Buyer "Horror Stories"

[greychins]

I just thought it might be interesting to share stories of people that we've had contact us looking to buy a chin who seem to be reasonable at first and then as time goes on, start to look a little (ok... a lot) loony…. or at least, someone you wouldn’t want anywhere near your chins…

I know at least I'd be interested to hear other people's stories...

I'll start... I have kits that will soon be up for sale, with pics on my website… Got an email from a girl who I assumed was 18-20. The first email was the normal how much, where do you live exactly, the usual. I emailed back saying where we live and such and I got a response asking if we could meet somewhere and I said probably, we'll have to see how my schedule is at the point they're for sale. That’s where the fun started.

I then get an email saying she has to get her parents’ permission. Then she tells me her parents don’t want her adding any more pets and that because chinchillas live maybe 10 years (they do? mine must all be right at death's door! some must be crossing the threshold as we speak!) - get this - her father (not her) would have to find someone to care for the chinchilla when she goes to college. Which makes me think she’s starting up college soon…

Now at that point I’m already like “she’s not coming near any of my chins” but she keeps emailing me so we keep talking. She asks me for “fun facts” to soften up her dad. I tell her that chins are a lot of work, and often the more people know, the less they want a chin as a pet. They're not a "throw it in the cage and leave it" pet. And while I was nice to her, I did tell her that it’s not fair to the chin (or any pet!) to buy a baby and leave it in a cage alone for the first 4 years of its life…

She then tells me her teacher’s chinchilla died at 4 years old… so I explain how food, quality of care, good breeding lines affect how long they live (and again reiterate that more than half of my "mini-herd" is in the 7-11 range, so they should apparently all be dead by now according to her standards) and I again ask who she thinks is going to watch her chin for the 4 years… And in there I mention that even if she can find someone to watch it, she has no idea about the quality of care it will receive or if it will be cared for “like she would care for it.” Somewhere in there she tells me "oh well I won't be going to college for 5 years," so it apparently wouldn't be the first 4 years of the chin's life. Some kids should not have access to the internet. Anyway, so in response to my question of who does she think is going to watch it...

... and I quote "I could find people to take care of it unless you could take care of the chinchilla while I was at college... then I would know that it would be played with and feed the right food and stuff... and if not I totally agree since you have many chins already..."

…..I think I have heard it all.

 

[lilchinchilla]

Well at least you only have one to tell. After raising chinchillas for fourteen years, you will find you have alot more to add to horror stories than one.

My worst one, and unfortunately I was duped and did sell to this person. Some old timers on this forum might remember the incident. Well I sold two chins to an RCMP officer. Or so she had told me she was that.

She seemed okay to begin with, she would visit my place every week till her kits were old enough to go, she was older than myself, and seemed to know alot of things about chins. Sometimes she would spend up to three hours in one sitting in my place with me with my chinchillas, each time.

Anyhow, about a month after I sold the two chins to her, she contacted me to say the one chin had to be put down. It had two broken back legs and brain damage. She then went on to ask that I replace the chin for free, because her daughter was crying and missing it.

She had no proof of it being put down (I asked for proof for the **** of it.), and couldn't tell me why it was like that, so of course I refused. I pointed out the chin didn't leave my home like that and for to have two broken back legs and brain damage, that it must have been more than just a simple fall.

And as if it couldn't get worse. The other chin she got from me, she had lied to me when she said it was for herself, she had bought it for someone I had refused to sell to (bad bad owner) and would never have sold to. I only found out like 4 months later, when the person posted pics of the chin online, and I recognized the chinchilla as the one I sold to the so called RCMP officer.

 

[Riven]

I've chin sat for a gal who was going to college.... I guess I don't see a problem with that. But apparently she is probably about 13 and her parents obviously have no idea what she's doing online. That is a bit wrong to me.

I had one lady seem like she wanted to learn, her daughter raised rabbits, etc. Then she was asking me what they eat, so I say if you're feeding a quality rabbit pellet you can feed that, and she continues to tell me that she doesn't mind if they need to get it dog food because they use really good quality dog food... and continued to be obsessed with the dog food. She also told me that her boys put the baby rabbits in the remote controlled cars... but the bunnies enjoy it... of course.

