I don't disagree with you at all. I even stated that this is where dealing with a live animal is different. I will say that the biggest difference here is Tom apparently didn't have a 7 day guarantee in place and he says he rarely has these issues. I realize you can't give away your tortoises to everyone who "claims" a problem. You both seem to do this as a hobby and that also changes the way you can treat these issues. The customer is always right is how I will always run my business, it's not a hobby and I can't have a bad reputation and continue feeding my family. I will tell you that a well written and explained contract or warranty is often the best way to insure happy customers and eliminate most of these problems. Again I just want to say I do not disagree with you because I wouldn't want to send a live animal to it's certain death but if there is no reason to think that is the case I prefer to side with great customer service. Tom was in the right but even giving half the money back instead of a new tortoise would probably appease most people. I know this person took that out of his hands but I'm just using this as an example. P.S. I wish my wife had a side job for shoe money, I could probably retire years earlier lolThe problem with "the customer is always right" is that we are dealing with live animals, and there's a million things that can throw off a new baby. Many many (many) people will not tell you that their dog carried it outside or that they left it in a hot car or that their 2 year old took it in the bath with them, but that stuff does happen, and it happens a lot. More than once we have had people tell us a tortoise we sent them died after whatever amount of time (outside our normal 7 day guarantee). We always ask them for information and try and figure out why, but many times there's no obvious explanation. Many times I'm sure they know why it died, but they won't tell you that in the hopes of getting it replaced. We almost always ask for photos of the setup which about half the time you will never get a response to. More than once we have had photos taken from google sent to us claiming that was their setup (they were familiar photos to me when they sent them, I had seen them before). Someone sent me a photo I posted on facebook 5 years ago saying that was their setup. A few months ago, someone called my wife about this, said they had a "nice little setup." She asked for more information and they were unclear, just that it was set up right per our website. She finally got a photo out of them, and it was literally in a metal pan with no substrate, no light, no hide, placed next to a window with a couple of crumbs of food in there. This was like a month after they got it, they were asking why it wasn't eating (I'll try to attach a photo below, I kept this photo because I knew this would come up again). In their opinion, being next to the window was a light and heat source. People don't want to spend $100 on a tortoise and then be told they need to go spend $150 more to set it up right. They want to take shortcuts, and think they know better how to do it.
We have also caught past customers that we gave the benefit of the doubt to trying to take advantage of that again. I hate not believing the things that people tell us, but you have to be skeptical because more often than not, you can find the hole in their story. If you simply sent a replacement tortoise to everyone that said it had an eye closed one morning 3 months after they got it, you'd be going broke trying to keep up with that. If you know you're not losing animals when you keep them or grow them up yourself, you can be confident that you're not sending out sub-par animals. I think Tom was absolutely in the right here, but I think the guarantee needs to be clarified ahead of time for future transactions. If the customer had been told (or better yet, signed) something saying it was guaranteed for 3 or 7 days (or whatever), their expectation of a partial or full refund after 30 days may have not happened. Many of us selling tortoises don't make their primary living from tortoises. For us, my day job covers my daily bills. My wife does women's hair and eyelash extensions to the tune of a few clients a day, and she keeps that money so I don't have to buy her clothes and shoes LOL. The tortoise money, if we make a profit in a given window of time, allows us some fun money for the kids, and more importantly to me, creates a bunch of tax write-offs. There is a lot of costs in keeping large groups of tortoises, we shouldn't feel bad trying to make money at the end of the day.
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