Bad Guy Matt Oakley

[EastCoastReptiles171]

The point is, if you order acertain size, that is what you should get, regaardless of who the vendor is. When I order, I have specific needs, and I order accordingly. 1 large rat and 10 pinkie mice may weigh the same as 100 hoppers, but they aren't the same thing. They would be useless as feeders if you needed hoppers. That's what matters.

Like the last comment this has no relavence to the situation at hand, you took this scenario took it to the extreme making it no where near what happend and then compared it. I didn't send Craig 1 large rat instead of 100 hoppers or anything like that. Also, he said he used them so they weren't useless.

 

[EastCoastReptiles171]

Like I said before the bags did not even meat his average, which like has already been said averaging them out is a joke. He even admits to shipping the mice smaller then stated and has refused to do anything for me. Plain and simple he is not a reliable source for rodents and I can not imagine buying anything that costs over $1.75 from him. I did feed his "XL rats" to my 08 balls, tomorrow I will probably feed 6 of them to one of my large female balls just so I can post in the ball python forum on kingsnake, listen to people laugh at them being XL rats, I will also weigh the rats before hand, I am pretty sure out of what I have left I have atleast 6 that are under 130 grams.They must have lost weight in shipping lol. Plain and simple he did not deliver what was promised and has said he has no intention to do anything about it. PLEASE anyone considering doing business with him stop and really think about it, there are other suppliers that will do a much better job. Do not do business with him, when his best testimonials include shorting people that should be a clue. I wish I had not done business with him, don't make the same mistake I did.

For one, I never said that I sent you smaller mice nor did I refuse to do anything for you. We talked for 3 mins where I explained to you the process in which I chose the rats. You never asked me for anything back. I was on my was to work when we talked and you posted this thread the same day, not even giving me time to do anything and trying to make me out to be a cheat, rip off, lier and ruin my business. If I was such a cheat why haven't I been kicked off of kingsnake (which i've been a mamber since 2004) and this the first complaint i've ever had on fauna (this is actually a question i'd like for you to answer as you seem to avoid answering every other question i've asked)?? I've never asked anyone to post any good guy post one here about me but have a lot. Obviously those people felt strong enough about our transaction to take the time to say how happy they were with me. So, for how small you said my rats were you feed your female balls 800g rats, right? Or are you just exagirating again when you said how small the rats were that I sent. Also, like I stated earlier everyone consider sizes to be different, I go by weight; 20 grams is 20 grams anywhere... Also, that's not the best testimonials i've gotten, just a couple of the more recent ones. The guy said I shorted him ONE MOUSE (which was refunded). Anyone can make a mistake and be off by one. You try to make that seem like such a big deal. if you were so perfect you would have seen that I sent you one extra mouse. This wasn't something important enough to say so I never did, big deal. And the only reason that part in on there is because i'm an honest person and took everything the guy said. If I was dishonest I definately would have deleted that part... And like already said, for the future i'll be sure to weigh each and every rodent I send someone.

I bought a snake from a very well known breeder 2 months and upon taking it out of the container noticed it had mites. I didn't get on fauna as soon as I got home and try to ruin him, I called him and let him know. You got on here and acted like I intensionally tried to cheat and rip you off which was definately not the case at all.

About 3 years ago, I bought 3 boas for over $500 from another well known breeder. When I got them all were extremely under weight. I didn't jump to conclusions, took pics called him and we resolved the situation amoungst ourselves. He even thanked me for not going on the net and trying to cause as much damage to him as possible.

 

[EastCoastReptiles171]

Matt, I have a lot of respect for the things you have done at such a young age. I hope you take this post as something constructive rather than an attack. I think you are missing some of the points being made by others, and you doing experiments is not going to change what you sent to Craig. You experiment took 176 rats, and 25 were not in the advertized range. 1 out of every 7 wasn't acceptable, in your own experiment. We aren't talking about just the rats that were under weight, but those over as well. Bigger is not always better. It is hard enough buying feeders that have a 75 gram window to feed to specific sized snakes, but when you offer a larger window with the feeders you actually ship, it makes some of the rats worthless. I am sure Craig has animals that can eat the larger feeders, but what if he didn't? For some keepers, if you sent a portion of the order over the advertised range, they would have a ton of feeders they couldn't, and wouldn't be able to use. Smaller feeders means that they may have to feed twice as much(which costs them more), or in the case that a snake wont eat multiple feeders the snake is fed a smaller meal than it needs to grow, or increases the frequency of having to be fed.The arguement that he shouldn't complain because some were over the weight doesn't work. I think that you owe him some kind of compensation, but that should be the two of you. How you handle this could shape your future. I urge you to think long and hard about what you think is right and come to a resolution.

