• Posted 12/19/2024.
    =====================

    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.

Bad Guy Dav Kaufman - Beware

Randy F

Randy F

Resident Demon
Resident Demon
Joined
Jan 27, 2010
Messages
1,829
Reaction score
152
Points
0
Location
San Diego, CA USA
On 2/24/2012 I bought a leopard pied male from Dav. I sent him $1545 for this snake. I had a pied male breeder but really wanted the leopard gene. I got the snake and it was healthy. It kinda looked leopard so I assumed it was and was happy. Last year as my clutches were hatching I produced zero leopards. I bred to a spider trying to make leopard spiders so it would have been obvious. I called Dav and told him. He informed me that he had got him in a trade and to let him contact the person he got it from. He then said that they assured him that it was a leopard. He didn't know what to do so we agreed to give it one more season and see if it produced. Here is how the conversation has gone

8/28 I emailed him telling him about the sitsuations.

8/31 8:37 pm I text him
Hey Dav, did you get my email?

8:40 pm he texted
I don't think so. What was it regarding?

8:41 I texted
The leopard pied I got from you. I waited another season and no leopards

9:23 he texted
Yes I did get that. I'm catching up on everything I don't know what to do about it. I'll try to give a call to the guys why I got the snake from

9:42 I texted
Ok cool. I know it sucks from every stand point. Hopefully they are stand up guys. The one I just bought back was only $500 but has me thinking now about what I sell and who's word I take

9:44 he texted
It does suck. & I was only the middle man in the sale. Do you remember how much you bought the snake for?

9:45 I texted
$1545. I know, that's why now I won't deal on hets or anything questionable unless I produced it.

9:46 he texted
That is exactly why I do the same. Let me see what I can do for you.

9:48 I texted
Thanks man I appreciate it. I am sure they don't want to refund it, I am not expecting anything for lost clutches, but if they can kick down something close to the value that would be good

9:49 he texted
Of course. Being that I was involved in the sale I will do whatever I can to make you happy.

9:49 I texted
Thanks

9/2 7:23am I texted
Not sure if they have come up with anything but what do you think of this....take the $1545 off one of your killer clown girls so I'd owe you $305. I will take the pied to the show next weekend and call you as I am selling it so your aware it's not going for $100 to screw you. Whatever it sells for is yours, and I pay shipping for the killer? This way your getting money, not paying shipping back on a pied, and they can make it right to you.

9/3 7:28 pm I texted
So I am assuming that since its been a week since I emailed you and you haven't responded to my idea that they still say it is what they say and nothing is going to be done?

9/6 11:16am I texted
Hey Dav if you can let me know who you bought it from. A few people I have shared the whole story with have convinced me to post it all on fauna, bush league and a couple other places so I think it's only fair that you don't get all the heat. Thanks

9/6 11:57am he texted
First I'm very sorry this happened. Second, even before the time of sale, I made it very clear that I was only the broker, the middleman who was only selling a snake for a friend. I've told you that I will go back to that friend who is no longer breeding and see what I can do and I am doing that. I have worked very hard to produce quality animals and maintain a very positive reputation for the past 20 years so if you choose to post this all over the Internet that is your prerogative but I will defend myself and my reputation, and ask others to do so on my behalf as well. Now I have considered your idea of giving you a $2000 snake now to make up for this with you trying to sell it and what not. I don't think that's fair. I did not produce the snake you purchased and relayed only information that I had from the breeder and made very sure that you understood that I was not the one who produced that snake before the sale occurred. I'm only a person caught in the middle of what unfortunately turned into a bad sitsuation for you and I understand that you feel slighted. I took only 10% to act as a broker for selling that snake. Now I am open to other ideas to rectify this but again I feel as I did not misrepresent my role in this and make sure that you understood that before the sale occurred

12:02 pm I texted
You never told me anything about someone else until last year when it didn't produce. Second it's here because you won't respond. What just really pissed someone off was you said you were the "middleman" you were the seller regardless. The offer I made you was more than fair. You would get around $650 cash and I would pay for shipping.

