The ad was for a "low white pied" which he had priced at only $2000! I was very excited and decided to change my original plan because this deal was too good to be true. Of course, it turns out that this deal was in fact too good to be true...
I sent carson the money and he sent me the snake via DHL. When I got the snake I decided to take some pictures and send it to some other breeders and sure enough they told me that I had been scammed! I did not have a pied in my possession but rather a spectacular ringer. I'd post a picture but I don't know how. Basically he has a solid white ring that's about 1 inch by 1 inch that circumvents his body. He looks very similar to the ringer in NERDs book.
So, I had just spent $2000 on a snake that is not worth more than a few hundred dollars, if that. Needless to say I was very upset! I tried calling Carson, emailing Carson, responding to his other ads and I did not hear anything from him. I contacted my local police station but because I had very little information on Mr. Phelps there was little I could do. $2000 is a lot of money in my mind but apparently it would have cost me several times that in order to hire a private investigator and to pay my legal fees if I ended up tracking Carson down and bringing him to court. Since I cannot really afford to pay these costs, I decided to chalk this experience up to a very expensive "lesson learned."
Then about a month ago I get a call during dinner from a collection agency. Apparently Carson sent the snake to me COD even though we agreed that the $2000 included shipping costs. As it turns out DHL screwed up and never contacted me about this outstanding debt and as a result they turned over the debt to a collection agency. DHL and the collection agency advised me to pay the debt because these types of "scammers" were impossible to track down and that my credit score would be hurt even more if I didn't pay it immediately. So, I decided to pay the bill.
To summarize, I am out several hundred dollars on a misrepresented snake, I had to pay shipping costs even though he was supposed to, my credit score was damaged as a result, and I still have not heard from Carson in over 7 months. In retrospect I should have been more knowledgeable about ringers but to be perfectly honest I did not know that ringers could look so much like low-white pieds to the untrained eye. Additionally, I should have been more suspicious of a $2000 pied for sale when every other male pied was at least $4000. Now I know better and never again will I be scammed by someone in this industry!
