huff747
New member
First off I realize there is another thread that was just started for Allen but it's titled Good Guy and I'm not sure people always read the threads once they see that so I wanted to start another one.
I can't say he's good or bad, I can only relay my experience from this week.
I had an ad posted with animals I wanted in trade and what I had to offer. Allen (emails come from Matt Allen for what it's worth). We come to an agreement and I find no info on the BOI so when he asks me for references I do the same. He gives me a couple emails of people so I contact them. They reply saying good guy so I go ahead with the trade. Allen doesn't ship first so I agree to ship Wednesday for Thursday delivery and then he would then ship the following Monday for Tuesday delivery. I ship out 1.1 fires and 0.1 Spider 100% het albino (pictured below). I box them up approximately 4pm Wednesday and drop them off at FedEx priority overnight. They're going from St. Louis to Dayton Ohio and the weather was basically the same on both ends, high 70's for the high, upper 40's for the low so since they're traveling mostly overnight I did use a heat pack. FedEx doesn't deliver them till almost 1:45 but I'm not really worried as the temps are mild and that's still less than 21 hours in the box (packaged at 4pm Central, received at 1:45pm Eastern).
For what it's worth, he requested paperwork on the fires so using the wonderful Degei product I printed the paperwork with the below photos.
At about 2:30 I received an email saying that they had arrived and the box had a terrible stench. He said the heat pack (40 hour heat pack from superior enterprises with a supposed max surface temp of 110 degrees) had fallen off the top of the box onto the animals which were bagged and packaged with shredded newspaper. He said the the spider was so rank that he immediately had to throw it into the dumpster outside without pictures. He said one fire was DOA and the other died shortly after arrival and he provided me the pics below, and only these two pics, taken with his camera phone because he didn't have his camera with him.
I said I was sorry (I have every email sent before and after the DOA incident but it' too much to post here so I'll paraphrase), and I asked if I could get better pics and requested a pic of the spider as well. At one point he said no way on the spider then later said he'd try and look through the dumpster, but said he did have the fires in the freezer and would get better pics. My wife has family in the Dayton area so I even offered to drive to meet him with replacements and I'd take the dead snakes home with me so I could write them off as a loss. He said he was moving this weekend.
Anyway we continue to exchange emails and I continue to offer to drive out and ask for the pictures. This morning he tells me his wife had seen the snakes in the freezer, freaked out and I quote
"So my wife took them and threw them in the sewage drain in front of the house. I'm sorry for the inconvinience."
So now with only the two bad pictures above as proof of a shipment of three expensive animals dead in shipping and no chance of any other pictures because the spider is in a dumpster and the fires are in a sewer drain I'm suppose to accept the loss.
Sorry I know this post has been a lot of info. But I guess the point of the whole thing is this. I can't say that I've been ripped off. Deaths in shipping do occur. Since I was shipping first in this trade I had every incentive to make sure they arrived in good condition.
What I am upset about is the lack of assistance I have received on his end. Decent quality pictures of the animals received dead is a pretty standard practice. I want to make things right and I've offered but at the same time I want some reassurance that I'm making them right because there really was a problem. With the pictures provided I surely can't ID them as the snakes I shipped. To be honest they don't look like a fire to me as fires have a distinct belly pattern.
Belly pictures of a couple fires I do still have.
So I'll stop rambling now. I just want to reiterate that I'm not saying Allen is a ripoff artist because I don't have proof of that. What I am saying is that before making a deal with him you should consider the above and consider if somebody who takes little to no initiative to ease your mind when something like this does happen is somebody that you feel safe doing business with. I've smelled some pretty awful things in my time in this hobby but I would be able to stomach it long enough to get a couple pictures as proof.
Thanks.
Chris
I can't say he's good or bad, I can only relay my experience from this week.
I had an ad posted with animals I wanted in trade and what I had to offer. Allen (emails come from Matt Allen for what it's worth). We come to an agreement and I find no info on the BOI so when he asks me for references I do the same. He gives me a couple emails of people so I contact them. They reply saying good guy so I go ahead with the trade. Allen doesn't ship first so I agree to ship Wednesday for Thursday delivery and then he would then ship the following Monday for Tuesday delivery. I ship out 1.1 fires and 0.1 Spider 100% het albino (pictured below). I box them up approximately 4pm Wednesday and drop them off at FedEx priority overnight. They're going from St. Louis to Dayton Ohio and the weather was basically the same on both ends, high 70's for the high, upper 40's for the low so since they're traveling mostly overnight I did use a heat pack. FedEx doesn't deliver them till almost 1:45 but I'm not really worried as the temps are mild and that's still less than 21 hours in the box (packaged at 4pm Central, received at 1:45pm Eastern).
For what it's worth, he requested paperwork on the fires so using the wonderful Degei product I printed the paperwork with the below photos.
At about 2:30 I received an email saying that they had arrived and the box had a terrible stench. He said the heat pack (40 hour heat pack from superior enterprises with a supposed max surface temp of 110 degrees) had fallen off the top of the box onto the animals which were bagged and packaged with shredded newspaper. He said the the spider was so rank that he immediately had to throw it into the dumpster outside without pictures. He said one fire was DOA and the other died shortly after arrival and he provided me the pics below, and only these two pics, taken with his camera phone because he didn't have his camera with him.
I said I was sorry (I have every email sent before and after the DOA incident but it' too much to post here so I'll paraphrase), and I asked if I could get better pics and requested a pic of the spider as well. At one point he said no way on the spider then later said he'd try and look through the dumpster, but said he did have the fires in the freezer and would get better pics. My wife has family in the Dayton area so I even offered to drive to meet him with replacements and I'd take the dead snakes home with me so I could write them off as a loss. He said he was moving this weekend.
Anyway we continue to exchange emails and I continue to offer to drive out and ask for the pictures. This morning he tells me his wife had seen the snakes in the freezer, freaked out and I quote
"So my wife took them and threw them in the sewage drain in front of the house. I'm sorry for the inconvinience."
So now with only the two bad pictures above as proof of a shipment of three expensive animals dead in shipping and no chance of any other pictures because the spider is in a dumpster and the fires are in a sewer drain I'm suppose to accept the loss.
Sorry I know this post has been a lot of info. But I guess the point of the whole thing is this. I can't say that I've been ripped off. Deaths in shipping do occur. Since I was shipping first in this trade I had every incentive to make sure they arrived in good condition.
What I am upset about is the lack of assistance I have received on his end. Decent quality pictures of the animals received dead is a pretty standard practice. I want to make things right and I've offered but at the same time I want some reassurance that I'm making them right because there really was a problem. With the pictures provided I surely can't ID them as the snakes I shipped. To be honest they don't look like a fire to me as fires have a distinct belly pattern.
Belly pictures of a couple fires I do still have.
So I'll stop rambling now. I just want to reiterate that I'm not saying Allen is a ripoff artist because I don't have proof of that. What I am saying is that before making a deal with him you should consider the above and consider if somebody who takes little to no initiative to ease your mind when something like this does happen is somebody that you feel safe doing business with. I've smelled some pretty awful things in my time in this hobby but I would be able to stomach it long enough to get a couple pictures as proof.
Thanks.
Chris
