I wasn't going to post on this thread, but now I see Joe selling elsewhere and STILL ignoring Rich's thread here. That's enough of a slap to someone I respect (I mean Hume, of course) to make me finally post in his favor, too. I've got some animals originally produced by Hume, and they are excellent feeders with perfect growth rates!
********************
Well, it looks like Joe is out there selling snakes. This was posted on another board (
http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69280):
Joe Pierce you're looking for? Why he's right here:
http://www.reptileauctions.com/Corn-Snake-2007-beauty,itemname,100428,id,auctiondetails
here:
http://www.reptileauctions.com/100427,id,auctiondetails
and here:
http://www.reptileauctions.com/100455,id,auctiondetails
....and here is the post alluded to in the first link where he had a load go sour, so he apparently stopped answering her attempts to contact him, too:
http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41891
********************
As far me, I had been reluctant to buy from Joe for years. He's been around the snake selling business for a long time, but he seems to get out there and well known, and then he almost disappears and you wonder if he stopped breeding snakes. It never seemed this obvious before the internet because people always lost touch of each other for a while just by missing a show or, too. So, Joe may just be taking a break and plan to come back strong in a couple of years. I hope people don't forget about this stuff if he does try to come back later - at least not until Joe takes care of all of his other debts first. Anyway, I was reluctant to buy from him because of some of the problems my friends had with him (practically unable to get deposits returned when Joe didn't produce the promised snakes), babies with slightly deformed heads, and other
rumors that I can't substantiate so I won't place here.
I did finally make a purchase with Joe once. I paid via paypal so there was no accidental charges or lost payments, I only purchased animals ready to sell so I didn't have to risk a deposit hassle, and I called him to discuss the hatchlings. This was back in April 2007, so the babies should have been a couple of months old. I was ordering something like 8 snakes, and the total was just under $600. All I wanted to know was how large were the snakes I was going to buy. Since many large breeders - and we've already read about some of the problem's with Joe's hatchlings - feed their neonates too infrequently for actual growth, I wanted to make sure that these were not like that. I explained to Joe that if these were small snakes still eating small pinks, I did not want them. I explained that I would rather wait a couple months an buy new hatchlings than get older animals that were the same size as hatchlings. He assured me that these were much larger than hatchlings. He did warn me that a couple of the babies were late double clutches, but that the rest had substantial growth on them: they were supposedly feeding on large pinks and maybe even a couple on peach.
We'll, two things went wrong from there:
1. The animals all arrived live, but it looks like he fed most of them RIGHT before he shipped them. Two or three puked in the cup during shipping, and a couple puked during the following 24 hours. It looked like 2 weren't fed before shipping, and all but one of the others puked their meal on me.
Could he make a more novice mistake?
2. The size of the snakes were horribly misrepresented on the phone. The smallest three were basically hatchlings size - NO growth at all even if they were late clutches (remember - this was in April and these were 2007 babies). They had to eat zero day old pinks for a few weeks do to size and the regurgitation during shipping. It took a while for them to become established feeders. The others couldn't accept large pinks - they'd have puked it if they tried to eat it. All of these snakes arrived feeding on pinks to SMALL pinks in size, only. I have always regretted not getting his size misrepresentation in an email.
In conclusion, I contacted Joe about the regurgitation, and all his reply was "they have a 30 day guarantee." Well, that's NOT THE POINT. This was such a beginner shipping error - especially when I let HIM pick the day to ship so that this wouldn't be a factor! - that it shouldn't have happened, anyway. I just ignored the size discrepancy. Joe knew he did it, so me making a scene wouldn't have changed anything. The feeding/shipping/puking this is what upset me enough to promise to
never buy from Joe Pierce again. We all know how a regurg in a small snake can set backs its growth for a long time. They DID all live - and they are all still alive - but 3 of them grew slow and 2 of them grew horribly slow. Matter of fact, 1 of those has such horrible growth that I can't even sell it today and feel good about it. I'd just be passing on a problem to someone else! Two of them did take off (coincidentally, the two he didn't feed prior to shipping) and do fairly well.
REPEAT - All of them lived, so nobody can claim I got snakes that died during this transaction. I don't want it to sound any worse than it actually was.
All of these more of a hassle than an good addition, and that is all that Joe's "30 day guarantee" got me! For the record, I never contacted him again after he told me there was a 30 day guarantee and ignored the problems with the regurg during shipping. I felt I had nothing more to say at the time. I had the snakes - what they were, anyway - and he had my money. The deal was done.
He seemed like a great guy on the phone. I actually enjoyed a ~30 minute conversation with him. He did repeat some parts of our discussion in a forum later by twisting around the words I said on the phone into a new meaning completely (I assumed it was accidental and a misunderstanding - nothing insidious implied here), so I do
recommend that people try to conduct business with Joe via email ONLY so you can maintain a written record of the transactions. That's always good advice with any seller, anyway.
Thanks,
KJ
