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Bad Guy FloridaHerps - I should have listened to all the bad reviews.

nickolasanastasiou said:
A few things.

The language/tone used by that representative is inappropriate and utterly unprofessional.

The fact that you agreed to a no-LAG policy kind of puts you in a position that makes this difficult. I personally offer a LAG in my terms, but my speciess are generally on a different tier of physical robustness. I can understand why many do not cover arachnid and amphibian classes. I sympathize with you, but under the agreement you were owed nothing further.

What was the packaging like? Was it generally adequate for the conditions? I agree with Kevin regarding the extra precautions taken if offered. If I send something to semi-remote desert area during the summer, I take various precautions. Also, like others have mentioned in this and other threads, it is the seller's responsibility to make the call to ship or not when conditions may be more hazardous than average. It is the customer's desire and the vendor's final decision in judgment for the welfare of the animal.
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Hi Nickolas,

I completely agree. I acknowledged the fact they do not guarantee live arrival. But, having been a customer for a few years, I thought that perhaps that might be willing to ship a new one to me at half cost or provide some kind of store credit. Now, I could care less about the money. FloridaHerps has shown itself to be a highly unethical business that gives us all bad names. Now I am at the point of spreading the word and considering consulting a lawyer. The one e-mail they claimed I sent but did not, that is just an outright lie. Our IT guys should be able to show that. There is certainly more to come.
 
nickolasanastasiou said:
David, I definitely appreciate you sharing this. You should never have been treated so rudely. Especially not for mentioning a quasi-parallel shipment that was a complete success.
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I certainly was not expecting the kind of response I received from them. I have been purchasing animals from them for about 3 years. Not huge numbers just a few here and there. Their utter lack of professionalism is just stunning. All they had to do was say "NO" and leave it at that. But, they have shown their true behaviors. If you look for them in Florida BBB, they have 10 previous complaints against them, with many of the same recurring themes - horrible, rude customer service, insults, and in one case threats. Just unbelievable.
 
Thank you. I did not intend the one e-mail to offend them, just make a point. But things went downhill from there rapidly.
 
This is unbelievable. I just discovered it in the BBB file on my case. This is what an employee told the owner of the store I e-mailed. IT IS 100% COMPLETE FABRICATION - A LIE. I cannot believe the ethics of these people. I am going to prove it by sending it to our IT people and asking them to make a statement I did not write this. Should not be too difficult.

From: David Baumgardner mailto:[email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2015 11:55 AM
To: Florida Herpetology, Inc.
Subject: Re: Order #15254
I see my account has been removed guess you didn't like my review? F##k you guys I already found anew suppier that doesn't have all your problems. I plan on posting pictures of the dead spider all over facebook and forums. your biz is going down floridaf##kers.
David E. Baumgardner, PhD
Senior Lecturer
Department of Biology
Faculty of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior
Texas A&M University
3258 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-3258
979-845-4191 (phone)
979-845-2891 (fax)
http://www.bio.tamu.edu/USERS/baumgardner/index.html
 
Tell me about it. And what is so amazing is that it is not difficult for an IT person to determine if I sent it or not. Either the owner has no control over his employees, or he condones their behaviors.
 
While their policy may be no refunds on invertebrates, their shipping terms also state that hot/cold packs will be used according to a customers "current" weather conditions.

I found the FL Herps email responses to yours totally abhorrent, particularly since you were a repeat customer and retained composure and respectability in your correspondence with them.

The mere mention of another well respected Vegas supplier obviously unnerved FL Herps and resulted in that very unprofessional, immature and rude dialogue. That speaks volumes.
 

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Yep. Reiterating the questions I asked regarding packaging and the screenshot Laura helped out with above, please describe the packaging the spider came in. Was a cold pack or were any cold packs employed to attempt to mitigate what they considered to be excessively elevated temperatures?
 
nickolasanastasiou said:
David, I definitely appreciate you sharing this. You should never have been treated so rudely. Especially not for mentioning a quasi-parallel shipment that was a complete success.
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LauraB said:
While their policy may be no refunds on invertebrates, their shipping terms also state that hot/cold packs will be used according to a customers "current" weather conditions.

I found the FL Herps email responses to yours totally abhorrent, particularly since you were a repeat customer and retained composure and respectability in your correspondence with them.

The mere mention of another well respected Vegas supplier obviously unnerved FL Herps and resulted in that very unprofessional, immature and rude dialogue. That speaks volumes.
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Thanks for your support. This is my first time on "Fauna Classifieds" and I have been very happy with the support and input from members. I realize one of my e-mails probably rubbed them the wrong way, but that was not the intention. Thanks for the cold pack suggestion. For some reason, I did not even think about that angel. It was not a huge amount of money ($120), but when they became so abusive, that is what caused me to fight them. I cannot stand bullies, and that is what they are - bullies. I am going to stand up to them and expose them for what they are - a highly unethical and unprofessional business.
 
I agree with what has been posted by both Nickolas and Laura.
Also, if Florida Herps sent a fake email, to BBB and allegedly written by you, that is even more despicable.
Please answer these questions:
1. Was a cold pack included inside the box that the spider was shipped in?
2. How was the spider/box packed (i.e. contents, container, insulation, etc.)?
3. Were you given an option on ship dates?

....
 
Pasodama said:
I agree with what has been posted by both Nickolas and Laura.
Also, if Florida Herps sent a fake email, to BBB and allegedly written by you, that is even more despicable.
Please answer these questions:
1. Was a cold pack included inside the box that the spider was shipped in?
2. How was the spider/box packed (i.e. contents, container, insulation, etc.)?
3. Were you given an option on ship dates?

