the stress of shipping.

~Aaron

We just recently got back from Garrett's house a couple of weeks ago. We purchased 3 Freedom breeder racks from him. He is just starting school and is needing money to pay for his school that is why he is selling off all his racks and Geckos. Every single animal we saw seemed to be in good shape. All the Geckos looked very healthy. We would have purchased some of them but they were already sold. As for the shipping method, he does not have many options because he lives way way out in the country. I am not sure what happened with the geckos that Aaron received but the group we saw were very nice.


Brandie Wyatt
TW Int'l Inc.

Has anyone let Garret know about this thread? It would be nice to hear his side of the story, although if he did ship a customer the leopard gecko shown in the picture there is not much he could say to justify that IMO.

By the way..

I don't think shipping the geckos USPS is necessarily a bad thing, lots of people still use them to ship lizards. Unfortunatly though the majority of shipments containing live animals that are shipped "Express Mail" (overnight) do take 2 days to reach their destinations which is why I don't ship with them anymore.

Some answers...

Okay, let me first clarify that my partener had a detail mixed up a bit; The animals were shipped a day later than was agreed upon, not a big deal. But I was not notified about this until the day of the intended arrival. That was on a tuesday. The previous saturday was the last I'd heard from mr smith in an e-mail that "the geckos would be shipped monday" that was all. I wrote several e-mails asking for a reply between sat. and tues. , but he did not. That alone is bad business. But totally forgivable.
The photots I saw on the ad at kingsnake looked healthy, of good weight, and free of any wounds. Now, for my discredit, I did not ask if any of the animals we were buying were emaciated, wounded, or sick. Generally, however, those are things that are not kept a secret from the buyer by a reputable source.
When I received the 13 animals I purchased, all were alive. Two females are seriously underweight, and one of those is extremely ill. Fecals all check out okay, so I'm running the very sick fem. on a round of antibiotics. She is in iso. In addition to the two very thin females, four others are in no way shape or form of good weight. One of the three males we purchased also had a fairly large chunk of flesh missing fron his head. This wound was at least three days old, so it did not happen in shipping.

Now, I do not want a refund of any sort. Quite frankly what's done is done. I feel that the animals will receive far better care w/ me than with their former owner. It may be mushy, but I see these animals as living things and deserving of an excellant quality of life, not as money makers or expendable breeders.
I just would like to see to it that anybody who deals with Mr. Smith in the future is very cautious and certain of the animals they are recieving.

- Kael -

Thank you Kael for clarifing your partners mistake. Even though the animals where shipped USPS they did arrive overnight. As you can check via tracking # ef082389390us signed for by Kael's aunt Barbra Valencourt. Since payment for the animals arrived late, I'm aware of the reason for late payemnt, the animals where not in my care for one week before and at shipping since i had to leave town. As for when i left they animals where in good condition, not to claim the animals arrived in poor condition, as i was made aware that one of the animals had lost weight, but which i didn't know it was one that you had purchased.
Garrett

GSmith said:

As for when i left they animals where in good condition

Click to expand...

If the gecko that is picture is the one you sold.... then.. I don't think it takes a rocket science to deduct that there was much more then just one weeks worth of neglect. Weeks of no feeding and improper husbandry have contributed to that geckos current condition.

So.. the question is.... is that the gecko you sold Kael?

As I said, the animals arrived in poor condition. The wound on the one males head likely happened less than a week before shipping. However, it is very unprofessional to ship animals that you have not seen the day of shipping. As for the female pictured, that is definitley not one weeks worth of neglect. It takes a long time for leos to lose all of their tail fat and body fat.
I reiterate:
It is the lack of disclosure prior to the sale on Mr. Smith's part that is so upsetting. I hope that he does not plan on doing business this way in the future.

-Kael-

As for the late payment arrival, it was due to an unfortunate power outage many of us experienced.

-Kael-