• 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.
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    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.

Is my thinking unreasonable?

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Gary,
What are you apologizing for if you have done no wrong? What I don't understand is during the day and a half before you e-mailed the other buyer, why couldn't you e-mail me to see if I was still interested? I don't know how I could have made it clearer. The whole deal could have been done Wed. but you had things to do and I respected that and was willing to wait on you to let me know when you had time. The last thing I said on the phone was to e-mail me if you couldn't reach me by phone and let me know a convenient time for me to pick up the snake. I e-mailed you on Monday letting you know I would be in your hometown again and you replied on Tuesday that the snake was sold. When was the day and a half period you didn't hear from me ? We initiated the whole deal via internet and I stressed that you could e-mail me letting me know what was good for you. I am sorry I didn't get the phone message but I was trying to give you the respect of not aggravating you to death with e-mails since you had some things to take care of and I didn't have your phone #. Anyway, needless to say, I don't have intentions of flaming anyone. I do wander what the guy who got the snake ( I can't remember his name) would be saying if he were on my end of the situation. Like was said before, let this be a lesson to all of us. I just was very frustrated at how things transpired and wanted reassurance that I had a reason to be. If I had been the seller in this situation, I would be watching the BOI for something like this to come about. If you are apologizing Gary, I accept your apology. You are probably a great guy. I just don't understand why you didn't make more of an effort to communicate with me before selling the snake. I was begging to buy it from you and figured our phone conversation made that more than clear.

Brandon Byers
 
Brandon the only reason I apologized is the situation did not work out. It was just common curtisy. Other than that I did nothing wrong and I feel like you are trying to drag my name in the mud for nothing. You need to call someone back that is what we agreed to the ONE TIME we spoke on the phone. I don't owe you anything else.

Gary Johnston
 
However, if I tried (mulitple times) to buy an animal from someone (offering him CASH), and the guy put me off but said we should get together over the weekend to actually fulfill the deal, and then he called me once (didn't get me, but left a message on my cell phone), and then he sold the animal to someone else, several things would be true for me.
Click to expand...

He tried once there was no multiple about it and I had to go to Thanksgiving there was nothing I could do about that. You have personaly attacked me with the"flake" comment, you are upset about being called a "hillbilly" I really can't figure you out man. I think your intentions are good but step back and read how you are back and forth on this whole thing. I really did not ask Shaun, I told him about it when he emailed me that he recieved the animal, to come on here I think he just saw what most of the others who replied to this thread are seeing is a guy getting roasted by a few people on here for nothing. As long as you keep saying these things about me I have to keep defending myself on here. Brandon has not even replied to my Private email but he was able to come on here and reply to me publicly. So if that tells you anything. I would really like to let this one go I have just seen how things can get out of hand here before.
thanks
Gary Johnston
 
From reading your side
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There are always 2 sides to a story like this, and after reading 1 side I formed an opinion based solely on the 1 post. I got the impression that the seller was hesitant to close the deal in person or at his residence, so maybe there was no snake at all. Obviously that was a wrong opinion, but it was valid because the same thing has happened to several different people who post here. I also believe the seller should have tried harder to contact Brandon before selling the snake to someone else, I know in the same situation, I would have.
I do not think Gary is a bad guy, just exersized some poor judgement.
 
Jason,

He offered to PayPal the money and Gary refused it.

Gary,

He offered to PayPal the money, to send a money order, AND to come to your town and pick up the animal, paying for it then. If that is not multiple attempts to pay for something, you and I must have a different definition of what "multiple" means.

Casey,

I agree with you 100%. That's all I am trying to say.
 
I'm afraid I am going to have to side with Gary on this one.

I've had my fill of people whom say they are going to buy something and then I never hear from them again. They are obviously floating multiple deals at the same time and they want to nail down everyone until they can make a decision. And they sound oh so sincere making the promise that they WILL get back to me and make the purchase.

I don't know how many times I have taken an animal off of a surplus list and then had to put it back on when funds or a followup call never materialized. Now I only comment out the code in the file and don't delete it, expecting this to happen.

The BOI is littered with situations like this.

Quite frankly, that animal was Gary's personal possession to do with as he pleased. He could sell it to anyone he wanted to and doesn't have to answer to anyone afterwards about his decision.

No money changed hands, no one got screwed over, and Gary did not need to clear it with Brandon before selling it to someone else.

This whole thread has been nothing more than crying over spilled milk.
 
Although I agree with Gary's side on many points, I also agree Brandon's frustration as well.

