Vicki and Chuck,
Let me start out by saying that I have done business with Duane. Just because I did business with him, had a good experience and I disagree with your complaints does not mean I’m posting as his friend or buddy. I’ve not had any contact with Duane other than when I made my purchase from him. Stop trying to contort the situation by making accusations about those criticizing you being his friends and doing so for that reason, it isn’t the case. Furthermore, you’ve started making wild claims about him sending you weak animals so he could send healthy animals to someone he makes money off of using their site. This too is unsubstantiated and simply a way for you to contort the situation. You might be able to contort situations like that with children but if you are going to continue this discussion here, I recommend you stop trying to contort the issue and suggest you start being straight up, answer our questions, post coherently addressing the issues and quit with your over emotional, useless banter simply aimed at irrationally denting someone’s reputation.
1) You claimed he shipped you newborns but sold you 2 month olds. The add does not in any way state 2 month olds. Unless you made some other arrangement with him (in which case, please provide us with evidence of such), he sold you “well started” animals. Duane has said his policy is to not ship animals under a month of age. You claim however that the animals you received were newborns. You’ve never hatched or seen chameleons hatch but feel qualified to make this assumption. Looking at those photos, the baby is admittedly small, however, looking at it compared to the quarter, I would guess that stretched out, that animal is significantly over your claimed ¾” length (Look at the length of the back and tail compared to the circumference of the quarter and you should see that stretched out, that baby would be about the circumference of the quarter which is about 3”). The average hatchling is 2.5” total length. As a result, that baby could very well be “well started”. At the very least, that animal is not as you represented it. If you want to stand by your statement that it probably, or even likely never ate before or was not fattened up prior to shipment, have the vet to a stomach analysis and post the results, otherwise, you’re just blowing more steam.
2) You were given instructions on how to care for them, what not to do and told to contact Duane immediately if there was a problem. You failed to contact Duane immediately and waited 12 hours to do so. Not only that but according to Duane, in your conversations, you told him you had them on a heat pad and said you didn’t give them water (against his instructions) because you were afraid of drowning them. Now you say that isn’t the case but it took you days and numerous posts and comments for you to change the story on us. On page 6 you said yourself you placed them on “the incubator pad” with another light on them as well. It wasn’t until then that you changed the story about the water. I find it hard to understand why it would take you so long to tell us otherwise was the case on something that was such a vital aspect of the situation. Makes me very skeptical about what you are claiming.
Duane, can you tell us which conversation they said they hadn’t watered them? Was this the recorded conversation and is there a way for you to play it back over the phone if someone wanted to hear it for themselves?
3) You’ve avoided direct questions about exactly how many animals are dead, when they each died and under what circumstances. We’ve heard a number of different numbers from you and you’ve not given us any direct answers.
4) What happened to the reptile vet in your story. He seems to have fallen out of the situation. Can you provide us with evidence that he saw these animals, how many of them he saw and how many of them died under his presence?
5) You said yours were in the mail for 3 days but they actually arrived in 2. You said he tried to push you around to pay more than the dutch price of the auction but you wanted him to pay to ship it to two locations. You never did answer how the animals arrived at the other location. I’m not saying that the shipping method isn’t a mistake and that is should have taken that long, I’m just saying we’re getting the run around by you and regardless, you failed to contact him and follow his directions.
I think the bottom line here is he sent you what you paid for. If they arrived in bad condition, you needed to contact Duane immediately which you did not do. It’s not Duane’s fault you failed to follow his directions. Rather than follow his instructions, you did the opposite, supposedly on the recommendation for someone else. That isn’t Duane’s fault. If the packages took longer to arrive than they were supposed to, that’s a problem. If it was delayed due to the error of the USPS, that’s not Duane’s fault and you needed to be in touch with him as soon as they arrived to let him know of any problems. If they weren’t sent overnight, they really should have been (but you really still should have been in contact with him immediately). Did you ask for alternate shipping options? If you did not like how he wanted to ship, you should have requested another method. I always ask how they are being shipped and if I’m not happy, I ask for other methods to be arranged. As we’ve said, you need to sit down (together so we only have to read a single post, not multiple contradictory posts), get your story straight and together post a coherent explanation of all of our questions and comments and explain why you’ve changed your story so many times if you have any hope of us taking you seriously.
Chris
