I had a deal with Jerry Conway a few years ago for a pair of his Isabel's...while I can't say the deal went "bad", I didn't quite get what we agreed upon.
I contacted Jerry in early January of 2005 about a pair of Isabel's from his latest birthing. He informed me that I was the first person to contact him, so I would be getting choice pick (though he would be the one doing the picking obviously). I had one request, and that was that the snakes were to be feeding on pinky mice. Baby Candoia are partial to frogs and small lizards in the wild, and appropriately sized food items were not easily available to me. Jerry assured me that it would be no problem.
He didn't want to ship in January because of the cold weather and the fact he doesn't like to use heat packs, so it was around late March or April before he shipped the snake. This was fine with me as I figured it would give him time to switch them over.
I got the snakes in April, and they looked great. I tried feeding them live pinkies a few days later to no avail. Long story short, after numerous attempts at feeding them rodents, it became clear these guys had absolutely no interest in anything mammalian. I contacted Conway, and he offered to sell me cricket frogs at $2 a piece, plus shipping (40 bucks). Fortunately, I found an add on KS from someone close to Conway who was selling them for 50 cents a piece.
I received the frogs, and after around a month, had 2 f/t pinky feeding Isabels.
I find it hard to believe that Conway, a self-described Candoia guru, couldn't succeed in switching a pair of boas in 3 months when I was able to do it in less than one using scenting. My guess is he never even tried. Had he told me he was unwilling to do this for me, I would have just requested some cricket frogs along with the snakes, instead of him trying to con me into buying some from him at an exorbitant price.
Regardless, Jerry had a pretty good reputation back then, and I didn't want to start a whole mess over it...but since he's apparently been doing some ethically questionable things as of late, I figured I'd share my experience with him.