pacific east aquaculture

stingman · Mar 14, 2013

so I bought some livestock from pacific east aquaculture and I was really impressed with there website boasting customer service and they have some incredible looking stuff in there youtube videos amazing clams and coral I was really excited to get the stuff from them unfortunately the livestock I bought wasn't quite what I saw on the website I bought a mated pair of gold coral banded shrimp when I got them home both had a missing claw and the smaller of the two was dead! I also bought a pair of clams because they were 2 for 150$ by the next morning I had one beautiful clam and one shell I have cared for clams and sps corals for years and have 3 others in my tank all thriving and growing rapidly I decided to send them a nice email in regards to the issue and received a reply stating they don't guarantee there animals! I replied to that email saying that I wasn't satisfied and thought they should replace the clam. This time I got a replay stating that the person who was writing the email was going to speak with the owners to see if they would help me with the unfortunate situation this time I got a reply that they would give me a credit to replace the clam but I would need to pay the difference in the price of there current clams and shipping and box charges I went to there website to see the difference and there clams are listed at $159 which is double what I payed in the first place and the shipping charge is 39.99 the box charge is 10.00 so get the clam replaced alone would cost me almost double what I payed in the first place! What do you guys think about this?
this is a quote from there website

"At Pacific East Aquaculture we strive to provide the best customer service and husbandry practices in the industry. We have been in busines since 2000 providing quality livestock online and through our retail facility"

Im thinking this quote may not be entirely accurate Ive done business with many other places in regard to fish corals and clams and every single one has done great in there customer service. Please post with your thoughts

PacificEastAquaculture · Mar 14, 2013

The original poster did purchases the pair of shrimp and two clams from us - at a recent frag swap event. He had the opportunity to inspect his livestock at our booth, hand selected his own clams from over 50 that we brought to the show and had ample opportunity to look at the coral bandeds before purchase. Clearly they appeared to be in good health at that time or they would not have been purchased. He later contacted us to let us know about his loses - including in his email that he had acclimated his new livestock for 3.5 hours which is considerably longer than what we would recommend for these animals and likely a significant stress factor. It is our policy that we do not normally guarantee any livestock sold at frag swaps due to the fact that customers do have the opportunity to inspect their livestock before purchase and that we simply cannot guarantee how livestock is handled or transported once it leaves our booth. We have had zero other reports of any problems or losses from this show, and we brought nearly a dozen clams back with us that did not sell and have had zero problems or losses on any of those despite all the extra stress and traveling time of an overnight drive back to our facility - absolutely nothing to indicate that there was any kind of problem with our livestock.

Despite all this and the fact that the only indication we have of any mishandling with these animals is in the over acclimation, we did agree to give him credit in the amount of the price paid for the clam, $75, to apply to the clam of his choice from our website. We also let him know that while the clams we currently have available are more expensive than the one he purchased, he was free to hold on to the credit until we had another clam shipment in and had less expensive clams such as our 'Our Pick' special or smaller cultured clams available. He would be required to pay the shipping and box charges to have the clam shipped to him, this is a standard part of our published guarantee. We have tried to make things right for him by making an exception to our policy and offering him credit to replace the animal that was lost. Instead he is attempting to blackmail us by insisting that we ship him a clam valued at more than twice what he paid for the animal that was lost, absolutely free of charge, in order to get his original post removed from this board as well as several others.