The thing is most of the people who responded read this, took me as a cheat and did attack me. I have NEVER tried to cheat anyone. You are one of the few people who has approached this with a level head and offered advice. It's like arguing with someone or talking to someone, you never get any points accross by yelling and even if you do the other party is probably so pissed of they're not listening. And even with all of the attacks I did realize that there was room for error in my method and said I will fix it. I will now weigh every animal I send someone. I appreciate your responce and will send Craig a partial refund which we will decide on eventhough I still don't feel like I ripped him off, those were never my intensions.

 

[EastCoastReptiles171]

Matt, you are right about that. I have not seen your rodent room and I do not know how many rodents you produce. I left you positive feedback in March of 2008 for a transaction that took place in September of 2007. I based my assumption on two facts:

1. I came to your house to pick up the rodents. I did not see anything there besides a single rat rack and a chest freezer.

2. After that transaction, I saw you on more than one occasion buying large quantity from the rodent vendors at the Havre De Grace reptile show.

Based on these two observations, I assumed that you were a middleman. It is entirely possible that you have expanded your operation and you are now producing the bulk of what you sell, but I figured that this particular dispute over rodent sizes happened because you sold someone else's product.

I stand by my feedback regarding our sole transaction. The rodents you sold me were properly sized and fairly priced. I just figured that they didn't come from your single 4- or 5-tub rat rack.

Thanks Seth, but I have Greatly expanded since then and the one rack you saw was only one of 4 racks I owned at the time (they have 6 tubs). And since 2003 I have only bought rodents from 2 breeders who also breed their own animals.

 

[EastCoastReptiles171]

To clarify, my biggest problem with the SHIPPING AND BOXING was the loose rats, my biggest problem with the order was for sure the undersize animals, they were not what they were suppose to be end of story. EVERY bag of rats but one averaged below 150 grams per rat period, that is the low of your range. It is just a clear case of misrepresenting a product then making excuses after the fact. I tried to talk one on one with him and he basically said too bad. I can guarantee not 1 single rat was over 190 grams, none. I bought rats for adult boas and I fed rats to 6 month old ball pythons. He also hads admitted to knowingly shipping the XL mice smaller then the ad states.

For saying that every bag was under the 150g average weight you have to be lying (unless my scale is not accurate, which im sure it is). I weighed each bag before putting it into the box and all of them were over the minimum weight. That's the only reason I said anything about them thawing and loosing weight because I know that when I weighed them they were between the correct range. I wouldn't knowingly send you smaller rats than you asked for. Also, how can you guarantee that unless you weighed all of them and from what you said you fed most of them to your snakes the day you recieved them? I can't see being extremely dissatisfied with a product and still using it. As I said to Dave I will give you a partial refund which we will have to decide on. I don't say this because I feel like I have to because paypal doesn't offer buyer protection unless you have an address saved to your account which you didn't. I say this because I did take something from all of this and realized that I made a mistake, though not intensional, and am taking responsibility for it. But i'm sure you reached your goal of making as many people as possibly feel that set out to cheat you.

 

[EastCoastReptiles171]

Not true
I checked, a sealed bag, same weight yesterday frozen as they are today thawed, exactly the same.

Not after you drain the water from it which i'm sure you didn't do. Have you ever let a rat thaw and looked at what it thawed on?? I guarentee you it will be wet, causing it to weigh less than when it was frozen. I didn't respond for you to argue with me about it as I do see this happen at work EVERYDAY. Even customers a smart enough to ask for their items to be thawed before purchasing it...

 

[crotalusadamanteus]

That's not what I did, I packed these rats in the bags before Craig odered them. I didn't put some smaller ones in the bag and then some larger to average it out. When i'm packing the bags I only place like sized animals in each bag. You say this under the assumption that I throw all different sizes of rats in the same bag which I do not. I was referring to another customer that said I had shorted them one mouse when I said that I refunded them for it, not Craig.

Look, it's your own words that are indicative of you not weighing the rats individually, but rather a bulk of rats in a bag. Your very first response...

First off, thanks Craig for being honorable enough to send me the link to this page ( I didn't think you would). As I explained to you on the phone for any size rodents I take the minimum weight and the maximum weight of the size and multiply it by how many are in the bag. As long as the bag is within those limits, that's what I send. I wasn't going to weigh each of the 390 rodents I sent you. So yes, i'm sure some were under the minimum weight and some were over the max weight.

