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Possible bad Guy Alex L. Smith?

Let me get this stright......you don't know where the snake is??? It *might* have been shipped? Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture? Did it occur to you that maybe because he did not receive the snake that he canceled the check? Perhaps you should be more aware of the location of your snakes.
 
DAVID, how do you

cancel a check with a bank if your overdrawn...........the answer is you cannot!! Therefore the check came back NFS which means insufficient funds..................TWICE. so even if he did not receive the snake, dont you think a phone call should have been made? Is that to much to ask for. After all, would you not contact me if you did not receive my shipment. Of course you would. You would also contact me if for nothing else and say. "dont deposit the check" ..........common sense has to rule here.
 
in this day and age it is next to immpossable to write a bad check with out knowing it.
Click to expand...

Vince, I'm glad that you live in utopia. I certainly don't. Let me see.. I have bounced a few checks in my life. I tend to remember these things....

Once I had my purse stolen, I had to cancel the account and get a new one. The theif wrote a check on my account, and the check bounced.

Another time I was ordering some school books online... $215 worth. I got one of those error pages that said "Sorry, your order cannot be processed at this time" So I drove down and bought the books in person. Several days later I received the OTHER books in the mail, the ones I didn't order... looked at my account and it was blitzo... half a dozen bounced checks, half a dozen bounced check fees, my paycheck had paid into the account, the mortgage had come out (luckily while there was sufficient funds) and the result was even MORE bounced checks, even MORE fees, several of which were the original bounced checks, being resubmitted. It was a month or two and a LOT of money later before it was cleared up.

So Vince, please, don't make such broad and all-encompassing statements. Plus I don't see what about "this day and age" makes it impossible to bounce a check?

As far as this particular thread is concerned, it seems that we should all withhold opinions until the shipping record is unearthed.
 
David you have to realize that this is over a month ago. I'm not a hobbiest, I do this for a living. Have for 25 years. When you do this for a living your not making much money if you can remember every specimen you shipped out over the course of a month. I simply have to double check my packing slips to verify wether he did indeed get the boa. When you have 400 plus specimens at any given time you can miss something. The other point is that the check was NSF 2 TIMES not canceled! I'm not going to repeat myself on the facts they can be seen in the previous posts. Now.....Not saying this is the senario but, someone could send out a check... talk the person into sending it before it clears and know that it will not be any good.... Hoping that they get the snake before it's found out that the check is no good. When they find that they did not get the snake they might be "embarrased" and not wish to talk to the person because they have been found out..... It may not be the case but, it points to that because there were no replies for over a month until this. Even if it does come up that a mistake was made on my part as to shipping a bad check was still written and no attempt was made to confirm the order or let me know the check was no good. Completely different scenario.............Thanks Jerry and again this just seems to be an odd explanation? Now if this were not the case at least Alex should have contacted me on his attempt to pass this check and the circumstance behind it. In thinking about this I felt bad for posting however, even if someone did not get a specimen but, did attempt to purchase one with a bad check I would want to know about it? Just means they should pay with, credit card, money order , cashiers check or paypal.....Does this make Alex a bad guy? I'm still not sure.. Just points to it because of how it was handled. If he didn't get the snake why would he not call and ask when it was shipping? If he made an honest mistake or something happened why not call and say "hey, I just found out that check didn't clear and wanted to let you know to redeposit it" How about, Just had something happen and that check won't be good a second time I'm going to have to cancel, sorry"
 
I agree things can happen... as Shasheena stated. I would however hoped that after the first time it bounced I would get a call or an attempt were made to make it good. Or last but, not least cancel the order. I will verify tomorrow if he did indeed get the specimen... If not then the only issue is the attempt to pass the check and the question why? I do also have fees incured that my bank charged but they are a drop in the bucket so to speak. I'm not concerned about them. I would just be shy about taking a personal check.......I just would like a valid explanation which can be handled via personal communication if Alex would like to handle it that way.
 