12:06 pm I texted
I hate having disputes and making things public, but put yourself in my shoes. And for the record, you told me that you got it trade last year

12:07 pm I texted
I am not asking you to give me anything more than what you took from me.

12:14 pm he texted
I'm out of town for the weekend right now so before we misinterpret the tone of texts, give me a call this week and we'll figure it out.

12:18 pm I texted
Yeah I'd like that because accidents happen and I really don't want to make an issue of this, but it was a good chunk of change. I hope you have a good holiday and we sort this out

12:42 pm he texted
We will. I'm not looking to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth. You have a good one too.

9/9 5:15pm I texted
Sorry been busy getting ready for this weekends show and talking to other friends of Tom Baker who if you haven't heard, he died two days ago in a motorcycle accident. I will call you tomorrow afternoon while I drive up to ultrasound some snakes.

9/10 5:37 pm I texted
Het Dav, so what ae you thinking we do?

That was over 4 days ago and nothing from him. After talking to enough people about it that it is my responsibility to bring it to light. I have been patient, non-threatening, and trying to work something out before going public but it's been almost 2 weeks. The snake I was willing to deal on was overpriced to begin with since I had a 500+ gram male killer clown on my tale for $1500, but I didn't try and talk him down on his price. I guess what it comes down to is despite him telling me last year he got it in trade and now this year he was a broker.....
1) I only had contact with him
2) I paid him
3) he shipped me the snake.........he is the seller!

I still don't even know who this phantom breeder is and honestly don't care. In the sitsuation I just had, I bought a snake from a vendor as a orange dream pin. I decided I didn't want another project so I sold it. A month later the buyer contacted me and told me that a couple people told him it was a desert enchi pin. When all was said and done, I drove an hour to him and gve him his money back and gave him a 700+ gram female fire yellow belly for the problem. I returned the snake to who I bought it from and waiting to get reimbursed since he doesn't have the money. That's between me and him, not my customer. So the way Dav has it is that we all can just be "middlemen/brokers" and have no responsibility? :ack2::toiletcla:angry:
 
Sorry for your trouble.
I do find it somewhat odd that you started a thread in the "Hell" section regarding people threatening to take things to a public forum, yet in your string of posts above you are basically doing what you criticized the person in your other thread of doing.
Don't get me wrong, I dont believe you deserve to be taken advantage of or not compensated, but it is ironic that you chose to throw that in there when it obviously upset you when someone did it to you.
 
No Jackie if you go read that one in hell it was that in the very first message was talk about ruining reputations. This went on for awhile and you can see where I said I wanted to work it out and didn't want to go public. that post was about wether it was acceptable to threaten to ruin reputation before even talking to the person to see what they would do.
 
I am sorry this happened. But if Mr Kaufman sold you a product promising you it was one thing, then it turned out to not be, it is up to him to refund the money.

The person that took the money is the person that need to refund the money. If the 3rd party took the money then you need to go to them.


As I told you in the other thread. The seller of the item has to take responsibility for the item.
 
CwnAnnwn said:
The seller of the item has to take responsibility for the item.
Click to expand...

Exactly. If a person sells a snake as an 'x' and takes money for it, he warrants it is an 'x'. Whether he is a producer, broker, it does not matter, what is important is that he is the seller to that buyer.

He must make things right with the buyer directly and then if he wishes he can go against the person who gave or sold the 'not x' to him, but the seller cannot change positions and tell the buyer to deal with the seller's supplier.

From the alleged texts from Dav Kaufman:"I have worked very hard to produce quality animals and maintain a very positive reputation for the past 20 years so if you choose to post this all over the Internet that is your prerogative but I will defend myself and my reputation"

Trying to slither away by saying you were only a broker is not a good defense, if that is what happened.

The ONLY defense to all this is bad luck, that the critter is what it is supposed to be but never proved out.
 
Lucille said:
Exactly. If a person sells a snake as an 'x' and takes money for it, he warrants it is an 'x'. Whether he is a producer, broker, it does not matter, what is important is that he is the seller to that buyer.

He must make things right with the buyer directly and then if he wishes he can go against the person who gave or sold the 'not x' to him, but the seller cannot change positions and tell the buyer to deal with the seller's supplier.