And again later on...

I weighed each of the bags of rats I sent you and all were above the minimum weight multiplied by the amount that I was in the bag.

So how is that assuming?

And I stand buy what I say. If you are going to run a business, and you advertise your rats to be of certain weights, then you need to weigh them to make sure you're sending what you advertise. I still think you owe him some compensation too.

People want what they pay for, Get used to the idea, and maybe you'll be around as long as you'd like to think.

 

[KJUN]

6% were smaller, and 8% were larger...

If true, why not just refund him 14% of the rodent price, 14% of the shipping costs, and be done with it? Heck, that would be cheaper than continuing this thread, eh? The BG post may have been premature (especially without evidence the rodents were actually undersized other than his word), but if any were off-sized, then his complaint is valid.

Have you ever let a rat thaw and looked at what it thawed on?? I guarentee you it will be wet, causing it to weigh less than when it was frozen.

Condensation from the air doesn't decrease the mass of a rodent defrosted in air. That's like saying a glass of coke LEAKS water because of the moisture on the outside of the glass. Sorry, but I'm not one of the guys thinking YOU are definitely in the wrong here because I haven't seen proof that the rodents were actually under-sized, but these "thawed rodents weight less" arguments aren't helping you at all, Matt. It's making you look like you are struggling for an excuse, and I don't think that is the look that you are trying to portray.
KJ

 

[TriangleReptiles]

Like the last comment this has no relavence to the situation at hand, you took this scenario took it to the extreme making it no where near what happend and then compared it. I didn't send Craig 1 large rat instead of 100 hoppers or anything like that. Also, he said he used them so they weren't useless.

My point is that rodents either bigger or smaller than ordered may very well be useless to the buyer. As the seller, it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to see to it that your rodents meet the specs that YOU advertised. I have no way of knowing what was shipped in this case, but your attitude seems to be that they averaged pretty close, so that is good enough. It may or may not be. In the future you would be wise to take a little more care and be a little more conscientious with your business dealings. I wish you all the best in your future dealings.

 

[ophidile]

Also, how can you guarantee that unless you weighed all of them and from what you said you fed most of them to your snakes the day you recieved them? I can't see being extremely dissatisfied with a product and still using it.

It would have been helpful if the OP recorded the weight of each bag before they got used. That said, even if I got unsatisfactorily small mice, I would certainly still use them. What else would I do, ship them back? The snakes will still eat them and I doubt you (or RodentPro, in my case) would want to pay for return shipping instead of just giving me some kind of break on the next order, or whatever.

Other than that, this is kinda down to he-said-he-said. I don't see any reason why Craig would lie, but so far Matt claims the worst of the problem (most of the bags being under the min weight) is not true.

... anyone have any idea how large scale rodent breeders make sure all their rodents are within the same weight window? I sort of assumed they kept litters of the same age together, found one or a few that were within the range, then used that whole litter/section. Probably weight the bags too to double-check. ??

 

[EastCoastReptiles171]

If true, why not just refund him 14% of the rodent price, 14% of the shipping costs, and be done with it? Heck, that would be cheaper than continuing this thread, eh? The BG post may have been premature (especially without evidence the rodents were actually undersized other than his word), but if any were off-sized, then his complaint is valid.



Condensation from the air doesn't decrease the mass of a rodent defrosted in air. That's like saying a glass of coke LEAKS water because of the moisture on the outside of the glass. Sorry, but I'm not one of the guys thinking YOU are definitely in the wrong here because I haven't seen proof that the rodents were actually under-sized, but these "thawed rodents weight less" arguments aren't helping you at all, Matt. It's making you look like you are struggling for an excuse, and I don't think that is the look that you are trying to portray.
KJ

I was explaining why I said that, not continuing the argument. I also, said in my last reply that I realized I had room for erroe and will fix this.
thanks,
Matt

 

[Casey Hulse]

Quote:

Not true
I checked, a sealed bag, same weight yesterday frozen as they are today thawed, exactly the same.

Not after you drain the water from it which i'm sure you didn't do. Have you ever let a rat thaw and looked at what it thawed on?? I guarentee you it will be wet, causing it to weigh less than when it was frozen. I didn't respond for you to argue with me about it as I do see this happen at work EVERYDAY. Even customers a smart enough to ask for their items to be thawed before purchasing it...