I AGREE

David you have to realize that this is over a month ago. I'm not a hobbiest, I do this for a living. Have for 25 years. When you do this for a living your not making much money if you can remember every specimen you shipped out over the course of a month. I simply have to double check my packing slips to verify wether he did indeed get the boa. When you have 400 plus specimens at any given time you can miss something.
Click to expand...

Got to agree with you Ray, you just can't remember that much. If you can, PLEASE let me know what vitamins your taking... cause I want some of those too! LOL

Ray, it sounds to me like your dealing with a flake or something happened that was unexpected on the buyers part.

in this day and age it is next to immpossable to write a bad check with out knowing it.
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What a load of you know what!
 
HEY FOLKS, when you are NFS

the bank notifys you, as well as being charged for 2 bounced checks. Certainly within a month someone has to open their mail dont they?

Their is no justification, because you are responsible for your own cash flow. If the check writer has bounced these checks, you can be assured that others have bounced as well! Unless the writer only wrote 2 checks that entire month, and I doubt that !
 
While I can understand that with the large volume of animals you deal with, if you cannot keep tabs on all of them perhaps you should scale your volume down a bit. IMO, quality not quantity is the way to go.
 
I know this is sort of off topic, but it is regarding the person this thread is about. For what its worth, I bought three Ball pythons from Alex Smith awhile back (last September). I was VERY VERY dissappointed with how they were shipped. They were shipped in a TINY flimsy box that barely crammed them in, with NO insulation, heat packs, etc. I was afraid to even open the box. When I did, three heads came popping out. They weren't in baggies, or protected in any way. Needless to say, they were cold but alive and healthy. I wasn't dissappointed with the animals, just the shipping. And that right there would cause me to never do business with this man again. It's a package deal to successfully sell animals.

Jennifer
 
I don't deal in animals but keep the billing straight for my husbands business, let me tell you it is not easy to keep everything staight in your head.
If you have 400 transactions over a peroid of time you would have to be a computer brain to know the details of them all w/out looking it up.
Hopefully for both of your sakes it will all be straightened out!
Rhoda Allen
 
QUALITY

IMO, quality not quantity is the way to go.
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Ray deals in quality.. David, are you questioning the quality?

Even big business makes mistakes with accounting etc. I'd hardly call one incident a reason to downsize.
 
Sasheena said:
Vince, I'm glad that you live in utopia. I certainly don't. Let me see.. I have bounced a few checks in my life. I tend to remember these things....

Once I had my purse stolen, I had to cancel the account and get a new one. The theif wrote a check on my account, and the check bounced.

Another time I was ordering some school books online... $215 worth. I got one of those error pages that said "Sorry, your order cannot be processed at this time" So I drove down and bought the books in person. Several days later I received the OTHER books in the mail, the ones I didn't order... looked at my account and it was blitzo... half a dozen bounced checks, half a dozen bounced check fees, my paycheck had paid into the account, the mortgage had come out (luckily while there was sufficient funds) and the result was even MORE bounced checks, even MORE fees, several of which were the original bounced checks, being resubmitted. It was a month or two and a LOT of money later before it was cleared up.

So Vince, please, don't make such broad and all-encompassing statements. Plus I don't see what about "this day and age" makes it impossible to bounce a check?

As far as this particular thread is concerned, it seems that we should all withhold opinions until the shipping record is unearthed.
Click to expand...

both those situations are nothing like writeing a check for a snake and sending it to someone. its not buying something online , or have to do with theft. if someone wrties a check they should know how much is in there account
 
