I don't know, the more I read on this subject on different forums, the more
I've been detecting the attitude that 'well it's a good thing that Wes is
getting rid of Joe, because Wes is really a good guy' Is Wes REALLY a good guy?
I had a deal with MKR a number of years ago. I posted my experience on RDR's
forum, I've copied it here because I don't want to do all that typing again.
The following is my PERSONAL experience, not hearsay.
A little over 3 years ago in the Winter of '02 when Joe and Wes were
just getting their business together. I responded to an ad to see
what kind of a price I could get on a male pastel. I talked to Joe
and discussed prices for a while and we came up with a price that
I thought was a really good deal. Joe then got me in touch with Wes
to complete the order. I paid a couple hundred dollars with the balance
due when they produced and were ready to ship the snake. I was putting
down a deposit on a snake that hadn't been produced yet. Well, several
months went by and I never heard another word from either of them.
Sometime in the spring of '03 I started calling Wes regularily to check
up on my snake. He's a very outgoing and friendly person so he was real
easy to talk to. One time I'd call him up and he'd tell me that breeding
was going well and he'd go into a lot of detail about all of his old
females that he had had for many years as imports from africa and how
his male pastel was a super breeder that was breeding everything in sight.
The next time I would call him he'd be saying that he was getting lots
and lots of eggs and how this was going to be a banner year for pastels.
He always went into a great deal of detail during these converstaions,
a lot of our converstaions went over an hour. The next time I'd call
he'd be telling me how they had lots of pastels hatching everyday and
how they had already picked out mine and were just waiting for it to
shed and feed. So I sent the balance of the money I owed them for the
snake and waited for shipping details.
Sometime during that time in the summer of '03 I was in Ralphs chat
room one night talking to Damien Wyatt. I was telling Wyatt about
my upcoming shipment from Morph king and I was frustrated that it
was taking so long. He told me that he had just sold several pastels
to Morph King himself, I believe it was even a couple of clutches worth.
He posted some pics of the clutches he hatched which all looked very
nice and we agreed (in kind of a joking way) that wouldn't it be ironic
if I actually got one of the pastels that Wyatt produced?
I called Wes a couple more times after that and he assured me that
they would ship as soon as they got the snake feeding and that I'd
be very happy with my purchase. Well sometime in August of '03 I got
my snake, several MONTHS after I had sent the final payment. I WAS
very happy with it. It was a beautiful animal with lots of blushing.
So I took a picture of it and posted it on Kingsnake. Shortly after
that Wyatt posted another pic saying that his snake looked similar.
IT WAS THE EXACT SAME SNAKE. One that HE had hatched and sold to
Morph King. At this point I was feeling rather confused and betrayed,
here was this guy that I had been talking to for months and feeling
really confident that I was getting a great snake from good strong
bloodlines that they had produced themselves. And then finding out
that he's jobbing me a snake produced by another breeder? I was pretty
angry about it at the time, I felt like I had been played for a fool.
Wes DID call me up and apologize when he saw the thread on KS, He gave
me some story about the lables getting mixed up, which I suppose could
happen. And it was good of him to call and apologize like that, but
I've always just felt 'funny' about it ever since.
Maybe I'm being too harsh, after all I did get a good snake at a great
price even if they didn't produce it themselves, as Ralphs has pointed
out before, a lot of breeders are also jobbers. What do you think happens
to all those trade deals that people set up? This year that snake helped
me produce 17 pastels of my own. But the whole deal just left me feeling
kind of funny and I've never bought anything from them since.
In my whole deal with them, I spoke to Joe for less then a couple of minutes
while I was on the phone with Wes for hours. So YOU TELL ME, Did Wes just make a mistake?
or did he get caught in a lie? Frankly, while I would prefer to buy direct from the
breeder, I don't mind purchasing an animal produced by someone else. I've done it
many times and will probably do it many more. But I DO expect people to be straight
with me about where the animal came from. I know there have been many accusations
that they have been buying up animals from other breeders and selling them as
their own. My experience is proof that they have done it at least once before.