Hey Matt, The shrimp are misted with water then flash frozen when processed.
The shrimp do not change weight.
You are talking in circles.......

 

[craig kade]

Here is a quick copy of the last email I had with him after I told him the rats were small, 1 bag of rats did average over the 150 gram each mark, barely. I do have some of the rats left and will weigh them. I have been busy buying a new house here is the email regarding the undersize mice. I did not wait to post here because he gave me no indication he had any intention of doing anything at all for me. I have dealt with dishonest people before and in my experience when they say it is not their problem they never do anything for you. Also he states that the weaned mice were larger then they were stated in his ad, not true, unless when I ordered weaned he thought I meant pinkie mice.


All of the 150 "weaned" mice I sent you were larger than my ad states. I sent you the largest mice I had at the time. Shipping also costed me about $20 more than what I charged you. From our conversation, i'm guessing that you didn't read my ad before sending me your order.


-----Original Message-----
From: Craig Kade <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Fri, 30 Jan 2009 4:17 pm
Subject: Re: Rodent order


the extra large mice were also small, the bag weighed 2479 grams your ad states large mice are suppose to be 30-39 grams. If you are goingf to rip people off you may want to stop sending through the mail, it is called mail fraud and although they probably won't investigate one complaint, after they get a couple they may.

 

[Cat_72]

Not after you drain the water from it which i'm sure you didn't do. Have you ever let a rat thaw and looked at what it thawed on?? I guarentee you it will be wet, causing it to weigh less than when it was frozen. I didn't respond for you to argue with me about it as I do see this happen at work EVERYDAY. Even customers a smart enough to ask for their items to be thawed before purchasing it...

Rats are not frozen (or shouldn't be, do you coat yours in ice before packaging?) the same way as shrimp. When I pull rats out of a fresh bag from Big Cheese, the rats are DRY. There is no ice, no moisture whatsoever on the outside of the rats, therefore....nothing to melt and no reason the weight should change. If an item is weighed with a layer of ice covering the outside, of course it is going to weigh differently. No sensible comparison between the two methods.

 

[SerpentCreations]

"I did this experiment to see what I would get myself instead of asking Craig because I really wouldn't believe the number he would say. I think that if most or even a large number of the rats were under the minimum weight he would have stated exactly how many of them were."


I told myself that I was going to stay out of this disagreement between the two of you, however, this is getting ridicoulus. For you to say that you would not believe Craig and that he is exaggerating on the size of the rats that you sent him. Has anyone ever told you that in running a business, you have to deal with customers and customer satisfaction if you want to succeed. Craig would not lie about the size or the number of rats that were under your minimum weight for XL rats of your standards. Trust me, sometimes he is way too honest and blunt in my opinion (which is not a bad quality) but he would not waste his time on this forum all day long, nor would he have posted a bad guy thread on here, if he did not feel he had been cheated. (and I feel the exact same way seeing the rodents myself and knowing the size of snakes that Craig has to feed) I did see the size of your so called "XL" rats and it amazes me that someone in the reptile industry would for one, be able to call those XL rats (I just purchased some medium rats from a local reptile show and my rats were larger than some of Craigs) and for two not realize that including different size rats in a bag and averaging it out is not the way that rodents should be sold. In our case, yes Craig was able to feed the rats off because of the varying sizes of snakes that he has, however the large boas got an appetizer instead of a meal. But what if this had been a customer that was just buying extra rats to keep in a freezer to feed his 3 or 4 boas that were approximately the same size, he would have never been able to feed the ones that were too large without putting potential harm to his snakes. Also you stated yourself that you did not put the weight of the bag into consideration, you state that you weigh your rats in the bags and then take an average weight, most of your bags of rats were under 130g, did you also take into consideration that the bag itself weights 30g?? I do work in a customer service setting and the customer may not always be right in your opinion, however, you want to try to satisfy as many of your customers as you can so that you build a relationship and create repeat business. Craig is not a hard person to deal with, and you also state that he did not even give you a chance to respond to his dissatisfaction, but he did call you and express to you that he felt you shorted him and that he felt like he was ripped off and you told him that you were not going to do anything about it, what was he suppose to do? Wait a few days to see if you would change your mind? You were not receptive to working anything out with him, just real short and positive that you felt you had not mislead him in anyway. If I were in Craigs shoes, I would have felt ripped off as well with what was sent and what was advertised in your ad. Even if you don't change your guidelines of your rodent sizes, you should at least inform customers how you pack and ship your rodents and warn them they they will not be relative in size. And in my personal opinion, which may not mean much, the reason that the rodents that were not in bags and in the box loose, those probably thawed out because they did not have any insulation around them what so ever (I.E. a bag) and because the box that you shipped the rodents in was a banana box, which had holes in it, allowing the frozen rodents to have constant air flow throughout the box, which probably helped the rodents to thaw out in the change in temperatures and climates during shipping.