As Rich said, the snake was Gary's and he could sell it to whomever he pleased without having to ask anyone's permission. Also, in this internet world of super serious window shoppers, it's really hard to take anyone seriously until there is cash in hand. There have been times where I've taken ads down for a "serious" buyer only to have to repost them later when communication ceased and funds didn't arrive(this always looks kind of bad when you have take ads down then repost them later, IMO). I have even had people set up deals on the phone to meet in person at a show, the person shows up, looks at the animals, says he/she will be back, then I never see or hear from them again.
However, from Brandon's side of things, it looks like he made several attempts to pay for the snake(pay-pal, money order, meet in person)and for whatever reason, Gary didn't accept it at the time(nothing wrong with that). It was Thanksgiving and Gary's family stuff has to come first. No biggie. BUT, if I were in Gary's situation, I would have tried more than once to contact Brandon because he seemed like a pretty real buyer. Gary had time and ability to e-mail another buyer, why not Brandon as well? I know you guys agreed on a phone call, but if he wasn't available, he told you to e-mail him also. And knowing it was Thanksgiving weekend, I would have chalked not hearing back right away to Brandon being busy and tried contacting him again later.

But either way, I don't think anybody did ANYTHING wrong here. Noone lost money or ripped anyone off. I wouldn't write anyone involved off as people not to do business with. Nobody was in the wrong, there was just a communications break-down and some quick decision making.

Cheers!
 
I have a scenario like that happening right now.... I posted an 80% yellow Biak Chondro on KS the other day.... I had an email from a person inquiring about it.... after a bunch of emails, he proceeded to make me a VERY FAIR OFFER, which I accepted.... I have NOT heard from him since I emailed him back, which, granted, was only this morning, but, the fact remains... if I get an email from anyone else, saying that they want it and they are going to PayPal me immediately.... it's THEIRS!!
The point being.... as I've always said.... TALK IS CHEAP! ACTIONS!.... That's what it's all about!
If I do hear from this guy, telling me he definitely wants it, and is sending me an overnight MO, or he'll PayPal me as soon as he gets home from work, well, that's a different story.... I will hold the snake (NOT take it off-line), but, HOLD IT till tomorrow's mail.... if no MO, no harm done!

....Neil
 
If anything, I would hope the BOI's archives would be used as a learning resource for buyers and sellers.

I think the following thread should be considered as required reading for the study of buyer/seller relationships:

Gilbert Thompson Thread
 
Here's where I see things. Gary is just not a man of his word. It's that plain! Gary, don't take offence as you make up the largest % of the population.

Shaun on the other hand sees this as okay. He looks at the world like you can't trust anybody so screw everyone that may be honest and good.

I found myself in this same spot with Ken a few months ago. He was a man of his word in a world that I don't expect it. I ended up not following through on my end of a deal in a fair amount of time because of that.

My gut feeling is that Gary got a lot of emails about the snakes and it dawned on him that he could get more money. If you notice they didn't talk about the price at all on here and avoided it when it was mentioned. Or those two are friends so he blew the one guy off for his buddy.

I ALWAYS, set timeframes for people when they say they want a snake. Confirmation is EVERYTHING! If somebody says yeah I want it for sure. I tell them to give it some thought and shoot me an email in the morning to confirm things. If they don’t follow through on what they say my obligation to uphold my word is gone.

My word is my bond; I do all of my business on a handshake. I've had people hold $17,000.00 in snakes for me based on my word! Gary not being able to wait a day on a pair of FL kings is preposterous!

Sorry about your bad dealing,
Adam Block
 
Neil and Dave are working together, and now Adam Block is in basic agreement with MY Sentiments???????

Next thing you know everything will be worked out over in the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts too! What's next? That fifth dentist will cave and they'll ALL be recommending Trident?


:D
 
You guys are killing me here! Mr. Block, Shaun paid $125 exactly what I was asking of Brandon, I have had no clue who Shaun is until this. What are you talking about guy. Brandon never called back. Plain and simple. He never offered to send a money order. He did offer to Paypal I refused it, I said I would take cash when we met up instead. We spoke on the phone once. I called him back and to this day he has not called me back. Come on people, this is getting silly. It was one female brooksi not a pair. I never heard from him. The "facts" that you guys are spouting is just not true.

Here's where I see things. Gary is just not a man of his word. It's that plain! Gary, don't take offence as you make up the largest % of the population.
Click to expand...