....
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I should have paid more attention to the packaging, but I was so concerned with the spider I set the box off to the side and forgot about it. So, to be completely honest, I do not remember for sure if a cold pack was included. As soon as I opened the box, I saw the container with the tarantula in it very near the top of the box and it was not moving. I was immediately concerned with it, so took it out and placed it in a terrarium. I set the box off to the side. I do believe there was a cold pack, but it was rather small for a box of that size.

It was packaged in a standard Styrofoam lined box, the kind used by most herp shippers. I do remember thinking to myself that it was a rather small box for the size of the spider.

No option on the ship date. They process and ship within a couple of days. They never asked me if I had a preferred shipping date.
 
Ephemeroptera said:
I should have paid more attention to the packaging, but I was so concerned with the spider I set the box off to the side and forgot about it. So, to be completely honest, I do not remember for sure if a cold pack was included. As soon as I opened the box, I saw the container with the tarantula in it very near the top of the box and it was not moving. I was immediately concerned with it, so took it out and placed it in a terrarium. I set the box off to the side. I do believe there was a cold pack, but it was rather small for a box of that size.

It was packaged in a standard Styrofoam lined box, the kind used by most herp shippers. I do remember thinking to myself that it was a rather small box for the size of the spider.

No option on the ship date. They process and ship within a couple of days. They never asked me if I had a preferred shipping date.
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As a seller, it is my responsibility to check shipping temps and decide what is safe. I have in my tos that I don't ship when highs are above 90, too. I will never ship when I think the temps are bad, so I think it's horrible that they're blaming you for that if they picked the ship date. The entire e-mail exchange is enough to keep me from ever ordering from them. So what if you mentioned another company. To me it sounds like they may be a bit jealous of them, but that's just the vibe I get. It's their responsibility to ship when conditions are safe. If they were not, they should have contacted you and said they needed to wait. I've waited for months for packages and have customers who wait all the time. If they won't wait, I refund their money. Animal safety should come first.

I'm sorry you had to deal with this and I'm sorry for the spider.
 
Yea man, it's a shame that your spider had to meet an untimely end because of, in my opinion, a bad decision on the shippers part. I don't sell or ship much, I'm just a hobbiest in this industry, but I'm always afraid to ship when temps are too high or low in any area. I feel that's a poor business decision on their part, and they should have disregarded their TOS in this instance and helped you out. Instead, they drove a lot of future business away be acting completely unprofessional in their responses and manner of handling the situtation.

I for one, will avoid them in any future purchases I decide to make.
 
Kristi23 said:
As a seller, it is my responsibility to check shipping temps and decide what is safe. I have in my tos that I don't ship when highs are above 90, too. I will never ship when I think the temps are bad, so I think it's horrible that they're blaming you for that if they picked the ship date. The entire e-mail exchange is enough to keep me from ever ordering from them. So what if you mentioned another company. To me it sounds like they may be a bit jealous of them, but that's just the vibe I get. It's their responsibility to ship when conditions are safe. If they were not, they should have contacted you and said they needed to wait. I've waited for months for packages and have customers who wait all the time. If they won't wait, I refund their money. Animal safety should come first.

I'm sorry you had to deal with this and I'm sorry for the spider.
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Agreed.

------------------

David, the representative attempted to lay blame at your feet for ordering during hot weather, but the company elected to ship the spider (on a date you do not seem to have specifically selected) during a time that defied its own terms for the animals (reptiles) it does set minimum and maximum temperatures for shipment coverage. That would seem, between it being above the temperature apex for coverage for animals they do guarantee and it being an animal they consider to be so sensitive that it is not even offered a guarantee due to their perception of its sensitivity, that they knowingly selected a date -in their own thought process- that would have a higher than average or more probable chance of failure (death).

When things are borderline, I try to take some extra care in packaging. When environmental parameters exceed my own sense of risk tolerance, like Kristi and many other sellers, I suspend the shipment until such time that things become acceptable for the safety of the animal during transit as I see them.

If we consider the terms, I do not see much to be done here other than taking your business elsewhere in the future and sharing this negative experience. However, the falsification of your communication in writing by the company has potential professional (reputation-based) repercussions and seems libelous to me (I am no attorney), so I would strongly urge you to talk to someone in the legal field for advice on how to address that. Especially if your employer offers any sort of legal assistance.
 
I cannot understand how Floridaherps thought the comments they made would be a good business decision. The rules are the rules, and refusing a refund is fine, but it would be a lot smarter to do it respectfully. I also think they were negligent for not including a cold pack. I certainly would have done so during hot weather. So while it's certainly up to them how they run their operation, the lack of ethics and professionalism shown far outweigh the fact that they didn't offer a refund.
 
Kristi23 said:
As a seller, it is my responsibility to check shipping temps and decide what is safe. I have in my tos that I don't ship when highs are above 90, too. I will never ship when I think the temps are bad, so I think it's horrible that they're blaming you for that if they picked the ship date. The entire e-mail exchange is enough to keep me from ever ordering from them. So what if you mentioned another company. To me it sounds like they may be a bit jealous of them, but that's just the vibe I get. It's their responsibility to ship when conditions are safe. If they were not, they should have contacted you and said they needed to wait. I've waited for months for packages and have customers who wait all the time. If they won't wait, I refund their money. Animal safety should come first.

I'm sorry you had to deal with this and I'm sorry for the spider.
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Thanks. I had to wait three months for a Cuban false chameleon because the woman who was selling them was in Minnesota and it was the middle of winter. I completely understood her position and appreciated her concern for the animal. Some people in this business are in it for the money, nothing more. And that is very obvious with FloridaHerps.
 
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