pitbulllady
New member
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2003
- Messages
- 98
- Reaction score
- 4
- Points
- 0
- Age
- 63
- Location
- Bishopville, South Carolina-USA
I recently purchased a large adult female Florida Green Water Snake from an ad on Kingsnake.com from a Rick Cremeans of Lancaster, OH. I sent him a postal money on July 22 for the cost of the snake AND overnight shipping via FedX, as per our email agreement. I emailed him on the same day and told him if he would to please let me know when the payment, which I overnight-Expressed to him, was received, but he never did let me know; he just sent a rather impatient email over the weekend telling me I'd receive the snake on Wednesday. I never got any further correspondence as to when he'd actually sent the snake or providing me with a tracking number. I waited all day Wednesday for the snake, then having failed to get any response from him by email, tracked down his phone number through the phone company and called him. He looked up the tracking number and emailed it to me, and I was able to find out that the package was in transit. It arrived at approximately 7pm on Wednesday. I checked the airbill and realized he'd sent it second-day delivery, NOT overnight, from Ohio to SC. The box was only 12x12 inches, which I found unbelievable if the snake was actually the size I'd been told it was. The box was wet on the sides and bottom and stank, really bad. The snake was allegedly gravid, so I was hoping she'd given birth en route to account for the wetness and smell, but I nearly threw up when I opened the box. There was absolutely NO padding of any kind, no Styrofoam, no "peanuts", no newspaper, just a bloody pillow case on top of a single layer of bubble plastic on the bottom. When I opened the pillow case, the snake inside was in an advanced state of decay. I had to take it out in the yard away from the house to empty it out, it was that bad. The skin was already sloughing off, and it had bloated to the point where it was starting to split open in several places. The eyes had already rotted away. The inside of the box was full of old blood and decomp fluids. I took several photographs of the dead snake and the inside of the small box before calling Mr. Cremeans. He insisted that he'd never had a problem shipping animals this way, and that the snake was alive on Monday when he shipped it, but it takes a lot longer than that for such a big animal to reach that state of advanced decay. This was a snake the size of many adult Blood Pythons, and it had been crammed into a box smaller than a 12-pack soda can carton. Cremeans said he would have a contact person in Florida catch me another snake and send it to me, but I insisted on a full refund. I do not want another dead rotting carcass to arrive. This thing was so bad that when I tried to pick it up by the tail to dispose of it, the tail just came off in my hand, so I had to use a large flat shovel to scoop it up. Cremeans emailed me last night, insisting on seeing the photos and telling me that the snake was alive when he shipped it, so I emailed him the photos of the snake and the inside of the box. I have yet to hear from him, and I noticed he'd removed his other ads on Kingsnake this morning. I'm doubtful that I will get my money back, but hopefully others will know to stay away from this guy so they won't have to deal with what I did.
pitbulllady aka Sharon McKenzie
pitbulllady aka Sharon McKenzie
