• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

Price Fixing by Kingsnake Moderators

I got banned from KS recently because I told the moderators how I felt about them in a post called "MODERATORS". I was sick of them deleting and tampering with my posts and refusing to explain why. Needless to say they didnt see the humor in it...

Anyhow, I think you should be able to sell those balls for a penny if you want and who the hell are they to say you can't. Thats capitalism.
 
Wilomn said:
Jeffy's got some splaining to dooooo.
Click to expand...

Jeff Barringer has very little to do with the day to day operations at Kingsnake.

After a long, self-imposed banishment from Kingsnake, (I was fed up with the censorship on the forums) I decided to give it one more try several months ago. I had begun collaborating with several individuals on the Kingsnake Boa Forum to get the information needed to start www.boagenetics.com.

When the basics of the site were in place, I made a simple post on the boa forum there announcing it and requesting additional information. I made it very clear that the site was community driven and was intended to be a resource for everyone to use. There was no "Branding" of any kind on the site.

The post was promptly deleted.

I reposted the announcement and went into further detail describing how the site was created, in part, by Kingsnake Forum users and was meant as an extension of that forum.

That post was promptly deleted.

Having known Jeff from back in the early days, I emailed him regarding what I felt was irrational behavior by his mod PHWyvern.

He responded immediately, but made it clear that the mods were in control and that he had no involvement with the day to day operations.

I made one last post to the attention of the moderator stating that their shortsightedness was detrimental to their members and that I suggested that they re-examine the intent of the forums - a free exchange of information.
After all, it was the forums that got Kingsnake where they were.

I have not been back and don't forsee there being a time when I will ever return.

If everyone would stick to their guns and not support this behavior - it would stop. If you think about it, Kingsnake is very outdated and has little to offer except high traffic.

The forums are a joke to navigate.
The overbearing mods are simply ridiculous.
Now with the censorship filtering into the classifieds, you cannot even sell without their approval. This all at a cost of many times more then any other classified site in our industry. Why do people continue to put up with this?

If the traffic were gone, Kingsnake would be forced to either clean house or shut down. Either way, the the on-line herp community would be improved!
 
Isn't AMERICA a free country????

Forget Kingsnake, the site is old and getting lame when they treat members like that. I hope everyone stops posting there and move to the other readily available forums and classifieds around the net.

So if I wanna give my snakes away for FREE........ what they are gonna remove my ads. Come on. What are we stuck in the 50's. Anyways like I said, there are too many other good sites out here, band together and let KS dry up.

Happy selling, for whatever price you want.
 
Well I have now been threatened with cancellation of my account if I do not post an apology and that I was all wrong.



Jeff Barringer <[email protected]> wrote:
Mr. Cole -

Posting comments accusing our business of "price fixing",
which is a violation of federal law, is not only false but
is defamation.

Our staff requested you post a reasonable price range
on your advertisement. Posting animals for sale on our
web site based on a dollar per gram measurement is not allowed.

You have 2 choices here. You can either post a retraction
and an apology where you made your original post, or we
will have no choice but to end our relationship with
your business as is our right under the Terms Of Service
contract which you entered into with our business.

Jeff Barringer
President/CEO
OnlineHobbyist.com, Inc.
 
So when I replied with this:

That IS a REASONABLE price range. Have you ever been to a reptile show and seen vendors vending ball pythons? Ballroom South does it, Incredible Pets does it, I do it, Ben Seigal has done it.

I did not find anywhere in the TOS that said you cannot price animals per size, per gram, etc.

So instead of saying please post an actual dollar amount first you threaten me with a cancelling of my account? If you had better customer service we could have avoided all of this. I have emailed 3 different tims to give me an explaination to no avail. that is why I went to the board of inquiry.

Thanks
ben cole
ben cole reptiles inc.


I got a one sentace email asking where to send my refund too.

Glad customer service is up and running in america!!!
 
Sounds rather discriminatory to me.

ONLY you have had this happen.

ONLY you have been booted for it.

Hmmmm......interesting isn't it?

Someone else should post the same as ben and see what happens. Maybe even a dummy account to see if they do it again.

I know none of the Faithful Fauna Readers would do any such thing, but others must occasionally peruse these hallowed halls, so to speak, and even heaven above knows not what THEY may be capabale of.
 
The one thing I will say is that I cannot prove or guarantee the Kingsnake was Price Fixing, I assumed it with the "reasonable price" statement in thier emails to me.

thanks
ben cole
 
bcherps said:
Our staff requested you post a reasonable price range
on your advertisement. Posting animals for sale on our
web site based on a dollar per gram measurement is not allowed.
Click to expand...

Are they saying that you ad was deleted because of the monetary format and not because they disagreed with the price?

Of course the words "reasonable price range" does infer that they want the price to be higher.

That sounds like price fixing to me.
 
Mike

Jeff Barringer
President/CEO
OnlineHobbyist.com, Inc.
Click to expand...

