Reptile & Amphibian Forums

there is a guy here in Quincy, IL that works in one of the local pet shops & he is lieing to his customers in order to make larger sales. I know, I know that sounds typical but, this is worse than you might think.

The guy is telling people that they need to buy and use UV light or the "SNAKES JAW WILL FALL OFF"!!!

This has been happening for a while & the manager in the store has blown off complaints and excused this persons actions by saying that everyone raises their snakes differently.

It's bad enough hearing about things like this through the grape vine but, now the guy has ripped off my 13 year old nephew!!!

I also caught the guy selling wild caught snakes in the pet shop a year or so ago. He tried to deny it, saying they were offspring of wild caughts but, I recognized them as snakes that had once belonged to me. You should've seen the look on his face when I told him "I caught them"!

Do you guys have any suggestions on how to handle this situation?

Thanks,

Eric

You can always report pet stores for poor animal health or other violations. There are 'lemon' laws in effect for certain pets like puppies but I am not sure what those laws require as far as reptiles go. Trying to beef up a sale by saying a snakes jaw will fall off without UV lighting is very poor sales tactics and can be reported as false statements. If he is lying about if the animals are captive bred animals that is a violation. Here is a website you can look at that will point you in the right direction if you want to file a complaint against the guy.

http://www.agr.state.il.us/AnimalHW/awflaws.html

Hope this points you in the right direction! There are some terrible pet stores in Philadelphia PA that have had serious problems and violations. I use to goto one pet store to some supplies from,never animals.They had a bunch of yellow rat snakes that were obviously WC adults and the guy was selling them as CB. I asked the girl who the breeder was and she called the manager in the back. He's like I dont give out breeder information. I laughed and said all those snakes there are wild caught adults. Some had scars and one had a stub tail. He said they werent Wc so I just said well you got ripped off if you bought them as CB animals cause they are in very poor condition.

Anyway a few weeks later they sold a puppy to someone here in Philadelphia who just happened to be a lawyer working in a hot shot law firm! The puppy got sick and her took it to the vet where it later died. After contacting the pet store they told him he is out of luck that the puppy was fine. He looked into it more and found out the stores papers on the dog were FALSE. They had down on the papers a reputable vet and the law firm contacted the vet and it turns out the vet hadn't worked with the pet store for YEARS!!

Needless to say the lawyer contacted the media and it was on the news. You didn't hear much about it after that but I know a lot of people sued the store for having false papers and what not and they were saying about lemon laws for animals. This was maybe a year and a half ago. Anyway the pet store is STILL open selling puppies,cats,birds,ferrets and reptiles. They settled out with the lawyer but they have a lot of appeals and trials being pushed back.They even have a SNAKEFISH in a tank which is illegal in PA but they have it listed as not for sale. Anyway every year they sell WC yellow rat snakes for 39.99 but this year they had no CB sign on the price tag. The only ones that had CB on them were ball pythons and king snakes. Everything else was WC. I don't buy any animals from them but I still buy some supplies. They are a lot cheaper then other pet stores. Heat bulbs at other stores are almost 10 dollars...at this pet store they are only 3.99.I moved out of the city so I haven't been there in a few months.