What are pet stores telling people?

[southb]

So I'm bring this up because last night I was buying some live feeders for a few picky animals and I overheard two guys talking about the snakes they had.


They were looking at an albino kingsnake and one of the guys said he was albino due to needing a different type of uv light.......and I thought.....ha, whats this guy smoking over there. I went over and introduced myself and we talked snakes for awhile. Both of these guys owned ball pythons and used the expensive uv bulbs, no hides, and were also forcing feeding their pythons once a month to eat a little "suppliment" pill that had calcium and other stuff in it. These guys were told to do this by the "snake expert" at petco..........

Now I set them straight after letting them know they could feed the animals more than once a month. One of the guys told me he was on his forth ball python because the others had died and petco was just replacing them. This made me so sick and frankly kind of ticked off. It's not the first time I'd heard something this bad coming from that store.

Is there something that can be done about this? I even went over to the store and talked to someone about it and they didn't seem to care, manager wasn't there, etc. I know they give caresheets and even those caresheets have how to keep them wrote right on them. I'm going back later to talk with the manager about it.

[southernboagurl]

It is really sad and unfortunately I don't know what you can do. It would be worth while to get a lot of "research" about proper care that's documented, print it off, get a statement from this guy that has had now four snakes replaced because of improper instructions, and send it to the district manager or someone higher up than just store employees (including the local manager). Not sure how much good it would do other than possibly get the employee/store manager into some trouble.

Unfortunately with stores like this and even your mom/pop stores, there is no like education/experience requirements for a lot of positions so joe blow off the street can get a job doing anything.

[dsmalex97]

Those people are freaking retards!! I had lot of expierences going to petco, and wanting to just dummy punch everyone of them. I went there looking for a thermostat one time, and they brought me to the thermometers!! Also they have cresties at the one by me, and the cage gets over 90 degrees sometimes while im in there!! There so doumb, I want to buy every animal whenever I go in there just cuz i wanna save em all. How do they even have a lisence to sell them if they can't maintain them? PEtco/petsmart is a joke plain and simple...

[scales owner]

My 2 cents but I doubt there are ANY retile experts at Petco. Sorry if I offened anyone. I find ALOT of people are givin' wrong information. Later!!!

[southernboagurl]

A lot of animals in these pet stores are not cared for properly because the owners/employees/etc are not educated about the care of the animals or they just don't care. If you see that they are in serious health decline you can contact the health department or check with your state's wildlife agency.

I only mention this because I know of a pet store that had broken glass in enclosures with animals, no heats on animals that required heat, and also had certain types of animals that were not to be displayed/sold in the state. Not sure what happened in this particular case, but if it upsets you bad enough to where you want to take action, there are places that can be notified.

[JeffJ]

This is the exact reason why i do not ever buy anything from these places. i cannot justify supporting there business or there practices. i do go in to look almost every time i pass by them though.

granted i did see a pet smart with a beautiful "un sex'd" 2' BP. i asked to see it and sexed it on the spot it was a female. they wanted $180 for her. i didn't buy her but they did write "female" with that oil pencil on the glass after i was like nice female

[snakedork]

Its really simple. There is no regulation on reptile sales like there is dogs. This basically comes down to standard of care. A dog has a standard of care for a pet store to sell. The humane society take care of this. But to sell reptiles due to the large variety of them. It is rather apauling to think that this is how our society treats these animals. But they are considered pest to most people.

[dsirkle]

My impression is that these chain stores follow a corporate policy on care and feeding that some bean counter somewhere established to make expenses (and profits) uniform in all their stores.. If you speak to the Manager you will likely be told that "Sorry, but my hands are tied."

[JeffJ]

its kind of sad there is no regulation on care standards for reptile sale. is there anything we as reptile lovers can do?

petitions are usually useless. so our options are limited im betting.

[southb]

I'm really close to telling the manager I will do a free training class on reptiles for employees and maybe once every couple of months for the buyers.