• Posted 12/19/2024.
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    I am still waiting on my developer to finish up on the Classifieds Control Panel so I can use it to encourage members into becoming paying members. Google Adsense has become a real burden on the viewing of this site, but honestly it is the ONLY source of income now that keeps it afloat. I tried offering disabling the ads being viewed by paying members, but apparently that is not enough incentive. Quite frankly, Google Adsense has dropped down to where it barely brings in enough daily to match even a single paid member per day. But it still gets the bills paid. But at what cost?

    So even without the classifieds control panel being complete, I believe I am going to have to disable those Google ads completely and likely disable some options here that have been free since going to the new platform. Like classified ad bumping, member name changes, and anything else I can use to encourage this site to be supported by the members instead of the Google Adsense ads.

    But there is risk involved. I will not pay out of pocket for very long during this last ditch experimental effort. If I find that the membership does not want to support this site with memberships, then I cannot support your being able to post your classified ads here for free. No, I am not intending to start charging for your posting ads here. I will just shut the site down and that will be it. I will be done with FaunaClassifieds. I certainly don't need this, and can live the rest of my life just fine without it. If I see that no one else really wants it to survive neither, then so be it. It goes away and you all can just go elsewhere to advertise your animals and merchandise.

    Not sure when this will take place, and I don't intend to give any further warning concerning the disabling of the Google Adsense. Just as there probably won't be any warning if I decide to close down this site. You will just come here and there will be some sort of message that the site is gone, and you have a nice day.

    I have been trying to make a go of this site for a very long time. And quite frankly, I am just tired of trying. I had hoped that enough people would be willing to help me help you all have a free outlet to offer your stuff for sale. But every year I see less and less people coming to this site, much less supporting it financially. That is fine. I tried. I retired the SerpenCo business about 14 years ago, so retiring out of this business completely is not that big if a step for me, nor will it be especially painful to do. When I was in Thailand, I did not check in here for three weeks. I didn't miss it even a little bit. So if you all want it to remain, it will be in your hands. I really don't care either way.

    =====================
    Some people have indicated that finding the method to contribute is rather difficult. And I have to admit, that it is not all that obvious. So to help, here is a thread to help as a quide. How to become a contributing member of FaunaClassifieds.

    And for the record, I will be shutting down the Google Adsense ads on January 1, 2025.
  • Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

breeders shipping USPS

C

chausies

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I know that this is frowned upon here, but how do you handle a situation if the breeder ships a snake to you USPS but did not inform you that is how he ships? If you sign for the package when USPS arrives at your door, are there potential legal issues that you will also have to deal with? Of course, if you refuse to sign and the snake gets shipped back, then you have the guilt of a possibly dead snake. Also, if they are using a USPS overnight envelope with little more than a VHS sized box (not the same size, but similar square inches) with a deli cup tightly squeezed inside.... how much potential damage is that to the snake? I can only imagine the snake being thrown around with what the USPS driver thinks is mail.

I'm not looking to get anyone into trouble with USPS. I'm not posting this on the BOI because I just want a general answer here. If you want more details.... I did not buy the snake "discount", in fact I have found similar snakes in my state that I could have purchased for less money, but I thought I was getting a better quality snake from this guy. Anytime I mentioned shipping, I asked if they (I originally ordered 3 snakes) would be sent FedEx (the way I usually get snakes) or UPS. He never addressed those questions and I figured that he just forgot to answer that because I usually asked other questions in each email. Once I was informed that the package was shipped.... I requested shipping info and a tracking #.... twice. The guy never responded to my request for a tracking # - he did not at any point say that there was no tracking number or that the package/snake was being sent by USPS. I was shocked when the USPS driver came to my door on the day that I eagerly awaited a FedEx or UPS truck. I was concerned when I saw the envelope in the carriers hands. I was doubtful that there was a snake inside until I got the envelope and box open and saw that there was indeed a snake in there.

Obviously, I did not want anything to happen to the snake, on the chance that there was a snake inside, so I reluctantly signed for and took the package. The guy also owed me money because I sent him a money order for 3 snakes but after he got the money, he called me and said that one of the snakes turned out to be the wrong sex. I had no use for 3 males, 2 of which were the same color and were littermates, and he had no acceptable replacements for me, so I just asked for one snake and a refund for the rest. He kept $120 of my money order (for a snake that I could have purchased from some breeders for $45-80) and he paid all of about $13 to ship the snake to me. I don't recall finding any info on the BOI about this guy (I did look) but he had a lot of customers on "another" website/forum.

