Bad Guy VMSherp, Monica and Sean Niland

[PSReptiles]

I dont find working with enigmas too bad, but dont people at least do a little back breeding to other things so they can hopefully get rid of any neuro. problems? I am just asking this as a regular question, not arguing with you or anything.

Chelsea

I'm not sure those were the right choice of words on my part, but do you know what I mean/am asking?

Chelsea

 

[Tony C]

Tony, it is your loss! You couldn't be more wrong about them. By the way how many people do you know working with enigmas? A gecko that has clear genetic neurological issues. Are you saying they are all unethical?

Enigma breeders usually explain the possible neurological symptoms, note the extent of symptoms, if any, that an individual animal shows, and sell severely affected animals as pet only. I have no problem at all with that, Enigmas are a young morph that are still a work in progress, and giving people the information necessary to decide if they want to take the chance that comes with buying one is what I would expect of an ethical breeder. I see a huge difference between working with a new morph that needs to have the bad qualities bred out and breeding deformed animals of established morphs just because the breeder does not want to recognize them as a problem.

 

[JordanAng420]

This is not a thread about enigmas!!! The enigma debate can go on for decades!!! Nothing has been proven MEDICALLY about enigmas being different from other morphs, neurologically or anyhow, and until proven otherwise, take your enigma bickering elsewhere...this thread will go on for thousands of pages if it comes down to arguing about leopard gecko genetics. :

 

[PSReptiles]

This is not a thread about enigmas!!! The enigma debate can go on for decades!!! Nothing has been proven MEDICALLY about enigmas being different from other morphs, neurologically or anyhow, and until proven otherwise, take your enigma bickering elsewhere...this thread will go on for thousands of pages if it comes down to arguing about leopard gecko genetics. :

Lol, I agree, this just need to be done and over with now....or get back on the original topic I guess.

I am actually in the process right now of talking nicely(not sarcasm, we are having a friendly conversation) with Sean about maybe marking any gecko deformities next to the pictures no matter how obvious some might already be... some others weren't obvious and THAT was the issue.

He also -asked- about advice and that is what I gave. Nothing more nothing less. He is sending me another PERFECT bell albino and I hope that it shows up still in that condition this Wednesday. I am still not and WAS NOT complaining about how he is taking care of the refund for me. I am pretty much done arguing about what is going on anymore or about what happened. It just DID and now is practically finished so what more there is to talk about...I don't know.

Chelsea

 

[Abby]

Glad to hear you are getting a gecko in good shape as a replacement. Hopefully he takes your advice to heart and does mark future available animals on his site properly.

 

[Tony C]

this thread will go on for thousands of pages if it comes down to arguing about leopard gecko genetics. :

Agreed. I will refrain from any further comments in this thread, the OP's situation is being resolved to her satisfaction and people have the information they need to decide whether or not they want to deal with VMS, continued discussion will just go more and more off-topic.

 

[PSReptiles]

Agreed. I will refrain from any further comments in this thread, the OP's situation is being resolved to her satisfaction and people have the information they need to decide whether or not they want to deal with VMS, continued discussion will just go more and more off-topic.

Thanks Tony,

Appreciated your support very much through all this. I am hoping that this gecko is in good shape and if so I will probably have photos of it up on the gecko forums somewhere at some point. If it is nice and everything is fine after it arrives then this thread is pretty much just done and over with since the problems will be gone.

I do want to say too though that he said he -will- be marking the geckos on his webpage as he goes through them(possibly doing another photo shoot while he's at it) because of everyones opinion on thinking he should do so. That is -very- good news IMO and what people should know when they go to buy them from the site where maybe it's not obvious in the pictures. Everything should turn out just fine.

Chelsea

 

[Tony C]

I do want to say too though that he said he -will- be marking the geckos on his webpage as he goes through them(possibly doing another photo shoot while he's at it) because of everyones opinion on thinking he should do so. That is -very- good news IMO and what people should know when they go to buy them from the site where maybe it's not obvious in the pictures. Everything should turn out just fine.

I know I said I wouldn't post anymore, but I had to respond to this.

This is great news, it takes a lot of character to be on the receiving end of a bad guy thread and consider the complaints with a cool head and implement changes to address them. It seems that most people become angry and defensive and end up digging their own graves. Instead they have acted with professionalism and grace, taking care of your problem and taking steps to make sure it won't happen again in the future. I am very happy to see my rather harsh judgment of them being proven unwarranted, and leave this thread with a much better opinion of VMS than I initially had. Thank you to VMS for handling this in the way you have, and I'm glad to see everything is working out for you Chelsea.

 

[KelliH]

Sean is a great person so it doesn't surprise me a bit. Even great people make mistakes and are wrong sometimes but like we here at the BOI always say, "It's how you right your wrong that really counts".

 

[Abby]

That is awesome!! Glad to hear.

