Well to be honest, I've never gotten mites from any substrate ever in over 10 years. Mites aren't going to want to lay eggs in a dry substrate especially if they have access to a nice warm, humid, dark cage with an easy supply of food. For them to be running around on bags of substrate, the place would need to be crawling with mites from head to toe and in that case, I would be more worried about bringing home a hitchhiker on your shoes or pants. Its the same as getting mites from feeders. I mean the chance is there but again, being mammals aren't their food source and again, comparing environments, the chances are pretty slim unless the mites are literally crawling on the walls lol. And for those types of pet shops, I avoid them.
Now the OP said the pet shop guy said they regularly get BPs with mites on them, that is a huge red flag and I would avoid that pet shop like the plague. Just going in there and looking around would put you at risk of bringing home an unwanted hitchhiker. That is the main reason I avoid most pet shops and all shows. I'm OCD about that stuff and I still managed to somehow get mites on my dumeril's. I think it was from a hitchhiker from when I did go to a reptile shop. Luckily none of my other snakes got them being in the same room but again, I wipe down the outside of all my cage stacks once a month with PAM. The dumeril's was in a glass tank waiting for her cage and I believe I forgot to wipe it back down after I washed her cage all out for a cleaning. Regardless though, I moved her to a separate room in the house and have been treating her for 2 months with PAM now. Only found a couple mites on her at the beginning and didn't find a single one in the cage after I threw out all the stuff and washed the cage out with soap and started PAM treatments. Was so weird. Figured after starting treatment I'd find at least 1 dead one on the paper or in the water bowl but nope, just the 2 or 3 in the water and 1 live on her at the very beginning.
And so far, been 2 months and not a single mite found and she had a good clean shed.
Bottom line is if you keep reptiles long enough, you will eventually have to deal with mites. They are a pain but not the end of the world.
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