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Bad Guy Avoid Howard Leong of HC Premium reptiles

S

Spider624

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At the 2015 Pomona reptile expo I traded 3 hogs (adult female 100% toffeebelly, adult male toffeebelly and a condo poss het toffee) for Howards male banana spider and a female super fire (Howards partners animal). Obviously they got the Lions share of the deal, but I really wanted a banana ball python for upcoming projects. I asked him on site if the banana was eating on its own since it was smaller than any snake on the table. He assured me he ate at least 3 meals on his own, and he came from a small clutch. Considering this was a breeder to breeder trade, I assumed he had no reason to BS me. I get home and start offering food every 2 to 3 days. He wouldn't eat anything from a plethora of options... live, thawed, pink,fuzz, rat, mouse, soft fur... nothing. About two weeks after the Pomona expo he died. He never produced any waste, and obviously if a hatchling ate, it would poop within two weeks. I called howard, clearly flustered, and he said he would compensate for the loss. However he had no banana options. on an attempt to recover some of my loss I accepted to pick from a small list of his. I decided on a enchi champagne, then he asked for an additional $100 for the price difference. I asked him what he valued a banana spider at. He tells me $250. Lol. This guy is shady and can't be trusted. He's condescending and underminds his peers. As a integral breeder, I offer cash back for fatalities and I'd never sell hatchling that don't eat. I left any problematic snakes I had back at home. Contact me if you'd like to see our text conversation.
 
Contact me if you'd like to see our text conversation
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I am not disputing nor questioning your unfortunate trade deal, but in order to validate your warning and enlighten future interested parties to his practices, please post your text conversation(s) here in this thread.

Posting publicly could very well save other interested parties from a similar loss and make show promoters aware.
 
At the show my partner mentioned that this person, Brandon, had a pair of toffee hognose, het female, visual male that he wanted to trade for ball pythons. Also included was an anaconda male that had issues, so he was throwing this in for free. This trade was primary with my partner for the toffee pair. The only thing that my partner had that Brandon was interested in was a female super Fire. This alone was not enough value in trade for the hognose pair. So to help my partner out, I offered to allow Brandon to check out my animals and see if I had anything he wanted. He picked out the spider banana male that I had. I valued the spider banana at $250 which my partner was going to paid me back for. (I will have my partner log in and verified that he is paying me back $250 to reimbursed me for this part of the trade.). I received a call from Brandon several weeks later that the spider banana had died and that he had never eaten while in his care. The banana had eaten while in my care and I was very surprised that he had died. I immediately offered to take care of it. Brandon could either wait for me to produce more banana morphs for him to chose from or pick out anything that I currently had. He thanked me for my offer and offer to paid the shipping to have the replacement animal shipped. I told him that I would cover the shipping. I wanted to make it right. Brandon looked over what I had and tonight texted me that he was interested in either my enchi champagne or killer spinner. I was fine with either. Brandon chose my enchi champagne female, which I was fine with. Because the enchi champagne was a $100 more, I asked for the difference. That is when the s**t hit the fan. Brandon became very upset, accused me of trying to rip him off, calling me names, trashing my animal. This was in a phone call that I made to him to discuss this. Because my reputation does mean a lot to me and in the interest of resolving this peacefully, I stated that I would give him the female enchi champagne straight up. I would send him the female and cover the shipping like I said I would to settle this, no cash. This did not appeased Brandon one bit. He continued to insult and trash me and threaten to post a bad person post on here which he did, all while I was trying to work with him to settle this in his favor. Finally to address the cash refund that he bought up, this was a trade of animals for animals. If Brandon had paid me $250 cash for the banana, I would have gladly refunded him the cash.
 
LauraB
I would be happy to post the texts myself. They will show that I did nothing but try to make right with Bramdon and to reimburse him for his lost. I am not very computer savie and if you could help me step by step to post the texts, I will.
 
When did banana spiders drop to $250. At the show you were asking $350. You said that was a quick sale price and I was technically getting a higher priced animal. You even told me it was possibly a banana bee when I inquired about the super fires parents. You can smooth talk the board and act like your a stand up guy, but you did me dirty. That banana spider wasn't ready to sell. I was trusting in your word, but I should have trusted my gut. I'm just stating what happend... obviously I don't post much on here, so take it for what its worth. I will accept the loss. Obviously Howard needs the $ more than I do.
 
I would just like to verify that I am indeed reimbursing Howard 250.00 for the Spider Banana that was part of the trade. So, in this instance the Spider Banana's cost was only 250.00. I do not understand at what point Brandon became upset about the reimbursement being offered. Howard is willing to send Brandon the more expensive snake (no extra charge) and also pay for shipping.
 
Again, I immediately acknowledge Brandon when he informed me that the banana had died and that I would take care of it with either a replacement or anything else that I have. He was perfectly fine with this. He only became really upset when I asked for the difference in the amount of what he wanted and what I actually got for the banana which my friend and partner just verified. Even when he became very upset over the difference asked and I proceeded to just give him the champagne at NO extra cost, he still post this bad guy thread on me. I never avoided the situation, never ignore him, tried to make it right and I still get this bad guy post. Since my partner paid me $250 to reimburse me for my animal to help out his trade with Brandon, I will gladly give Brandon the $250 in cash to reimburse him. As a quick note banana males are everywhere. You can easily get a male banana for $200. Adding the spider gene does not add that much value to it. As for my prices at the show, I literally did not sell a single animal for my listed price. Everybody asks for a discount. You either give it or take your animals home because somebody else will offer you a discount. So now I have this permanent bad guy post from someone that I immediately tried to take care of once I was informed by him that his banana had died.
 