Come on now guy what are you trying to prove. That is a pretty bold statement. I can't figure out if you people are just having fun at someone elses expense or you are serious. I don't know if I should even keep replying to this seeing that you guys are going to say and think whatever.

Gary Johnston
 
Here's where I see things. Gary is just not a man of his word. It's that plain! Gary, don't take offence as you make up the largest % of the population.
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Your one to talk there Mr Block the nozels took almost 4 weeks to show up.
My word is my bond;
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HAAAAAAAAAAA thats the funniest thing I heard all day didnt, I get your word that my nozels would be shipped within 5 buisness days and it took what almost a month and well over a dozen emails to get them here??? Your not one at all to talk!
 
I didn't mean for it to come to this. I don't think Gary meant bad he just didn't use the best judgement. One thing I do want to clear up.....If you think back hard Gary, when you told me you had Thanksgiving things to do I told you to get back with me next week. With it being the weekend after Thanksgiving I figured a lot of people, possibly you too, would be doing family things and such. One person in a previous post stated it was a lame excuse to not get his call to my cell phone because most people keep them on their belt. I'm sorry, but when I'm visiting family from out of town I don't care anything about toting a cell phone. Another thing I would like to say and then hopefully this will all die down.....Shawn mentions something about people using this as a weopon to talk bad about people or some nonsense. In my opinion the most inappropriate words on here come from him reffering to Darrin as a Senior Hillbilly in such a derogative way. Also Gary, did Shawn put cash in your hand? I did offer to pay for the snake in whatever manner you wished. Anyway, like was said before, no one got ripped off and there is nothing that can be done about it now. I began this thread because I do not do business this way and wanted to make sure I was in the majority. Sure, I've heard the 'ole check is in the mail thing time, time, and time again and it gets old. This was not the case in this situation though. I offered to pay and made clear I was willing to pay and wanted the snake. We even talked about projects we had going on and I don't see how you could have doubted my seriousness about wanting the snake. I didn't bring this hear to slander or flame you. I put your name in it so you could add your side of the story. Without boths sides what good is what I have to say? Anyway, I'm over it and moving on. Best of luck to you.
Brandon Byers
 
Brandon well it has come to this you did not use good judgement when you didn't keep your cell phone on you that weekend when I said I would call(you could have called me, you could have emailed me). You could have at least let me know that you were busy and now was not a good time. My mistake was I should have called you AGAIN just to make sure on Sunday but you didn't have your phone on you anyway so? Just as Darrin was called a "Hilbily" I should not be called a "Flake" or "not a man of my word" or a "shady person" or whatever I was called. No big deal I'm a big boy. I don't really believe your justification for bringing my name on here. You could have called me and said "Wait a second I thought we had a deal!"When we ended the conversation we agreed we would get together or at least speak over the weekend. Back at yah Brandon think about the conversation we had. If you really wanted to know how I felt about this and would like me to know how you felt, you could have called all last week.
Thanks,
Gary Johnston
 
okay fellas...

Let's simmer down and just let it go, okay?

Miscommunication, noone got hurt, let's just chalk it up to experience on both sides and keep it as friendly as possible.
Personally, I'm gonna go have a couple beers and relax for the evening, hope you guys do the same.

Cheers!
 
You seem a little hostile there Gary. Maybe you should take Mr. Hill's advice. I didn't run your name thru the mud I merely opened up the forum for others opinions on the matter. There was more than one way for you to communicate with me. Why did you e-mail Shaun several times while waiting to here from me yet not one time e-mail me. I felt you did me wrong and wanted to know if that was unreasonable thinking. The truth lies in the BOI. The people who reply are unbiased and I got assurance from this thread that I was not being unreasonable. I have not been hostile in this matter and I don't think of you as a flake or any of that. As I stated before, you are probably a good guy. This forum was created to inquire the opinions of others and that is all I did. No hard feelings. I don't think anyone has said you are a crook or a con or anything like that. Then I could see your hostility. I don't think anyone will not consider buying from you due to this thread.

Brandon Byers
 
No Shaun. This is not a weapon. It's a tool, just like a hammer. How that tool is used defines what it is by the person using it. It can be used to build something useful, or it can be used to bash someone's head in. The choice is up to the wielder of the tool.

As such, I think the best thing that can happen from here on out is for Gary and Brandon to get on the phone and talk to each other privately about this. It is serving no purpose to have everything repeated and rehashed here. Although I believe there are no bad guys involved with this, there is certainly the danger that one or both will escalate this to the point where that will change.

As such, I am recommending that the two parties in this issue deal with it privately.

This thread is now closed.
 
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