- I've been selling
reptiles online (tranquil ambient music)
for a solid few years now
and shipping them off to people all over the United States.
And looking back,
there's the occasional thing where I'm like,
yeah, that was kind of sketchy.
So I thought today, for some reason,
it'll be a good idea to share the five top things
that I thought of when it comes to, yeah,
some secrets I've done about selling reptiles.
Now just how sketchy or bad are they?
Well, you can be the judge.
I don't think they're horrible
but I'm sure the comment section will fill me in
if I am misguided.
The first one, in my notes, I said, loopholes,
I feel like the word loophole is a bit strong.
I'm gonna, hold on, synonyms for loopholes.
There were some discrepancies that I dodged?
No, that's even worse.
Means of evasion.
Okay, these are all too,
you know, I'm just gonna say the word loophole.
I don't think it's really loophole,
but we worked our way around some things
so that we could still work with and sell reptiles
that were actually illegal to own and sell.
In the United States,
the states while they are united, kind of,
they each have their own laws.
For example, in Georgia, corn snakes are illegal.
It's very random.
It's just, if you're in Georgia,
you can't own a corn snake.
Yeah, whatever.
So the easiest example to describe to you
would be diamondback terrapins, which are illegal to possess
or own in the state of North Carolina without a permit.
But we were still able to help people out
when they would say, hey, I've got a diamondback terrapin,
can you please take it in for me?
'Cause I can't keep it anymore.
We could still make it work,
you pay us thew rehoming fee and we'll take it.
But when I say we, that includes our partners
because instead of shipping it to us in North Carolina,
they would ship it to someone else on our behalf
that lives in another state
where selling Diamondback terrapins was illegal
but owning them was not.
The Diamondback Terrapin
never entered the state in North Carolina,
and never even got close to North Carolina,
it got from one state where it was illegal to own
to another state where it was legal to own,
we can list it on our site as usual,
that person's caring for it and doing everything we need.
And then once we find a new owner for it,
that person would ship it to the new owner on our behalf.
And we would occasionally compensate these people
for helping us out with various things.
So it was kind of a win, win, win situation.
The person that couldn't keep the animal was helped out,
the animal got to a great home
and someone that wanted a diamondback terrapin
and could own it legally
got to own their diamondback terrapin.
And we were able to do it
all from the state where it was illegal to own
but I never even saw the turtle.
So I don't think that's too bad.
What do you think?
Is not even that sketchy.
Number two, on the site,
it clearly says, we do not accept returns of reptiles.
If you buy a reptile, it's all on you.
We're not taking it back.
In reality, we actually did accept returns, okay.
Now most reptiles sites,
if you look, they're gonna say no returns,
you can't send the animal back.
If you pay for it and we send it to you, it's all yours.
It's all your problem, we're not doing nothing,
but we still help out people
that bought animals from us four plus years ago.
We're still there for them, we still answer questions.
And if they want to return it,
we actually do accept the returns, okay.
Another reason we say we don't accept returns
is 'cause we need buyers to be like, I am keeping this,
this is my problem.
It's my responsibility, there's no 30 day return period
where I can keep it for 29 days
and then ship it back and then get a refund or whatever,
because we need people that are certain
they're gonna do what they can.
However people still mess up
and they actually can't keep it.
Now, some people accept returns.
I think that's kind of crazy.
If you think of an Amazon,
like I love Amazon's return system.
I use it occasionally,
but if you return something to Amazon,
it's probably just gonna get thrown away.
We can't throw away live animals.
So if it gets sent back to us,
we have to deal with whatever that owner did,
if they say did a poor job or something
or so thing went bad, that's our problem now,
and then we have to send it out to a new person,
then maybe that person returns it.
And then we're, we don't wanna ship animals too many times.
Like even though I believe shipping reptiles is okay,
I don't wanna have to ship 'em six times
'cause people keep returning the animals.
However, if someone contacts us and they explain,
I need to return it.
I just lost my job, I can no longer afford it.
I don't have time.
And I don't always agree with their reasons,
sometimes they're like, I don't like its attitude,
I don't like its personality.
If someone clearly has an animal that in their ownership
where they're unhappy with it
that's not gonna be good for the animal,
and one of the promises that we want to uphold
to the people that send us animals and we're rehoming for,
is that we're gonna get them into a good home.
So even if that home seemed good,
if it turns out it's not good,
we'll do what we can to get it back.
Most of the time we get them to pay for the shipping
and they do not get a refund.