 

[greychins]

Well I know when I was in college, I had a rabbit, and my mom watched/cared for my rabbit. Not well, and I guess that's what throws up a red flag for me here.... she did the typical things that someone does when they don't really want to watch your pet - waited til the cage was absolutely soaked to change the shavings (the rabbit wasn't litter box trained), would only go and check in on the rabbit once a week (which by that time, he was out of water and food and such for several days)... now my pets are in my care, but now I worry that someone getting a pet only to push it off on someone else for several years has no idea how it will be cared for... and there may not be much you can do at that point. I had a scholarship to go to college, which paid for my room & board... I couldn't afford to move to an apartment and take my rabbit with me when I had free room and board... the rabbit ended up re-homed, to a much better family with other rabbits, but for awhile the poor thing was probably miserable.

I have told this girl that if I was to sell to her I would have to talk to her parents before she would be bringing the chinchilla home. I have nothing against selling/rehoming to young people... I had a 13 yr old boy who ended up with a rescue, and I think he takes care of her great! But he also seemed responsible, we had long discussions on chinchilla care, and his mom said she would make sure that he fed and cared for the chinchilla well... This girl didn't comment on it when I said about talking to her parents...

I suppose the concept just seems a bit odd to me - I just guess if it wasn't a chinchilla... like say it was a dog that someone bought from the breeder... I guess I just wouldn't expect to tell the breeder, hey in a few years I'm going to go to college, can you watch my dog for four years? It just seems like an odd request in my book. Not to mention, 5 years down the road when she goes to college--- I have no idea what I might be doing in 5 years! (I have an idea of where I'd like to be in 5 years, but it's hard to say if that's where I'll be). I'd hate to commit to watching a chin now, for 5 years from now, when I could die in a car wreck tomorrow! Or move across the country... I mean who knows, a lot can chance in 5 years (not to mention I don't have a 5 year planner, I'd be the idiot and forget I'm watching the chin until she brought it to my door).

Out of curiosity.... how did you work it out - I mean four years of watching someone else's animal is a long time - did you charge anything - some sort of fee? Make her pay for food, vet care if necessary? I've rarely had any health issues pop up, and the ones I've had are not my breeding chins, so I don't anticipate health problems in these, but my law-school background just sort of screams that a contract would have to be written up, because like if the chin gets sick, is she going to pay for vet care? Because if she didn't, well I sure couldn't just let the chin suffer. And then not only am I watching someone else's chin, I'm paying for someone else's chin's vet care. At least in Indiana, contracts with a minor are unenforceable unless the minor ratifies after age 18, so even if a contract was written up saying (for example), she'd pay for food/supplies/vet care, it couldn't actually be enforced in a court of law... I just think of so many what-if's...

LOL of course the bunnies enjoyed it. I used to put my hamsters in remote control cars... course my parents at least knew better and told me to stop.....

 

[Riven]

I didn't chin sit for a full four years. About six months. Her step brother was caring for the chins and she wasn't happy with the care so she found me. I think it shows a lot about a person to bother to find someone to care for their animal for a long time like that, opposed to just rehoming it and getting another.

We had a "verbal" ( well via email ) I provided food ( I buy it a ton at a time anyway and it was easier to feed the same I feed the girls in the house ) and she provided any vet care needed, etc.

 

[greychins]

Oh ok. I agree that it does show that they're thinking of the future and finding someone to care for their animal for a long period of time, which I would rather have than someone buying a chin and rehoming it shortly after...

I sort of feel that if I knew that within a few years time, there would be a period of years where I couldn't personally care for the animal ... I would simply wait to purchase the animal. As an example, when I purchased my dog, it was right after I came back from a 3 week vacation where I was out of the country. I knew I was going on the trip for months, and I could have bought my dog ahead of time, but I didn't want to buy the dog, and then 2 months later, burden someone else to watch it for three weeks... I'm sure not everyone thinks like that, but I've found there's not very many people I can actually rely on (not counting like actual boarding kennels or those types of places, like in the instance of a dog), so I personally would wait rather than count on someone else watching my pets for years at a time. Not to mention, while I think I care for my chins well, this girl doesn't know me from Eve.

I do suppose she would have the chin for the next 5 years before anyone else would have to care for it so it's not like buying it and immediately handing it off....

I sort of don't know what to do about all of this, as may be apparent. I haven't actually told her that I won't sell to her, or anything of the sort, we've just been talking about chinchillas and she's trying to get me to help convince her parents (I'm not good at convincing mine, so I'm no help). I still feel that when I sell to anyone under 18 I need to have a chat with their parents first, so that would be a necessity, but the way she talks I get the feeling (like Riven said) that her parents probably don't know that she's talking to chinchilla people online arranging to buy one and have it be cared for in the future. My parents would have murdered me if I did that at 13. Course that's exactly why I talk to the parents first... Any thoughts?