David, I do make accounting mistakes, I do on occasion make inventory mistakes, I work 16-17 hours per day, I ship quite a few specimens but, I can tell you the last time an animal ate or the last time it was sick, the last time it bred, what the last fecal was, the last time it shed , the locality data, etc. etc. On top of caring just for my collection and what I sell... I conduct 3-6 educational programs per month, hold a reptile clinic twice per month, arrange meetings for the local Herpetological Society(Of which I'm the President), run a reptile rescue, on call for three counties for nusiance wildlfe, conduct field studies etc. So, yes I do make mistakes. On top of that I'm not well versed in regards to computers which i've had some problems with. However, I do pride myself on one thing... selling quality honestly represented specimens. I you want to say i'm a bad businessman when it comes to bookeeping that is fine and I will agree with you. If you want to say that I have mixed shipments up and shipped them to the opposite people that's fine too I've done it!!! LOL's! However, you do not stay in business for long burning people or selling garbage.
 
i still stand by that if you arent responsable to know how much is in your account b4 you write a check, then you should not have a check book.
 
CHECK

i still stand by that if you arent responsable to know how much is in your account b4 you write a check, then you should not have a check book.
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I agree, but things happen! My wife and I wrote a check for our daughter's school ring... and it was not cheap either. Several months went by and it was not cashed. We didn't know what was going on, they didn't know what to tell us. Then 6 months later it suddenly clears.... Several hundred dollars... by then we'd forgotten all about it. It didn't bounce, but was a close one!
 
you both have good points, but you have to admitt your situations are totaly differnt from what happend, if you sat down and wrote someone a check, knowing it was going to be cashed befor you even got the thing you where paying for , would you not make sure the money was there? plus the fact that it went back and forth to the bank two times, and that person was trying to get ahold of you. why would you not talk to the seller? i dont know, i guess things like this happen all the time in this bussiness
 
Vince, I realize that the situation with Alex is different from the examples that I and another person posted on here. You have to understand that they are both in response to YOUR all-encompassing statement that "in this day and age" people have no excuse for not keeping track of the money in their account. In the one experience I shared with you I wrote checks and the Money wasn't in the bank. You have this tendency to come up with these absolute statements that are full of a self righteousness and have very little constructive to do with the thread.

I believe that Alex and Ray have something to work out. No question about this. I also believe it will BE worked out... either satisfactorily for both parties, or with one or both parties unhappy, and the truth will be out here for all to see.

As far as keeping records you know what? When one of my 130+ students comes to me to ask for their grade I have to look it up. Does that mean I shouldn't be a high school teacher? Nope... There is a reason for there to be records... so that you don't have to keep everything in your head. Ray has said he would have to access the records, but did not at the moment have access to them.
 
i dont know, i still think its very hard to not know how much money you have b4 you write a check, i meen all the info you need is in the same little book that you have to opean to write the check in the first place
 
SASHEENA, what kind of an excuse

could you provide if the check was written with full knowledge that the funds were not their to begin with!

That can be very easily proven by his bank statement. After all the writer has to bear some responsibility ........... Robert, here is what I would do. Go to your bank and have the check protested. The bank will at that point take the NFS check and and forward the legal instrument to the bank on the check for payment, which I am sure no funds will be available. But this time because the check is being protested, the bank will have to provide proof that the monies were not their before the date of the check. That sets up the crime of fraud. Now depending upon how much the check is valued for, you have several options opened which I will not persue here, but let me assure you since the writer seems to have some support on this thread. Let him put the money in his account and make the check good. Hows that for a simple alternative!
 
Jerry, I am NOT arguing that it appears that something was BAD with Alex's check... whatever the circumstances (whether there was something that happened that unexpectedly impacted his funds, or whether he wrote a bad check knowingly) The ONLY argument I'm having is with Vince's GLIB statement that there is no excuse for not knowing how much money is in your bank account. ACCIDENTS do happen. I wrote several checks (even one for a snake, but luckily that one barely cleared along with the mortgage). The money wasn't there. IT CAN HAPPEN. But I did not do it knowingly. If someone did do that knowingly... with the intention of never honoring the check, then that person is a BAD person. But I don't believe that it is possible to categorically state that all people who don't know what is in their checking account are bad guys. Heck, I never knew how much was in my account... it was great when I got married... I gave up my checking book and never more was subject to the delusion that just because I had checks I should have money (J/K).
 
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