Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Off the bat, leave out names...I don't want this to get into name bashing or anything...
but what is your worst experience receiving or shipping a snake?

I have two.
One was the company that was doing the shipping...and one was blatant stupidity.

The first one was a female snake and her babies. Basically I bought 3 adult females off a dude, he sent me two and bred one to his spider. We were going to split the babies. Ended up with 4 normal babies, so he let me have them all. Maybe I was ripped off...whatever. He packaged the snakes fine, sent them out...and the company lost the package.
The snakes showed up 3 days later. They were cold, but fine.

The second one...I found normal female hatchlings for $20 shipped, so I bought one.
I got the snake...it was tossed in SOCK...and put in a small box stuffed with shredded newspaper. To top it off...it was sent FIRST CLASS...so it took 3 days to arrive. Needless to say...it arrived dead...
so I emailed her and asked what was up. She said her brother had handled the shipping that week. I asked for another snake or a refund and she told me I would have to ship the dead snake back to her as proof...so that she knew I wasn't ripping her off...
(for $20...)
I ended up just sucking up the loss, but was extra angry because the snake was the ultimate loser...
-----
"What is man without the beasts?
If all the beasts were gone,
men would die from great loneliness of spirit.
For what happens to the beasts,
soon happens to men.
All things are connected."

-Chief Seattle (Duwamish Tribe)

A friend of mine(very prominent gecko breeder)shipped me about 50 geckos to sell at MARS! I sold some and sent the rest back to him! This was pre-911 and was w/Delta, when shipping a fish styro was about $32 Anyhow, when I took the package to the Delta counter, they were having a pizza/birthday party! So I filled out the paper work, shipping them from Cleveland to OKLAHOMA CITY! Needless to say, about 4-5 days later, he calls me and says "Hey, I got the geckos, Thanks but why'd they come from SALT LAKE CITY"?????????????? The animals were a little dehyrated but otherwise fine! I guess you can't "party it up" AND ship live animals!

Proper shipping is going to set you back anywhere from $35 to $70 depending on location, box size, and if you get a discounted rate.

I would think that $20 shipped would have sent up flags that they weren't being sent priority next day air.

An adult pastel male shipped PA to Florida in December. Beautiful snake, back when pastel prices were still high...over 2K for this beauty. Shipped FedEx with unexpected snowstorm in Memphis....six days later the snake arrived cold and dead. Both shipper and purchaser were devastated.