Obviously, now I know to not only ask if they ship FedEx or UPS, but to expliciting request it in writing and not send a dime until they confirm that is how they will be shipping. But to get back to my original question.... are there any legal implecations for someone that signs for/receives a package sent USPS and if it were you, would you have refused to accept the package? And why would anyone send a snake in an expressmail envelope with a small, thin cardboard box inside with a deli cupped crammed into that?

thanks,
 
well...

this happened a bit of time ago. The envelope is dated Dec 21, 2004. At first I was waiting for him to send the money he owed me, and it took 3 weeks and several emails before he finally sent me the money. I did not want to mess up my chances of getting the money owed to me, so I did not say anything (I already had that money spent on other snakes to make up for the ones that I did not get from this guy.) Then I got back into college and have just not had the time to think about this issue, much less do anything about it.

The guy posts as "rainer" on the kingsnake dot com forum and classifieds. He lives in georgia. His real name was listed as frank yourez or something like that - it's difficult to read on the envelope. I kept the envelope as well as all emails from the guy. My husband threw away the small cardboard box that contained the deli cup the snake was in, the deli cup was standard size (what I have received hatchlings in.) I'm sure I have his full name correctly listed on an email somewhere, but I'd have to dig for it. At the moment, I don't have the time to do that.
 
If I were you, I'd post about it on the BOI so that other people who want to do business with him request proper shipping.
 
Yes both parties are at fault when shipping something illegal. At least that what is tated in USPS.com. It's probably because it's more difficult to prove the one receiving the package didn't agree to it than to fine both.

Regards.
 
actual name

the breeder that sold me this snake was Rainer Weishaupl, but for some reason the envelope reads Frank something or other. They used the same "from" address..... wierd. None on my email conversations with Rainer included anything about or from a Frank Yourez or whatever that name is on the envelope (I just read through the old email conversation.) Just thought that I would post an update/correction for the name.
 
dunno

I have not seen a breeder name for him anywhere. As far as I know, he has no website. If he has a breeder name then he has not advertised it where I have seen it. He just uses the name "bluerosy" on the kingsnake forums and classifieds. I have read posts from people who have purchased from him and never saw anyone complain about his shipping methods or any other complaints about him....
 
at least you got a deli cup

i just got a banged up, tiny hatchling brooksie [loose in a flat box] which did not eat and died shortly thereafter. cost me $145. a short time later [july, 04] i asked for 2 cheaper replacement snakes which rainer agreed to. well, even though he had my correct address, the snakes never arrived [?], and were returned to him, fully baked and quite dead 2 days later. rainer seems to think i am to blame somehow!?! i paid $45 for shipping and he pocketed about $42 of that sending my snake to me in the cheapest way possible w/ no regard whatsoever for the snake's comfort or well being. no insulation, not even crumpled newspaper! just loose in what amounted to a 'good & plenty' box!!! he kept my money and will not rectify the situation saying that he did his part!! if that means killing 3 snakes, then he certainly did. he's definitely to be avoided because even if you do get what you PAID for, it'll arrive in such generally bad shape [banged & baked] and you'll be stuck w/ a rehab project. when you pay good money, you expect good animals and good service. i got neither from rainer, just blantant unprofessionalism and childish excuses.........dan felice
 
chausies said:
the breeder that sold me this snake was Rainer Weishaupl, but for some reason the envelope reads Frank something or other. They used the same "from" address..... wierd. None on my email conversations with Rainer included anything about or from a Frank Yourez or whatever that name is on the envelope (I just read through the old email conversation.) Just thought that I would post an update/correction for the name.
Click to expand...

Charlene and Dan also. This information warrants a very bad guy post on the BOI. Between your information and Dan's this goes way beyond just "innocently" or "ignorantly" sending a snake through USPS. He seems to be trying to cover his name up as the sender, or maybe one or the other is his real name, and he messed up, while he does these illegal activities. (let me guess, the other name is his business partner or roommate who has access to the computer :rofl: ) plus he charged Dan the higher fees of an overnight delivery service, but ships USPS. Killing 3 snakes from two different shipments, in the process of his fraudulent activities.
 
Well this may help. I did a search on the kingsnake forums and this guy posted a picture of himself. At least we know what he looks like as well as his bad business practices. Every little bit counts.
 

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This thread actually hurt my stomach..... The thought of shipping in a god danm envelope or small box via USPS!....sorry I need to go to sleep.... :slamit:
 
Whew, I can't believe this. Their are so many false statements here that I really don't know where to begin.
I think I will adress where I am at fault first and that is sending the snakes via usps. They were small snakes that I charge $20-$25 shipping for. But with that said I will have to set the record straight on some issues brought up here especially by Dan Felice and my packing of snakes.

First of all I pack all my neonates in a deli cup filled to the rim with shavings. this does two things. One, it keeps the snake from bouncing around in the deli cup and second it reduces stress on the snake. Some people find this strange because they "think" the snake does not get enough air OR that the snake needs room to crawl around. Snakes live in holes and tunnel under ground most of their lives and it is quite natural for them to be confined in this manner. Snakes are not claustraphobic like some prople think.