I didn't mean to turn this thread from buyer-stories into my own personal saga. :/

 

[aznmexaggie]

Oh, I've only had one bad customer so far and I had a whole thread about the situation and what I should do. It just got fishier and fishier with each e-mail she sent to me and then she just disappeared... http://chins-n-hedgies.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14156

 

[greychins]

I suppose I do have another horror story, just not a chinchilla one.... I had a mom/daughter degu pair that I was selling when I decided degus were too much for me. This nice lady popped up and seemed like a good home, we talked about degu care and about the pets she had... and when I asked what sort of cage she was going to put them in, she said she had a multi-level cage from when she had rats... but the rats met their end because she rescues feral cats... and you guessed it.... the feral cats got into the rat cage or tore it apart or something and killed the rats.

Well, she said she didn't do the feral cats thing anymore... and maybe she didn't plan to at the time. I sold her the mom/daughter pair, making very clear they were to go to a pet home, and I let her know that it was possible that the mom was pregnant at the time.... a month or so later I get an email from her saying that I must have mis-sexed the daughter, because the "bigger one" (the mom) had babies. I explained to her again that I had told her at the beginning that the mom was possibly pregnant, and for awhile I didn't hear from her. She had told me she was going to re-home the babies.

Next thing I know, she tells me she's keeping one of the boy babies, because she wants to have more babies, so that either the mom/daughter can produce a boy that she can keep with her current boy baby that she was keeping (why she didn't keep a female? dunno). So she bred the mom/daughter... (so the mom was breeding with her son, the sister with her brother) regardless of the fact that I had specified that they were to go to a pet-only home... and of course she gets the feral cats again, which rip apart the cage housing the degus and kill the male... but not before both females are pregnant....so they both have more babies... and again, she wants to keep a cage of boys, and sells all but one boy... and then uses that boy to breed...

She no longer responds to my emails. I've never been mean in any of my emails to her, but I have reminded her that I had intended the girls to go to a non-breeding home, and that I was not exactly thrilled with how lacsidasical she was about letting the feral cats get at her small-animals.

Of all the animals I've ever bred/sold/rehomed, I really feel sorry for these two.

 

[Riven]

If you feel the girl is wasting your time just tell her that you don't adopt to people under 18 and if she gets her parents convinced to have them contact you as a family.

 

[proudmom25]

If you feel the girl is wasting your time just tell her that you don't adopt to people under 18 and if she gets her parents convinced to have them contact you as a family.

I agree with this. If her parents don't want her having any pets then I wouldn't be selling to her.

 

[greychins]

I agree with this. If her parents don't want her having any pets then I wouldn't be selling to her.

I haven't heard from her in a few days now... the last email I told her that if she was to get a chin, I would have to talk with her parents first and make sure they understood how to care for the chin in her absence and make sure they were ok with her having the chin and all that.... needless to say, I'm not really surprised I haven't heard from her, cause I didn't exactly get the feeling the parents would be willing to do that.

I do actually have a sales form that I require potential buyers to fill out, I need to get it up on my website... it's very basic, but it's the sort of stuff that if I sell to someone who's not 18, the parents have to fill it out. And often, once they go over the form and read that chins can live 10-20 years, they're awake at night and make noise, are asked what would happen to the chin if they could no longer care for it, the parents are often like "this is a lot of work for my kid's pet" and they move onto a hamster or something they can buy from a pet store without ever having to fill out a 2-page form. But it weeds out the people who, IMO, wouldn't make a good home if they can't take the 5-10 minutes to fill it out....

 

[caiti]

Yea, I think if the girl doesn't live on her own or if she doesn't have the means to support pets the parents need to be on board and enthusiastic about it. If they're not, the girl will have to find chin-sitters whenever she goes camping or to visit a far away friend etc, which she might have to ask her parents to pay for anyways, since I'm assuming she's a young teenager but I don't know for sure. If the parents don't care or don't like the idea, the chin is going to suffer from lack of appropriate care.

Who does she think will watch the chin? Does she have someone specific in mind? Like you said, I'd imagine it would be very hard for her to book a 2-4 (and that's if she graduates on time which a lot of students do not) year chin-sitting job for 5 years from now. Even well intentioned pet sitters do harm, you really need someone knowledgable about the animal they are watching. I left my mice with my father when I went to europe with my mom for spring break, about 3 years ago. I left him a detailed letter and everything, lectured him on it. When I got home they were shivering because my dad is very very frugal and kept the house at about 60F to save money, although I told him not to keep it too cold (I guess that's the problem with subjective wording). One of the two mice died a few hours later while I was trying hard to warm them up and I haven't completely forgiven him for it yet. I was infuriated and so sad. But he never meant any harm, he just thought it he didn't need to pay that much attention to things like that.