Ken, your super fire is an excellent animal. Eating fine, growing well, couldn't be happier. However, the deal you guys worked amongst eachother is none of my concern. Howard offered me nothing equivalent to the banana spider I lost, then he has the audacity to try and tag an extra $100 on a subpar snake. I even offered to pay shipping with hopes of getting an equivalant animal. I understand he has nothing in the banana genre, and the list I was offered had nothing that I could really use in future projects. Some nice combos, but stuff I'm already working with. Howard tried making good only after I told him I was taking this to the boards. It shouldn't have had to go here, but it did on his accord.
 
Again, what Brandon states is not true. I have tried to make good from the very beginning. The value of the banana as my partner just confirmed was $250. Because he became so upset over the $100 difference that I was asking, I offered to then give him the champagne straight up to appease him. Obviously this did not happen, he chose to trash me on this site instead. Unfortunately not all deals end smoothly. The few times when a deal has been less than satisfactory for my customer, I have immediately worked to rectify the situation to the satisfaction of my customer. One only needs to search this site to see that nothing of this nature has ever happen to me before. And again I will happily give Brandon the $250 that I got from my partner to him.
 
Post the full screen captures of all the text conversations ... this is turning into a he said/he said & at this point, I am unwilling to believe either party.

P.S. Paragraphs & spacing are your friend.
 
Snake queen
As I stated to LauraB, I don't know how to post the texts on this site. If you could walk me through it step by step, I would be happy to do it. Or I could forward the texts directly to you if you want to send me a text message. 415-317-4820
 
I have asked twice for help to post the texts. My son is the technical one and he is away for the weekend. The texts will be posted by late Monday night when he gets back if they do not get posted before then by Brandon. There are not that many texts, but they will show that I immediately acknowledge and apologized for what happen to the banana and my offers to immediately take care of it.
 

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Thank you to Dan of Fangthane for helping me post the texts. I just wanted to show that I immediately acknowledged and apologize for the lost to Brandon and tried to immediately take care of it. I did make a call to him to try and explained that $250 was all I actually got for the banana from my partner, at which time he got very upset, started to call me names, trashed my animals and stated that he was going to post a bad guy thread on me and then hung up on me. I did immediately try to call him back and text him that he could have the enchi champagne female straight up, no cash. I am fighting this post with everything I have to show that I tried my best to appease him but to no avail. Now I again will gladly give him the $250 cash which was all I got for the banana from the trade.
 
hleong said:
I am fighting this post with everything I have to show that I tried my best to appease him but to no avail.
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I'm not really seeing where you've done anything to deserve the Bad Guy label. We can only speculate about why the snake died, but that doesn't really accomplish anything. As far as I can tell from the verifiable communications, they don't seem to support the OP's claim that you needed to be coerced into remedying the situation. You appear to have been very reasonable and accommodating from the beginning. I think the OP just got himself worked up and jumped the gun on posting this thread.
 
It does look like you did try to do right. As soon as you realized the OP was upset you offered the Champ. straight up.

It seems like there may be other issues here. I am only speculating, but possibly there is some animosity for some past occurrence? You are both vendors at the same show, "competitors".

Brandon, it seems he offered you exactly what you asked, very little if any "arm twisting", why the bad guy post? Do you never make mistakes?
 
Yes, thank you. I was shocked when Brandon informed me that he had died. He was from my last and latest clutch hatched in November which was why he was one of the smallest animals on my table. Brandon offered to ship me back the body. I told that it was not necessary, I took his word for it. I don't know why he had died and we did not get into the specifics of it. Upon him informing me that he had died, I immediately asked what I could do to compensate him for the lost, offering him anything that I had at the moment. This was an all animal trade, no cash was involve, so I felt it right to offer him any animals that I curently had. I should also mention that I do not feed my animals a solid week before a show to allow them to clear out their systems so as to not soil their display containers that they are in.
 
Thank you for your comment, Casey. No he was not a vender at the show and this was the very first time in dealing with him. On top of everything, this was not even my deal. My partner wanted the toffee pair and the only thing he had that Brandon was interested in was the super Fire. I only tried to help out my partner by allowing Brandon to pick out something from my collection and then have my partner reimburse me for it. I frankly am very shock at the drama this created and how this situation has turned out. I don't know what more I could have done, I had given him exactly what he asked for. And yes, I did offer the champagne female with no addition cash on his part after he became very upset and stated that he was going to post a bad guy thread on me. I did feel that I was not wrong in asking for the difference but deferred to him to try to appeased him. That did not work.
 
I would never sell a hatchling that supposedly only ate 3 times.I prefer to get them on an eating regimen,so my customer has peace of mind that the animal is feeding very well.;)
 
Yes, point taken. Maybe, it would be best in the future to put more meals into them before selling though I have not had a problem in the past. But in this case when Brandon inform me that he had died, I did not fault Brandon not dispute the claim. I only tried to make it right and compensate him for his lost. That is was this thread is all about.
 
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