 

[Powergeckos]

Seems to me this whole thing should have been settled privately. I've done business with VMS in the past - and I think this entire episode was handled correctly by him. A 15 page bad guy thread was unnecessary.

And now, I've contributed. Egads...

 

[jbt123]

I'm contributing too...

I've done business with VMS several times and had a wonderful transaction each and every time. In fact, my first purchase from them (a 66% het hypo Anza Borrego Rosy Boa) has produced two healthy happy litters for me, and there's more to come: he loves the ladies. He was sold to me as a proven breeder and they weren't kidding!

For someone who produces so many animals, I am sure that there are oversights every once in a while. Whether the kink is genetic or not: you already made your point. He did the right BUSINESS thing and offered you a full refund. You can try to make this an argument about Ethics but the main purpose of the BOI is your dealings with them in a business sense.

VMS is NOT a bad guy. They did the right thing.

 

[Lolo76]

I'm glad to see everything worked out okay! I was surprised to see VMS on the "bad guy" list, since I purchased two beautiful/healthy leos from them last year - a SHTCT female and Las Vegas Albino male. I actually purchased them as a pair of females, but they clearly stated that both were only incubated for female... so I wasn't mad when the LV developed male parts, although they did have to be separated asap. Anyway, happy to see you solved everything, and just thought I'd add my positive review of VMS. I would happily do business with them again!

 

[robin d.]

oh Mar 19, 2010 i purchased two leopard geckos from from Season at VMS One was Rainwater Patternless albino and the other a snow rainwater.

these next two photo are of the photos of the geckos VMS provided via their website.

snow rainwater albino

patternless rainwater albino

you can see here the entire page (i screened capped it) you can see the geckos i purchased where it has the description and "SOLD (RS)". As you can see there was no notes of a kinked tail or anything.

(just fyi i always screen cap stuff like this just incase.)

he shipped on the 24th. they were delayed because of a blizzard in CO.

Today (3-25-2010) i received the geckos. both geckos had some sort of tail deformity. They were gorgeous and healthy looking, great weights. other than the the tails, they were in perfect condition. if i would have known they had the tail deformities i would not have bought the geckos from him.

here are the photos i look today and the photos of the tails.

snow rainwater

tail shots

patternless rainwater albino

tail shot

i sent sean and email letting him know they arrived and they were gorgeous but i was not happy about the tail deformities.

he replied and asked me what i wanted to do

i replied and told him i wanted a full refund including shipping.

he wrote be back and said he would refund me the entire invoice and for me to keep the geckos, it was not worth it to ship them back.

he was very polite throughout the entire thing and took care of the situation quickly

so even though he made things right in the end. i am very disappointed in the fact he did not divulge that they both had tail kinks/imperfections.

this is just my experience. i figured i would add it to this thread

if you guys want to see email correspondence i have it but in this situation i think the photos and screen shots speak for themselves.

 

[robin d.]

by the way these two girls are going to be adopted out to non breeding homes only.

 

[eereptiles]

Seriously? The geckos you received look just like the ones pictured on their site. Some people just won't be happy no matter what a seller does!

Then to say they are going to be adopted to a non breeding family. Implying that there is something genetically wrong with those animals is more than a stretch.

Nick Stark

 

[aleria]

I don't think there was any dispute about whether they looked like the pictures originally provided or not. It was about the fact that the kinks at the end of their tails was not disclosed prior to purchase. Small kinks like that are not always obvious in pictures but were caught quickly by the OP once they arrived for a hands on inspection, which I would take to mean that the seller should have also noticed them.

 

[robin d.]

Seriously? The geckos you received look just like the ones pictured on their site. Some people just won't be happy no matter what a seller does!

Then to say they are going to be adopted to a non breeding family. Implying that there is something genetically wrong with those animals is more than a stretch.

Nick Stark

in years past patternless leopard geckos have been know for genetic tail kinks and deformities. the fact that the seller did not divulge the info to me (that the animals had tail deformities) is very unsettling. before you say the snow is not a patternless, the snow is HET patternless. i breed geckos and the last thing i would want is to take a chance of introducing a genetic mutation into my breeding projects.

would you breed a reptile with a kinked tail, kinked spine or other genetic or possible genetic flaw?

in 12 years of keeping and breeding geckos i have only made a couple of bad guy posts on here. generally i give the breeder the benefit of the doubt if anything occurs but in this instance this seems to be an ongoing problem.

 

[KelliH]

I've already said my piece regarding tail deformities and breeding in prior posts in this thread, so no need for me to go there again.

Sean did the right thing to correct the problem. Good call on his part. I think Robin is just informing people here what her experiences were with VMS. That's using the BOI for exactly what it is intended to be used for.

I think Sean might want to think about outcrossing his Patternless line if there is an ongoing problem with tail kinks in that line (or any line consistently).

 

[MedusaCoils]

Robin S,

Is it possible that those minor tail tip kinks, could have occurred during shipping?

Wayne