If she wants to be a responsible pet owner, she should probably be concerned that her parents do not want to watch a chinchilla for multiple years while she is gone. If I lef tmy pet with someone who was relectant to watch it but still agreed to, I'd be worried sick the whole time. I get the feeling she's just young and need to grow a little, we've all been that immature and naive at one point. You could tell her you don't adopt out to minors, but since you've already implied you do by allowing the conversation of adoption to go on, I would just be straight with her. Tell her you think she's too inexperienced and a chin is not the right fit for her.

The story about the person who adopted the degus is horrifying. I don't know how you guys deal with those situations. They are bound to happen because you can't read someone's mind when you talk to them but I can't imagine how hard it is to go through.

 

[greychins]

Oh I agree - in the case where I sold to the 13 yr old boy, I had talked with his mom several times, gone over chin care, and she was totally on board with him getting a chin (and he did pay for food, vet care, cost of the chin, all that stuff, so she was alright). And of course, she would watch and make sure he was caring for his chinchilla well. That's my ideal situation when dealing with minors.

Who does she think will watch the chin? Does she have someone specific in mind?

See, that's the funny thing. I asked her several times who was going to care for the chin... cause she just kept telling me, "oh I can get someone to watch it." Ok, who? But she never would answer that question, which made me think that she just assumed that if she told me she had someone, I'd just believe that and be like ok! and sell to her. Doesn't work that way. On my sales form, I have the question of "What would you do if you were no longer able to take care of your chinchilla?" If people put down "someone will watch him," I ask who.

I informed her several times that it's not in the best interest of the pet to be watched by someone else for years. Like you said, even having good intentions, pet sitters may do something wrong, not notice illness, whatever the case may be. Especially with chins, it's good to find a chin-knowledgeable pet sitter... which aren't easy to come by.

Since the case isn't actually that I don't adopt out to minors, I did tell her that I require her parents to talk to me and fill out the forms and all that (that's the only way that minors end up with chins). Typically parents who aren't on board with their kid getting a pet aren't gung-ho about filling out forms regarding chinchilla care and all that. Yet every time I said to her that I needed to talk to her parents, she'd just ignore this. Which made me think that if I was to talk to the parents, they weren't going to be on board... which begs the question, did she think that if she just showed up with a chinchilla one day, her parents would accept it and let her keep it? I think she might have thought that was a very real possibility.

I also wasn't crazy about her attitude or her parents. The once when she was talking about convincing her dad, she said "then again he's been like this for other situations and i have those things that he said i wouldn't get..." Which sort of aggravates me, partially because of her, and partially because of the parents. First... if Dad said you couldn't have it... and now you have it... maybe Dad should stick to his guns a little better? I feel if parents say "no, you can't have it," they need to stick to it and not give in... and many don't, which is why we see those babies and toddlers that scream and scream until they get their way... cause they have learned that if they yell loud enough and for long enough... mom and dad give in. That's not right in my head. And second, she gave me the feeling that she was trying to manipulate her parents into letting her get it... and while I don't have a problem with someone doing a little convincing if someone's on the fence.... if you're counting on those people to care for the pet for years while you're gone... I don't think it's that great of an idea to manipulate them into letting you get the pet.

The last email I sent reiterated the fact that I need to talk to her parents, they need to fill out some forms, and I need to know who she thinks is going to watch the pet. And I reiterated the fact that it's not likely going to be free for someone to watch the pet for four years... since it is HER pet, she will have to pay for the food, bedding, water, vet care... even if the parents watch it, because it is HER responsibility. Yeahhhh.... haven't heard back, and I don't expect to.

I really think she was just naive enough to think that maybe she could get a pet, dump it on someone for four years (5 years from now), have that person pay every expense associated with that pet during that time, and come and pick up the pet after the four years as if it was hers all along. I don't think it works that way (or in cases where it does, I don't think it should work that way) in the real world.

Fortunately, I've only had that one occurrence with the degus as a really bad experience. Like you said, you can't read someone's mind, and the lady in that case had me convinced that she was done with the feral cats and that she didn't want them to breed. I believed her, and what else can I take other than her word? Now, though, I have a separate Sales Form and Adoption Form that get signed at pickup... they're nothing complicated, and I suppose they probably wouldn't deter someone who wanted to "adopt" a rescue and then breed it... but it's an extra step they have to go through at least...