So even though it's a return,
well, if you bought a $200 snake, $50 shipping,
you're gonna ultimately pay $300
for not owning the snake 'cause you bought it
paid for shipping and then paid for shipping back.
Now there's been, I think a couple times
where we cover the shipping,
but we did not give them a refund.
It is what it is.
We don't have a return policy, but we have accepted returns.
Now it's not even too many times,
at most maybe like 10 animals have been returned.
Some in person, where we actually able to meet them
and take it back,
others were online and they got shipped back.
But ultimately selling 500 animals,
I'd say that's pretty good, if we did have a return policy,
I'm guessing it would've been, I don't know,
five, maybe even 10% 'cause like,
well, it's a risk free guarantee.
If I don't like the animal, I can return it.
And then there's people impulse buy more
and buying animals they're unsure about.
So I am going to support this, I will die on this hill,
we should not have a return policy,
but we should still take the returns.
And I think most people would probably agree with that.
Number three.
In multiple terms, and what I'm about to say
is going to instantaneously sound sketchy
and that's because we would do inhouse financing,
which you know, that can be a little scammy,
a little suspicious sometimes.
And maybe you're buying a car
and it's a little bit of a weird place
and they want you to finance it through them,
but you can't find the APR on the page.
It can be iffy.
And we did have legally binding contracts
where if you were like, I want this $500 animal,
I don't wanna pay 500 up front.
We'd be like, cool, no problem.
Pay us 125 a month for four months.
And what was, I can't remember what,
we actually did charge them like an interest.
I think it was like, it was kind of crazy,
it was like 10% interest or something.
So over the next few months, you're gonna pay us 550,
it says it in this contract,
we would write up contracts using free templates
and we'd send them off and they sent them back
and they were in fact signed contracts.
But here's the thing, it was very sketchy,
not for the buyer, but for us
'cause how it worked is you pay the first month
and we go ahead and ship you the animal,
you have the animal, we don't have your money.
We're just hoping that you send the money.
If you didn't send us the money,
we wouldn't have done anything honestly.
You just got like a free animal.
Ultimately, yes, could we have gone to small claims?
Yes, could we have won?
I think we would of,
but are we really gonna go through the effort of going,
let's say the person's in California wearing NC,
we have to sue them over the $350 animal.
We're just not going to,
it's just not worth the time or the effort.
And we were just taking a risk
every single time we did this financing.
It's not like PayPal financing
where they will actually get their money
no matter what it takes, we wouldn't have done anything.
So if you financed with us, you could have actually not paid
and we wouldn't sold you in the future,
but we weren't gonna go after you.
We were completely bluffing
if we said that you're gonna go to court
because you're not paying for your animal.
Now we did have many people pay late,
sometimes people were a day late,
sometimes people were three to four weeks late
but ultimately everyone that we financed
paid their full balances,
except for one person who I still remember.
And I think they did a typo because they still owe me $1.
I thought about if I should contact them for that dollar,
but I decided, you know what,
I'm going to do the gracious deed
of covering that $1 for you
and not taking you to court over $1.
I wouldn't do this again, but it worked out
and everyone paid and I appreciate your honesty
and we did not have mal intent with it,
it was honestly just to make it easier for you
and to make sales more efficient and more quick.
And it was cool because all the buyers were good,
we had good intentions and it worked out,
they got their animal for the promised amount,
and they paid it and we were all happy.
So it worked for me.
I probably won't do it again though.
Number four.
Each animal on our malt scale has its own unique description
to perfectly describe that animal.
But I've sold over a 100 ball pythons,
I've sold over a 100 leopard gecko,
I've sold over 50 cresty geckos.
And even though each reptile is very individual
and has its own personality,
if I get a ball python today,
it's pretty much guaranteed to have the personality
of one of the other a 100 ball pythons
I've sold in the past couple years.
Sometimes I reuse this descriptions of animals
and I just scroll through and find a similar ball python
and I copy it and I paste it into the new one,
but it's accurate.
It's a sweet, charismatic leopard gecko
that likes being handled and has a great temperament
and eats well and likes dubia roaches.
And it's all accurate with the new leopard gecko,
why not just take that old description and use it again?
If it's gonna be the exact same,
why waste the time to type it with different wording?
If I was feeling a little frisky,
sometimes I'd use some different additives,
instead of sweet, the gecko was nice,
and instead of grumpy, the ball python was defensive
you know, and make them all a bit unique,
but ultimately yes,
sometimes I did copy and paste descriptions.
So if you go through all the animals that we've sold,
you'll probably find some matching descriptions
and somehow nobody's ever noticed this
but maybe it's 'cause they actually don't care.