Didn't you say that Jeff Barringer had little to do with the day to day operations at Kingsnake? If so, are the moderators writing letters in his name?

Kevin
 
I would have happily changed my ad if they had told me what they wanted in the first place, and been polite about it. But they are just looking to fight. I sell a few animals here and there on KS but loosing the account won't bankrupt me, plus it will save me a lot of spam/migerian scam emails!

They will argue that it is the methodology of price calculation, but it is not an old concept. Flex watt is sold by the foot, nolvasan is sold by the gallon, mealworms are sold by the count. So ball python by the gram is not that far fetched.


Thanks
ben
 
kmurphy said:
Didn't you say that Jeff Barringer had little to do with the day to day operations at Kingsnake? If so, are the moderators writing letters in his name?

Kevin
Click to expand...

I will not rule out the possibility that I was lied to when I voiced my opinion to Jeff. Maybe he just didn't want to deal with the situation.

Of course, it could be that this issue does require his involvment because of the seriousness of the charge.
 
quote
" Is is posted somewhere on KS that you are not allowed to sell slithers by the gram?"

I just read throught the TOS and no selling snakes by the gram is no where in the TOS, just this:


" All ads must have a realistic price or price range listed. "



To someone that is not into balls, is 100k for a new morph, or 20k for a new wc thing realistic?-NO.

To someone who is not into Cars is 1.2 million for the new Bugatti realistic?-NO

To someone not into billiards is a custom made pool stick worth 3 grand?-NO

The value of somehting is what you can get for it. I have a 15 year old pet tricolor milk that I would not sell for $1000 bucks because he is my pet. Although I have some ball pythons that I think are seriously undervalued becuase I don't have the correct name or history to sell them yet.

That statement taken directly from the TOS tells the user that they have to set thier price in a pre set sort of range-is that not Price Fixing?

If I am wrong please let me know.

In a huge post here many people are mad and in support of Morph King all because they lowered the price of Mojavies to a point that they sold very quickly. On the other hand, blood boas could be had for a couple hundred bucks 10 years ago and now they are almost 10 grand! Thats how the market is. Sometimes we loose money, sometimes we make money on an animal. But how can Kingsnake say in thier terms of service that " All ads must have a realistic price or price range listed. "

Shouldn't I the seller determine what my animal is worth to ME, thusly what it would take to let it part with me, or not part with me for?


thanks
ben cole
 
Why not just re-list the ads with a price they would like to see and include the words "price is negotiable"? How could they have a problem with that? I mean if they did you might want to ask one of the jagoffs running the show over there to simply write the ad for you.
 
to critical bill

I would just simply repost, but when I got the email "where do I send your refund to" I assumed that meant that my account is cancelled.

thanks
ben cole
 
Obviously they didn't make a mistake, and as much as I like to believe in the honesty and goodness of people, that is just wrong.

I retract my "maybe they made a mistake" comment.

I do agree that you could repost with a different format to your ad, but it seems like you are not interested in supporting the site any longer. :) Makes sense.

Post here, I'm sure you can find someone who is interested. :)

Good luck.
 
Sooner of later, everyone will realize that KingSnake sucks...

At that time, something better will come along...

Sorry that this ended badly for you, Ben....but can you still at least log on to read thew Week In Review??? (insert rolling eyes here)
 
Justin Mitcham said:
To make my post a little clearer..
If you were to advertise ball pythons for 1.00ea kingsnake cannot ask you in any way to raise your price etc.. not by 1 red cent. This is price fixing. They connot pull you ad either.
Only people who should determine if a price is reasonable is the seller in setting his own selling price and the buyer.
Click to expand...

In some cases, dumping is also illegal.
I believe the legal definition of dumping is along the lines of selling below wholesale for the purpose of manipulating the market to drive out the little guy.

But I'm no lawyer.

-=-

I think kingsnake.com policy is that they want clear prices defined. I'm not sure requiring your customer to do the math is clear prices defined.
 
bcherps said:
I would just simply repost, but when I got the email "where do I send your refund to" I assumed that meant that my account is cancelled.

thanks
ben cole
Click to expand...

I understand and I don't think KS was right in anyway in what they asked of you to do. But had you went along and satisfied them before accusing them of price fixing, (which I believe cause the cancellation of your account) and simply adjusted your price and to include that it was also negotiable...you may have not had any serious problems from that point forward.
 
To Funky

Maybe my ad is requiring some people to do math but the reason is that I have over a hundred balls to move from a 80 gram male runt through 500-600 gram female holdbacks, and a couple of bigger wc's. So instead of having a hundred animals listed at 20 different prices I thought I made it simple.

If they had replied to me and said please list/price animals individually I would have said o.k. But when they replied with the reasonable price deal it set me off. I had the same reaction at the same deal at the spring repticon show in orlando when another vendor came to me and asked me to set the price of baby balls at 25 when they were going for 12 and 15 on line.

Thanks
ben cole
 
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