The problem with a place like the internet (or BIO) is anyone can post anything they wish while stretching the truth or all out lying about what took place. I am speaking about Dan Felice here and not Charlene.

What has happened here is Dan is an alcoholic (at least he has a problem with alcohol) and gets a little upset about things and then writes dirty threatening emails to people and then aplogizes later when he is sober. I have dealt with him for two years over this and he knows he is full of it yet. I will post some of his embarassing emails if he continues to challenge me here.

Also people who know me and done business with me know I am one of the best to do busness with. I always stand by my animals even if its not my fault and I go OVER AND ABOVE what other breeders would do.

I sent Dan felice a hypo brooksi. It was a very nice hypo here is the pic of the actual snake I sent him two years ago:
standard


Pretty fat and healthy and definelty not how he described it. Anyway Dan received the snake and I did not hear from him UNTIL 6 MONTHS LATER. He sends me this email that says he, at first he only got the snake to eat 3 or 4 times and then it stopped eating. He says he had to force feed the snake through the winter and then it waned and finally died 6 months after purchase. I never heard anything or ANY propblems with the snake until then.

In Dans very first email he threatens to ruin me and my snake reputation. Anyway we talk on the phone and he aplogizes to me for his rude email and that he had one to many to drink. I told him I appreciate his humblness and that I would send him not ONE hypo but TWO hypos the following summer. Fast forward to the next breeding season and Dan emails me for his replacement snake(mind you I did not have to replace his original snake, I only did so since I never had a problem with anyone so..) so I tell him I will send the snake next week. Then i get an email from Dan saying he is in the process of moving and to send the snake to this new address which he has not moved into yet.

here is that email to me with the different address:

thanks for replying rainer. the address i supplied earlier was where i
was working. that job is over and i've moved on so........you might as
well send them here, which is 768 pa. ave., wallingford, pa. 19086. just
give me a heads-up when you ship so i can retrieve them quickly ok?
thanks.......dan felice



I said okay since he should know where he wants the snakes shipped. I send the snakes and hear nothing for several days. A week later I get the box back and it says "address undeliverable" "No such address". Well after a week (not two days like he sstaes above) in transit the two beautiful snakes were dead. Now I am upset and send Dan an email and tell him what happened. Again I don't hear from him for anothere two weeks . He writes me an email saying i still owe him TWO snakes. I write back telling him I send him 3 snakes. I paid the shipping BOTH times (he did not pay the shipping either like he states in his email) and that he give me a address that was bogus for whatever reason. Now he wants TWO MORE snakes and he wants me to pick up the shipping tab a third time.

I am sorry I should have never send Dan the replacement snakes. He should have contacted me three or four weeks after he got the snakes and reported they have gone off food. i would have told him to cool the snakes for the winter and not to worry that a lot of snakes go down during winter. The really strange thing is Dan keeps telling me ahow experienced he is with snakes and shipping. if he is so experienced then he should know that if one recives a snake they should contact the seller within a reasonable amount of time. (about 1-2 weeks from what I gather here from the BIO) and NOT 6-7 months later with no word of any problems.

Anyway Dan has been my only bad customer and I did try to please him any way i could and went wayyyy above what I should have done. Chrlene has surprised me by here post since I never knew of her being unhappy with her snake. She writes that i did not pay her for three weeks and that is not true. I sent her payment six days after I sebt her the snake. I called her on the phone and told her to check her emails about this and to please correct this. I have the emails and I sent the snake on dec 22 and then sent the money owed back to her on the 28th. I apologized to her for not sending the check with the snake but forgot to include it. Christmas happened and so six days went by and not three weeks. I also send her the snake in a small box that was placed in a large express envelope. The deli cup could not move in the bos and the rim was filled to the top with shavings. NO STRESS to the snake. Most people expect a big box and I ship in a small box that gets thrown around less. Thats how I learned it from the late Lloyd Lemke and I have had far more success shipping this way than others. Anyway i do not stick the snake in an envelope. LOL!