'cause ultimately each animal I sold,
the personality was accurate to the description.
So I always made sure they were right,
but some of 'em were the exact same,
I'm just gonna be honest, okay.
And number or five.
While I considered it in the past,
we ultimately do not let people repurchase animals
that they send to us.
And people have mixed emotions about this
when I mention this,
because let's say you send an animal to us
and then a month later you're like, you know what?
That was a mistake, I want the animal back.
One person did this and they actually had a good enclosure.
They actually, if they were a different person,
they would have been approved,
but ultimately after deliberation,
we decided not to send people back their animals.
And after this first one, it just became the policy,
if you send us an animal,
there's no chance of you getting them back
because even though if the enclosure was good
and the setup was good, some of these people
were just really bad at caring for the animal
where if it clearly came in underweight
or overweight or had a respiratory infection or had mites,
we can't really trust them with this animal again.
Our promise to the person rehoming
is we're gonna get it to a home that's good for the animal.
And if that person wasn't good for the animal,
it's not gonna go back to that person.
Also, a lot of these people are simply too neurotic
to be comfortable.
Like say they were rehoming the animal,
I'm like, I'm gonna rehome, actually I'm not gonna re,
actually I need to get rid of it, actually,
ah, I think I'm gonna keep it.
I don't have time for it.
No, I think I can make time, I don't have money,
I think I can make more money.
And then they're finally like, you know what?
I'm gonna send it,
they send it and then they do the same thing.
Ah, I don't wanna send it, I want it back.
Well, no, you're just gonna send it back
to us a month later, it's kind of obvious that you're,
if you're that on the fence about it,
it's just best for everyone's sake, just don't, it's here.
It's gonna stay here until we find it a new owner.
And that's just how it's been since,
ultimately even less people
have tried to rebuy their own animal
compared to people that have tried to return animals.
So say we had less than 10 returns,
we had, I think less than five people try to repurchase.
It was like three, maybe four,
like between three and six people.
So at the grand scheme of things,
it was a very small group of people
but it was still very stressful
and something that really took a lot of thought
to make sure we were making the right decision.
But that, what was that number?
That was indeed number five.
So yeah, quick rundown, if an animal,
if we couldn't keep it legally that wouldn't stop us
from making sure we could still legally work with the animal
and get into a good home.
Even though our policy said absolutely no returns,
and we still accept returns,
it's kind of just what we gotta do.
If you don't wanna pay for a very expensive animal upfront,
even though we don't do it now, we used to let you finance.
And actually now, Wix,
which is the site I used to like sell animals,
they actually do have PayPal financing, so you can do that.
It's not me.
I get paid upfront.
PayPal sends me the full amount
and it's between you and PayPal if you stop paying.
So don't think that you can do the financing now,
it does not pay, 'cause it's not me, it's PayPal
and PayPal will probably come after you.
But I think their APR is zero and we actually charged you.
So there's that.
Animals, they're unique,
but yes, sometimes I'd reuse the descriptions
and information for the same,
it was always updated pictures, I'll give you that.
Anytime, even if I reused the listing and the description,
I would take new pictures of the new animal
to make sure you get the one that you're looking at.
And yeah, if you send us an animal, you can't take it back.
And sometimes people
try to work their way around to get past,
if we've declined them in the past,
they really want that animal,
they try to buy it under a different name.
Well guess what?
Your name isn't the only way we know who you are.
You have a digital fingerprint, your credit card,
and your debit card have digital fingerprints,
they're linked.
If you use a credit card under your name,
we still know who you are, okay.
We can't see your full number
but we can acquire enough information
to know that you're trying to buy an animal again
and trying to be someone else.
So yeah, it doesn't work.
You can't do that.
But that's that, what do you think?
Were they not that bad?
Should I have not done some of these?
Looking back, I would just not even bother with animals
I can't keep legally, just, there's enough other animals.
I'm not even touching that again.
Not doing in house financing.
I will still accept returns if I have to.
I'll still use descriptions and I still will continue
to not let people rebuy their animals.
So ultimately, that's my thoughts on it now
but I'm curious to hear yours.
And I'm curious if you want a plushy before they sell out.
As of recording this, there are 30,
I think 29 left and then they're gone.
I'm keeping a fee for myself, but that'll be it.
And it'll be a little while before there's more plushies
because they take a long time to make.
But thanks so much to everyone that bought one
and there's a couple animals on our malt scales right now
if you wanna check 'em out.
But that'll be it for this video.
(upbeat ambient music) I'm Alex
and thanks for watching.