My dealings with a bad dealer.

[sxereturn]

Approximately 2 months ago I purchased an adult trio of Antaresia Maculosa off of a guy named ...EDITED..., who resides in Sydney. He advertised them on the australianherps Yahoo group. He informed me they were healthy, adult specimens - 1 male, 2 females.

I picked them up from the airport, and inspected them in the car before we left. There were two, adult sized Maculosa, that looked to be in good shape. I presumed these were the two females, as they were in the same bag. In the other bag, was a severely underweight, bordering on dead adult Maculosa. You may have read the previous post about this animal. Despite extensive treatment from well-known Brisbane herp vet, Clayton Knight, he died.

As I presumed the two larger snakes were females, I housed them together. One night I heard some commotion coming from my quarantine room, and found the two wrapped together. I seperated them, putting it down to either one snake not liking the other, or male/male combat. As my mates probe proved last night, they are indeed both males.

I have tried many times to talk civilly with Mr ...EDITED... but all I have received is threats of legal action against me.

Thank you,

-Jonno

Thats not a very nice story sxereturn. I think the only thing to do is to turn the page and get some legal advice yourself, and advise Mr ...EDITED... civilly of what your actions are and what type of outcome you are looking at getting to. Maybe even approach a mediation firm and see if they can help you.
It is always risky getting animals sent/recieved from interstate as these things do happen. But also, i still believe myself in the old, "a mans word is as good as a contract".
Anyways, i hope things work out well for both parties and something 50/50 can be sorted out.
Cheers, Alan.

[NoOne]

It's crap Jonno you take the action mate and if that doesn't work tell everyone.
I swapped him an adult frilly for a yearling pair of darwins.
Both darwins had worms, the smaller one i'm still treating and it's been at least 3 months since i got them.
Both snakes were under weight the smaller one was quite bad, i think this guy has way to many reptiles and can't look after them i have spoken to him breifly since getting the darwins but that was a while back.

I'm not to worried as i've been able to treat the animals without much trouble but i am dissapointed and the worst part is it's happened to me before and it's becoming more and more common.

[Farkurnell]

I too purchased a Snake from him earlier this year. It was a male Stimsoni. Admittedly I was able to view the snake before purchasing and did buy it knowing that it looked slightly under condition presumably only needing a good feed. Well I was way off the mark. The animal slowly declined into a very sick snake not to mention breaking out in the worst mite infestation I've seen on an animal. Having taken it to the Vet on a few different occasions I had to start treating him for Flagellates, which is a reasonably common complaint and a course of injections for an infection of some sort in it's gut. Luckily for me I got it to the Vet in time as it is still alive and has stabilized and is slowly on the road to recovery. It has very little, if any, muscle tone in the tail half of his body and hangs like a wet noodle when held. It is going to take quite a long time for it to fully recover.
I only bring this to light and add to Jonno's post because he has denied responsibilty or admitted that the Snake was indeed sick when I got it. I have contacted Simon in the past and his reply was that there was nothing wrong with it. He did admit it was underconditioned though. As I said I bought it anyway only thinking it needed to be fed up a bit. Obviously I wouldn't have touched it if the truth were known.




Greg.

[NCHERPS]

Unfortunatley in every hobby you get people like this, but it reallly annoys me when you see people selling animals that are sick, obviously knowing it.
Thanks for letting us all know about this fella, especially as he's in sydney.
I will steer well clear of him, as will alot of others from this sight I am sure after reading this thread.


Neil

[Hix]

Too bloody right.

Hix

[RAZZA]

[BuggieSmuggler]

SXE, U showed a lot of patience & maturity not to post this blokes name weeks ago. I read the posts then. But enough is enough. If can help in anyway way let me know.

[toxinologist]

Just a thought ...

Why don't the moderators set up a new Complaints folder and allow complainants to post a single message giving the details of their gripe ... then also allow the other party to post a single response ...

The moderators then set a poll asking members to vote on who they think is in the right or who they think is in the wrong ....

This way members get to see who is being complained about regularly, and can be forewarned about dealing with those people.

Just a random thought ...

Cheers


Dave

[Greebo]

Not a bad idea David.
The only problem I see is with people who have an axe to grind with someone that is not a member and could not respond.
In Sxereturns case, it is pretty clear the other guy is in the wrong. Other examples may not be so clear cut and that's where the legal problems might occur.
But, hey...it's still not a bad idea all the same.

[toxinologist]

Quite a few websites overseas run a similar thing ... you have to give the email address of the person you are griping about so that the Mods can invite them to reply ... then folks vote on whose side of the story sounds true ... not that the voting means anything legally.

The thing is the real shonks show up time and time again, and eventually people stop dealing with them - which is a good thing.

Cheers


Dave

[Bryony]

I'm sorry but i think NPWS should revoke his licence! Its not a right to own a reptile it is a privlege and he sounds like he dosn't care about any herp at all!!!!!!
If he did, none of this would happen. I bet he is just in it for the money

i would like to try and report him myself to NPWS and RSPCA to see what they can do if anything cause if he keeps on selling practicaly dead pythons, its just cruel!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Bryony]

sxereturn and Farkurnell
Report him to RSPCA it comes under Wildlife Policy statments in section 1.7 Keeping of wild animals as pets.

It states basicaly that all needs have to be met for in a captive state
You can report him
go to this web site at RSPCA

http://www.rspcansw.org.au/rspca-cruelty.htm

[sxereturn]

Bryony - if it doesn't have fur, the RSPCA don't care. Sad, but true.

[instar]

WWW."POSSE".com ????