Lucille was professional and polite enough to send me, the seller, notification that a thread had been created in this forum. My response to her: "Wow, I really don’t know what to say. I do appreciate you for sending this to me. I guess this whole thing is a lesson learned for us – we need to video tape or take pictures of our snakes before we send them. This guy has been extremely unprofessional with us from the beginning and we have tried doing the right thing. We can’t just send him a refund when he’s placed a claim through paypal and they might automatically refund him – he would get money twice.
We would NEVER purposely ship a sick snake!! As I explained to him, we had no indication that it was sick – eating and shedding fine, acting fine, no bubbles that we saw. It is difficult to determine that the pic he’s taking for us actually is our snake. If we somehow overlooked something, we would certainly own that and apologize and make it right with him!! He’s harassing us at this point, too – sending my husband rude text messages."
I do have the numerous emails and text messages that were sent to us from SnakeMorphology, but I am not sure it is entirely appropriate to post all of them. I do not say this because we have anything to hide, or that I spoke inappropriately, but there is still an open inquiry through Paypal - I've been sharing information with them. At this point, I think it's best to communicate through them until a judgement is made.
We are not saying that we won't refund the money - we just needed to make sure that the buyer was being honest with us. We only just recently starting shipping our items for sale, so some of the shipping business aspect of it was knew to us. We have had numerous successful shipments and our customers have been extremely satisfied, so this is the first time we've had someone ask for a refund. Let me rephrase - demand a refund. The buyer (Rick) didn't even try to contact us about the snake before he contacted Paypal - he went there immediately. Paypal emails come to my address, but communication through Morph Market goes directly to my husband's email - there was nothing from the buyer. So, I started communication with the buyer in order to reach a resolution, which required me to ask questions. My emails showed that. I also quickly responded to Paypal that I would like some kind of evidence that our snake we shipped is/was indeed sick. We check snakes before we ship them and certainly would not have sent her if she was obviously "that" sick. The buyer claims that the snake has had an infection for a long time. Well, I do not know how he would know that just by looking at her and there is no way that it true. Like I stated to him, she was eating, shedding, moving, acting quite typically up until we shipped her. There were no symptoms of any kind or any indication that she was sick. Now, if she was/is indeed sick and he saw this upon her arrival and we somehow overlooked this, by all means, we want to do what is necessary to make it right. That being said, we are now very cautious about what to do next because the buyer's reaction to the situation, responses with us, and interactions thus far have made us question his integrity.
We are now waiting to hear from Paypal (which I explained to the buyer), because our funds are tied up through them. They froze the payment until a resolution was made. I can not send him money for a refund as well as a prepaid shipping label, which he is insisting we create for him, and risk losing out on the money. Granted, it's not an overly pricey snake, but I don't make it a habit of throwing money out the window.
I apologize for the lengthiness of my reply, but I thought it was important for this forum and its members to hear where we are coming from. We all know how quickly a reputation can get ruined on the internet and our business does rely on positive feedback from our customers. I welcome questions and inquiry from the members on here, but I will not engage in a debate, argument, or "mud-flinging" with Snake Morphology. I appreciate the opportunity to better explain the situation.
