Spartan76
Active Member
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2022
- Messages
- 104
- Reaction score
- 89
- Location
- WNY
- What state or country do you live in
- New York
The level of incompetence and disorganization that this company has fallen into is difficult to comprehend. There are a lot of threads out there appropriately criticizing their current poor management of livestock. My experience was driven by an attempt to use my last credit from them to purchase some new fish. Not surprisingly this credit was for shoddily packed livestock that had arrived DOA. Four separate times I placed orders online and each time the order was not fulfilled. Days after the anticipated arrival date of the livestock, I would receive an email saying that the order was not fulfilled based on unavailability. Yet each time I would check the website the exact animals I had ordered were still shown to be in stock, the next day as well as several days later. I finally resorted to calling the company directly. This was extraordinarily difficult as most of the time the customer service line simply disconnects. At other times on the phone tree one can attempt to leave a voicemail however, the mailbox is invariably full. After numerous attempts, I finally did reach an employee who promptly disavowed any knowledge of the livestock ordering process, and the customer service ordering process saying that only one employee, named M*****, handles such matters and that she would have to call me back. When I asked for direct contact information for M, the employee told me that M does not have a phone or a direct email. When I asked the employee, how does she herselfcommunicate with M, the employee responded that she has to walk to the other side of the building and speak to her at her desk. If this improbable circumstance is true, one can only wonder how the rest of the business functions. In any case, I finally did reach Martha after much more aggravation, which I won’t go into. She took my credit card information and assured me that my order would be arriving in a few days. Once again, the order did not arrive and I did not receive any communication until several days later. This communication said that either I had canceled the order (I had not) or that my billing information had not been processed. Incredible. Like most of us on this forum I care deeply about the animals that I purchase to take care of. I rearrange my work schedule in order to receive the animals immediately upon their arrival and in my absence, arrange for someone else to do so. This is a considerable inconvenience and imposes direct costs on my valuable time, but like all of us I make the sacrifice for the hobby that I love. It is not acceptable, however, to make that sacrifice in vain four separate times. I have been a long time high budget customer for Live aquaria, and after this incredibly frustrating experience and seeing ever worsening quality of their care of the livestock, I will not be ordering from them again. I did directly share my feedback to their customer service email, and I did ask for my credit to be refunded, but I have a low expectation of recovering that sum. I am very sure that I will be joining the growing ranks of their creditors, whom I suspect would be very interested to know that the current state of the business leaves their investments as vulnerable as an emaciated fish in a leaking plastic bag.