From the alleged texts from Dav Kaufman:"I have worked very hard to produce quality animals and maintain a very positive reputation for the past 20 years so if you choose to post this all over the Internet that is your prerogative but I will defend myself and my reputation"

Trying to slither away by saying you were only a broker is not a good defense, if that is what happened.

The ONLY defense to all this is bad luck, that the critter is what it is supposed to be but never proved out.
Click to expand...

:iagree:
With Lucille and Dan as well.
Mr. Kaufman needs to make things right, with you, if he told you the snake is a Leopard but, after a couple of breedings, the snake didn't prove out to be what it was sold to you as.
Mr. Kaufman, if he so chooses, can go to the person, who traded the snake to him, to seek whatever loss he had to take (due to making things right with you).

....
 
IMO, Dav is completely in the wrong here and sometimes you need to bite the bullet and do the right thing if you wish to maintain a flawless reputation. I can speak on this because I actually found myself in a similar situation a few years ago. I sold someone a "white" snake that I believed to also have pastel in it. The buyer got multiple clutches that first season and did not produce a single pastel. So without question, I manned up... told them to keep/sell the original snake and also gave them another pastel "white" snake to replace the one that did not prove. Thats how I believe these sort of situations should be handled. I let them keep/sell the original one to make up for there lost clutches that they were banking on to have pastel in them. I think the deal that the OP offered to make up for it was MORE THAN FAIR on his behalf. Sad to see that people will throw their 20 year rep out the window over $1000...

*I wrote "white" snake instead of the exact morph to maintain anonymity of the project*
 
Typically the "middle man" gains something from the deal, so the "middle man" should have to make it right. If you go buy a used car from the car lot and it blows up, they're not going to say "let me find the previous owner and see what I can work out". In my opinion it is up to Dav to good on the deal. I think Randy was more than gracious to give it another year, a lot of time and money wasted! Sorry Randy.
 
I see more posts like this in the future,with so many animals being sold with wrongly stated genetics!;)
 
Guy Castro said:
I see more posts like this in the future,with so many animals being sold with wrongly stated genetics!;)
Click to expand...

A good post for the discussion forums. Genetic testing is getting more accurate and cheaper, so such testing might discern between bad luck and a scam.

The problem here IMHO, was and is Dav's avoidance of his financial responsibilities by trying to say he was merely a broker.
 
I agree with all the above comments. The middle man excuse is not an acceptable answer. He took the money and sold the snake as a leopard pied. Dav needs to make this right ASAP. It is almost unbelievable that someone in the right mind would think that they are not responsible for the genetic back up of an animal they sell on here. Furthermore I see Dav has advertisements up and could more than pay back Randy. I guess we will see if Mr. Kaufman is willing to throw away his reputation over this amount of money.
 
Whether Dav got it in a trade or was just the "middle man" it doesn't matter he was the seller in this situation. The snake came from his address. You only had contact with Dav and most importantly he was the one you sent the money to. He's the seller. he should be making it right. He should be trying to work with you first before going back to someone who is no longer breeding and seeing what they can do. He should take care of that on his time not yours. You purchased it from him not them. It's been two seasons he had plenty of time to prepare to make this right just in case it did not have leopard in it. He should have gone back last season to who ever he played "middle man" for to let them know the situation so that if didn't prove out a second season they could have been prepared to take care of the problem. He can at least text you and update you on the situation or try working out a deal that works for both of you like you did. there's many ways this could have been played out but staying in contact with the buyer is very important. Just a simple I haven't forgotten about you or I'm still working on it or anything letting you know he's making an effort. But it's been over a week since he's texted you. No update I understand the frustration
 
Not in any way am I being biased because I know Randy, but Im sure everyone on this forum has spent a few bucks more then what they wanted to, on things that we need or like to put into our projects. The fact that you pay top dollar for something and get what you don't pay for isn't right. Also being the middle man, you should always stand by your product no matter what. If it comes through you, its your responsibility to be a 100% on that animal. I also understand everybody gets busy and its hard to reply sometimes or you forget to which is normal but to take that long without a courtesy txt isn't fair. Hopefully he will make it right because he was the seller and it is the honest thing to do.
 
homeya100 said:
The buyer got multiple clutches that first season and did not produce a single pastel. So without question, I manned up... told them to keep/sell the original snake and also gave them another pastel "white" snake to replace the one that did not prove. Thats how I believe these sort of situations should be handled. I let them keep/sell the original one to make up for there lost clutches that they were banking on to have pastel in them. I think the deal that the OP offered to make up for it was MORE THAN FAIR on his behalf. Sad to see that people will throw their 20 year rep out the window over $1000...