 

[mikeyt]

Hello, I am another one who sits back and reads all of these forums and chooses to never get involved, but I have been following this thread and it seems to me that from the beginning this should have been an open and closed case, and there wouldnt have to be pages of discussion. The customer did not get what he ordered, and therefore should have some sort of compensation. This reminds me of a situation a few years back when I ordered a small sausage pizza from my local pizza shop, and when it arrived it was a large mushroom. The delivery guy thought I should be grateful since I only paid for a small. I said, I dont eat mushroom, and its not what I ordered. Why should any customer in any situation, in any business be forced to accept services or products (regardless of more or lesser value) if it is not what they originally requested. The entire point of ordering anything specific is based on need.

 

[EastCoastReptiles171]

I don't see any reason why Craig would lie, but so far Matt claims the worst of the problem (most of the bags being under the min weight) is not true.

I didn't want to strait out call Craig a liar because that was a strong thing to say about him character but now I have the evidence:


Honestly, I was planning on giving Craig a partial refund to fix my mistake with the rats and not ad anymore to this conversation. So, I e-mailed Craig to see how much he wanted back. Here's our conversation:


From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2009 8:27 AM

What do you want back?
thanks,
Matt



From: Craig Kade <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 7:20 am

$75 sound fair?



From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 1:12 PM

How do you come up with that figure? I figured a quater off of every rats as if every one of them was undersized. Since this was not the case I figured that would have been more than fair.



From: Craig Kade <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Mon, 9 Feb 2009 2:53 pm

So are you saying $35 is fair?



From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 3:24 PM

I was going to say $50 which I think is more than fair.



From: Craig Kade <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wed, 12 Feb 2009 11:24 pm

no don't worry about it, it is worth more then that for me to say that it was never taken care of.

If Craig was so concerned about fixing the problem it wouldn't have taken him so long to e-mail me back as I did the same day he e-mailed me. If he wasn't just out to make me look as bad as possible he wouldn't have said that he'd rather I keep the money so he can continue to run my name through the mud and say that I never attempted to resolve the problem...

To me his motivation to writing the post in the first place was to "screw me back" not resolve the problem.

Can you honestly say that if you were in the same situation and the seller is obviously trying to fix the problem that you would have said the same thing?? I know I wouldn't...

 

[crotalusadamanteus]

How about it craig? This is about trying to fix mistakes after all, not for vendetta type threads. If what he's saying is true, it don't really make you look any better IMO.

 

[craig kade]

He asked what I wanted I told him and he did not like it, I will not deny any of the emails, they look accurate, if anybody wants to send me their money, have me rip them off and offer a 13 percent refund and call it good, great. I will offer purple elephants at $1000, send you a white mouse and offer you $150 back. Plain and simple if you want what you order do not order from this guy, period. I think I have made my point if I am lying because I am to busy to reply to his email as quick as he would like then my bad. I took his pitiful offer as an insult and almost did not reply at all, then I decided I would send him an answer. If I ripped a customer off and they said that 18% refund or whatever was fair I would have had them the money instantly, not counter offer. Plain and simple he admits shorting me and admits he was wrong. What is $50, nothing, $25 more from him and we would not even be having this conversation. If I was trying to make a future of this I would, and do, try to make my customers happy. So if after reading this you still want to do business with him great, let me know how those "hets" prove out or what "healthy " means. If he ships you a dead animal he will probably offer you a 13% refund. Or if you order a boa and get a ball, 13% refund. He asked what I wanted I told him, he did not like it. I really wanted my order shipped right but figured $75 would get me rats from a real supplier.I guess I will just say, if you still do business with him and have a problem please email me so I can send you a big fat I told you so. I still need to go get rats from a supplier that ships what they advertise. Sorry if I did not answer this soon enough. I will be adding to this thread whenever I get a minute just to keep it fresh. Good day. Craig Kade

 

[craig kade]

Just to add, he says it best "screw me back" as in yes I did get screwed by Matt in the first place, well put you are right. Sucks when people voice how they got screwed and actually do not like it. I never said he never tried to resolve it, he did after I posted here, just did a piss poor job of it in my opinion.