Petco

[jadab123]

So call the corporate office and complain, and let them know that you will be taking your business elsewhere until conditions improve.

Petco is a big business and all the people at the top understand is $$$$$. The only way to force changes is to reduce their profits.

This is why it's a bad idea to "save" animals in their stores by purchasing them - Petco gets the $ and uses that money to replace the animal with another one for sale. If Petco continually lost money on animals they would either fix their husbandry, or they would stop selling animals and dedicate that shelf space to dry goods with a better profit margin.

I plan on calling corporate and letting them know once the holidays are over. I have never bought reptiles from them, but we sometimes get supplies there (mostly things for my husband's leopard gecko, as I tend to order snake stuff online). Unfortunately we do have to buy our dog and cat food from either them or Petsmart, so I can't just stop buying from them, and we don't have any "boutique" pet stores near us that I know of that sell our dogs' food. And I agree, I wouldn't "save" one of these animals because I know that only encourages them. When I was still in high school, before I knew about puppy mills and their horrors, my mom and I bought a pekingese dog at Petland to give to my grandparents who had just lost their 17 year old cat. It was a wonderful dog and my grandfather loved the dog to death, but over the years it had many health issues, including breathing problems (common in the breed but worse than normal in this dog) as well as some back issues that my grandad spent $3k on surgery to fix, which didn't help much in the long run. In the end, the animal died at only 9 years of age, seemingly of heart issues, poor thing. While he loved the dog so much, had I known then what I know now, I would have looked into a rescue or a reputable breeder rather than bought it from a pet store. I think the same think kind of applies to snakes in these instances. My husband and I got our dogs and cats from breeders (we are not against rescues, it's just that he is military and most rescues are afraid that when we move, we will just dump our pets. We would never do that, of course, but I guess enough military families have, that it disqualifies us from adopting at most places). I'm pretty used to doing research into breeders and making sure they are reputable, and that philosophy has kind of transferred over to our reptile purchases as well.