*I wrote "white" snake instead of the exact morph to maintain anonymity of the project*
Click to expand...

nice to see there are still good guys out there Adam. That's what I would do but didn't want to approach it like "if you were stand up you would just send me one of those and call it a day!" Brian Barczyk sold a buddy of mine a multigene male and it turned out to not have one of the genes that my buddy really wanted it for. Brian without haste, sent him I believe it was 3 snakes to make up for the confusion, lost time, and clutches and he kept the original snake. To me that's not only good business, that's being a good man. Everyone makes mistakes, realistically the way half these new combos get predicted is that they look like a little more than the pictures of the one without it look like. It happens, but what you do about it shows your level of self pride, actual respect for the animals, or your love of the money. I hear "broker" and that screams "I don't even care enough to buy the animal and flip it, I just want to get the money without getting my hands dirty." Why would anyone if they were told I did not produce this snake, have this snake, I am just the broker collecting a fee, not just go to the actual person who bred or has the snake? I tried coming up with a fair solution but it was shot down like I was ungrateful and unrealistic. Now I would not pay extra for a hatchling of something I had on my table for cheaper and way bigger. To me I feel either he should just refund them money to me and be done, or send me the killer clown girl on his dime and call it a day. Is that unreasonable? I am sure if I took it to small claims court I would get the cost of rats for 2 1/2 years out of it since it was not what it was suppose to be.....plus a days wages for missing work for court:D
 
Lucille said:
A good post for the discussion forums. Genetic testing is getting more accurate and cheaper, so such testing might discern between bad luck and a scam.

The problem here IMHO, was and is Dav's avoidance of his financial responsibilities by trying to say he was merely a broker.
Click to expand...

Hi Lucille,
I am not aware of any genetic testing that will determine what morph a snake is. The reason for this is that 1) we do not have the genome of many snakes, and those that we do have are generally not fully annotated, and 2) we therefore do not know the genomic location of the genes associated with specific traits, thus we cannot determine which allele of that gene is present in a snake.

So right now, you simply have to go with what the breeder says it is, and what you think it is. When traits might be subtle, I am always of the opinion that you buy the most obvious animal available. This might cost you more money, but in the end of the day, you have a website quality animal to show off the genetic potential.

What we can do with genetic testing is more related to phylogentics, phylogeography, and parentage. Of course, with a dominant, incomplete dominant, or poss het recessive breeding, you cannot tell if the offspring carries a given gene, only that a particular set of parents produced it.

Warren
 
fyi....I alerted Dav to this thread via text. And anyone who wants proof of the texts between us, I can send them to a moderator for confirmation that they were word for word. The screen shot shows his personal phone number and I do not think that is right posting it.
 
so here is the latest text between us
10:52 I texted
Fyi, there is a boi thread up about this, sorry it went there

10:53 he texted
All you had to do was give me a call to sort this out as I was willing to do. This is permanent now.

10:56 I texted
its been two weeks and I have sent messages. You told me in a text to go and post it.

10:59 he texted
It's all over now. I never told you to do anything but call me so we could work it out. You told me youd call me on your way to a show and didn't. I had something in mind that would have benefitted you. What happens now is your own doing


so wait....it was so beneficial to me that you had to tell me over the phone and couldn't have texted me when I asked 5 days ago what you had come up with? You made a big thing about 20 years you have been doing this and have backers....a bluff to shut people up with intimidation? What happens now? That's a threat! Anyone please tell me what I did wrong here? I really blew it now huh?! Wait....it's over....does that mean he is not going to do anything for his 10% broker fee portion he is responsible for?:)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top