I believe good customer service is great communication. If you made the arrangements and kept the customer informed and he had tracking #s and he knew your TOS then it is his responsibility to make sure he is home or at least arrange for an alternative PRIOR to the items being shipped. If he failed to do that then I don't see how the seller HAS to do anything. I understand what you mean by maybe partial refund but the seller did 100% what he was supposed to do and the buyer failed, the seller can NOT be held liable at all. He can't give up the snakes AND the money, that would not be very good business. That just means he gives away money because someone else was not very responsible.

Now if the buyer was not fully aware before shipping or had questions that were not answered before shipping and was not able to make arrangements PRIOR to shipping, then I would agree that he would need a full refund.

We can't always hold people's hands, people need to stop ducking responsibility. You are an adult, if you messed up, admit it and learn from it, and move on, but the seller, in this case, should not feel like he has to give any money back when he did anything wrong.

Just my 2 cents. Keep us updated, I really hope the animals are well in the end.