Charlene received the snake in a cardboard box that the deli cup fits into very tightly (narrow but long). The deli cup does not move around at all because the box is the width of the dli cup. thats how it fits into an envelope. It is then placed in an express envelope. If you understood how shipments get handled by UPS, Airborne, Fed-Ex or usps you would know its the larger boxes that get thrown around because they do not always fit through the conveyer belt holes. A small package does not get tossed about and the snakes inside the small box are just as stable (actually more stable) since the smaller package gets less hands on treatment. I have received snakes from all types of well known breders who still do not know how to package snakes, They put a small king or ratsnake in a deli cup with a paper towel and then place the deli cup into a BIG box thinking the snake will be okay. What is actually happening is the snake gets tossed around in the deli cup even though the box is real big. Doesn't make sense if you think about it. Anyway i have been trying to educate people on proper shipping for a two decades. Here is a link to a thread on KS that i explain the shipping better:
http://forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=561697,561697

Also here is my last reply to Dan after sending the second shipment a year after the first:

Dan
I said I would replace the snake even though six months had passed and no
word from you as to the health of the animal. You said the snake ate for
you and you said it languished. Youir first email to me was very
threatening. I called you and I was kind enough to forget the email. This
spring you contacted me and I sent the snakes out. They came back to me as an undeliverable address and dead. I never had any fatilies this year and
only one last year. Now you wait another couple months and you ask for
another replacment. I should not have agreed the first time!

Rainer
----- Original Message -----
From: <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 6:12 PM
Subject: Message from dan felice about "Poor Man\\\'s Indigo Snake" LOL!
n/p.
 
"Snakes live in holes and tunnel under ground most of their lives and it is quite natural for them to be confined in this manner."

What the heck are you talking about? Are you trying to say that kingsnakes live underground most of their lives?
It is funny that there are a couple hundred other breeders that don't ship snakes in deli cups inside little boxes that are inside sealed envelopes. One of the reasons is maybe AIR for the snake to breathe. The other is that with proper packing the snake will not be harmed even if the box is bumped around. With your method the package can be subjected to mail sorting machine. You say that you have been trying to educate people on the proper shipping of snakes for two decades. Did you ever think that the reason that they haven't been listening is that you are the one that is wrong? I was shipping snakes through the USPS 25 years ago ( when they still allowed it)and even then we used proper styrofoam shipping boxes with air holes and the snake inside a bag that was padded all the way around with newspaper and never had any trouble with stressed snakes.

David
 
Snakes live in holes and tunnel under ground most of their lives and it is quite natural for them to be confined in this manner."

Yes most NA snakes live and tunnel (rodent tunnels) under ground most of their lives and are used to being confined. It is during the spring that herpers fund them warming under boards and rocks thermoregualting themselves or crawling during temperat days in the summer.

As far as air holes. Yes their are holes I put in the corners of the box and the deli cups have holes as well. The envelopes are not airtight and I purposely make sure of this. I have only had one fatality in thousands of shipments. Thats about the best record (with the amount i ship) in the business.
 
bluerosy said:
Snakes live in holes and tunnel under ground most of their lives and it is quite natural for them to be confined in this manner."

Yes most NA snakes live and tunnel (rodent tunnels) under ground most of their lives and are used to being confined. It is during the spring that herpers fund them warming under boards and rocks thermoregualting themselves or crawling during temperat days in the summer.

As far as air holes. Yes their are holes I put in the corners of the box and the deli cups have holes as well. The envelopes are not airtight and I purposely make sure of this. I have only had one fatality in thousands of shipments. Thats about the best record (with the amount i ship) in the business.
Click to expand...

Are you really trying to say that because a snake "lives in a rodent tunnel" that it is cool to ship them in a deli cup "packed to the rim" with sawdust?

Personally I've never heard anything bad about your animals but I do recall some comments you made on fieldherpers.com a while ago and to tell you the truth, the guy posting now and the guy posting then seem to be two different people. But I digress.

While I do believe that you have used this method many times and no doubt successfully, I do doubt that you are doing a service to your snakes by shipping this way.

You state that you KNOW smaller packages are treated better than larger ones, especially by carriers other than USPS. From where do you obtain such data? It would seem that a smaller package, one much easier to be tossed about or kicked or whatever, would suffer MORE abuse than a larger package that you could NOT put behind your back so your boss didn't see you playing football with it. Does this make sense?

Anyway, I'd like to know where you got your data from. And if you want to say you got it from Lemke, think again. He's been dead for a while now and it can be NO secret that USPS has NOT allowed snakes to be shipped in at least two years. It WAS legal to ship snakes by USPS when he was alive, I used to do it myself, now it's not so I don't.

Perhaps it's time to up your shipping fee and do it right.
 
Are you really trying to say that because a snake "lives in a rodent tunnel" that it is cool to ship them in a deli cup "packed to the rim" with sawdust? While I do believe that you have used this method many times and no doubt successfully, I do doubt that you are doing a service to your snakes by shipping this way.

Yes I absolutly beleive this is the best way. What other way would you suggest?? To put a snake in an empty deli cup or a have full deli cup?

God you are killing me here to even contest this. I am very concerned (actually disturbed) about you even suggesting that someone should ship a snake in a deli cup that is not full all the way. AND YES IT IS BEST FOR THE SNAKE AND YOU WOULD BE DOING A DISSERVICE FOR THE SNAKE BY NOTDOING THIS!!!
 
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