Loading ...Recently, this issue hit hard with me. How much money do you have to make in this hobby versus how much moral obligation to the industry do you have to sacrifice? Let me bring up a couple of instances.
Last week, on a forum that I follow closely, I found a thread that was commenting on the level of customer service a vendor was dishing out to its clients. Lets just say it wasn’t too positive. So, after much deliberating, the website owner decided to force the vendor off of his/her site. Relinquished the vendor’s sponsorship rights, deleted him/her from their database, and was permanent. Their (owner,mods) argument was that the vendor wasn’t trying hard enough to rectify numerous customer complaints, and thus would greatly smear the image that the site is trying to build for their users. That, my fellow readers, is a victory for morality and the reefing psyche of Canada. They chose not to view their business model through the eyes of green.. uhm, red, blue, and green bank notes.
Exhibit two leads me to this story about morality vs money making. Again, we are involving a local board here for our discussion. A famous local reef store, actually more like infamous, has gotten into some more hot water with their USA suppliers of coral/fish (Hawai’i, California). The issues were over payment for their livestock, ones that were already in ‘sell mode’ over on our local board. The suppliers tried to reach out to them in many ways, just to be ignored. As usual. (some of these posts were deleted on our local forum). They even posted on many forums, asking people to help them in recovering their money in another country. In a surprising move, soon after these acts of help, the sponsor on our local board disappeared. Their threads deleted, sponsorship revoked, and their footprints swept away. I thought, “Finally, we have another victory for morality vs money making!”. I truly believed that the board owner has stood up and showed them that he won’t tolerate such detrimental behavior to his forum users. The sponsor was trying to sell wares that were not paid for. In my eyes, that doesn’t sound right.
So I get up this morning to browse around the net a bit, and surprising to me, I see the local board sporting the infamous sponsor with their new shipment of coral (extremely adjusted for the PFE award) and live rock. Quite shocked and disappointed, I tried to figure out why this happened. Why was I so wrong? Was Jeff right all along? Was it only a glitch in the php code? Or was it a glitch in my hopes in believing in people having some sort of a responsibility to reefers? As Jeff told me, “I told you it was all about the money.” And he is right. It was. They probably didn’t pay their sponsorship money in time, and got cut off for a short time. Got my hopes up… and many others.
I guess there is a HUGE disparity between the views of the two big site owners in Canada. How much do you really need to run a site of this magnitude? How much are you willing to sacrifice just so you can have more fluff for your wallet? Are you going to support a vendor who doesn’t care for their customers? One that is allowed to sell wares that are not paid for? One that doesn’t know how to excel in customer service? One that doesn’t display prices, just so that they can have a different price for everyone?
If you want to be in this industry, you have to have a moral obligation to this hobby and its users, us reefers. There comes a point where you must draw the line, otherwise you just look supportive of their business practices by association.
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Trained by the thirteenth ring master of the Sian Xiuang Coral Temple. Currently is apprenticing the art of Acropora shaping in the ancient tradition of Ninja Fragging. Known as the SPS hero!
RE: Example 1.
There is a difference between the way these forums charge money so I am not sure if I can say the other forum is any better than the local forum. The other forum is known to collect almost the annual sponsorship fee of almost 1K from their sponsor pre-paid. Therefore when the other forum decided to revoke the sponsorship, they are not losing any money (only money for subsequent years). Have you verify with the other forum or that ex-sponsor whether they refunded it partially?
If there is no partial refund, it is not a fair statement that they are not after the green.
RE: Example 2. That LFS in question is having issues with their suppliers (Hawaii) and wholesale customers (California), these are B2B issues that does not have anything to do with a retail marketing aspect (that is what the local forum is for them). Despite what you might think is ethical or moral or perhaps illegal, it is not up to the forum business to determine that. If you have no check lately, the local forum is a business and it is there to look after their business interest. And in this specific incident, there are no issues with retail customers (i.e. the majority of the forum users).
Looking after business interests is just part of business, no different than how some blog sites block certain questionable destructive users.
Excellent post Vlad!
Hubert, you are missing the entire point. ALL businesses, whether in in this industry or the pencil making industry, have to have some moral responsibility towards their customers. This is my belief, and not what is being portrayed in life. This post was trying to show that there is such morality in a world of greed.
The local forum should have a sense of shielding its users from businesses that are known to be shady. That is the moral responsibility that I am talking about. One that was practiced at the other reefing forum.
It may not be up to the forum owners to decide legality of the vendor in question, however it is up to the forums to decide morality of the hobby, we do that every day by purchasing tank bred species, frags from other collectors and other examples. Knowledge of the possibility of fraud by a vender/sponsor on a forum should be investigated and acted upon should the allegations prove correct.
Also we are talking about two different vendors here, both have been shown to have their issues, and such has been aired publicly, by their clients, their suppliers and themselves.
Vlad, did not miss the point, my point was that they already pocketed the money
So no need to constantly fight for their customers to earn additional money.
@Hubert – Bullshit. Do forums have a responsibility to their members. In fact, all businesses do. You run your business morally, right? What happens if you don’t? What happens if you sell things that you know are rotten? How long will you stay in business? This industry needs a strong moral centre. Forums are the lifeblood of information in the hobby and without some guidance from them, shady practices will continue.
@Jeff it is naive if you think that forums are there to ensure a moral centre for the industry or hobby. Some serves as good information but at the end of the day, they are just a business and any business has to make sure it generate enough to sustain itself and its goals (whether it is their stated goal or hidden agenda). Forum is just one source of information, it is not the truth, how many times you see newbies trying to give ‘advices’ to others and then you found out they only started 2 months ago… and suddenly they are experts. At the end of the day it is up to the person themselves to determine the validity of the information or the ethnics of certain business and LFS and forums and blogs.
@Hubie – I’m saying what the hobby *needs* not what it has. Isn’t it up to the hobbyists to affect some change on the industry? I’m not happy with rot in the system, so why shouldn’t I speak out against it? Morals are necessary for a healthy industry. Reefing definitely is not a healthy industry.
I have never been a business owner, however I have managed several over my the years, retail, service, telecommunications, and restaurants. Every day was a fight to keep customers, service is key, and part of service is ethics and morals. To say or act otherwise is to align yourself with the greats like DOW, Exxon, et al.
Yes it is up to each of us to weight the information that is presented on the forums, however muzzling or deleting such isn’t right or proper. If the information isn’t posted then there is nothing to weigh. Unethical vendors are still frequented and therefore kept in business. Thus the forums are here to assist in keeping the ethics in this hobby.
The worst part is the people that get scammed by the businesses your article is talking about are going to be people new to the hobby who dont really have a good pulse on the LFS scene nor the forums.
I think most of us who have been in the hobby for a few years know exactly whats going on and stay clear eventually these businesses will cease to exist.
At least that is the hope. This is why we, Fragd.it, exist. We want to bring people awarness on many fronts. This is just one aspect, in a drum full of reefy issues.
Ya know you guys need to cool your jets. (Vlad/Jeff) There are two sides to every story. Did you know that said shipper shipped the fish 5 per bag and that 50% of them died? I personally saw those shipments and watched as said retailer tried to provide an enviroment that they might recoup in. As Hubert noted this is a B2B issue and just because you guys might have issues with said retailer is no reason to use them as your personal pissing post. I thought you guys would have learned after that RC fiaso, but I guess not.
Mike, we are personally involved in a lot of things behind the scenes. We talk to a lot of people. People that most don’t talk to. You may be right about this time, but the common theme with the vendor in question is still the same. Did you know that Indo suppliers won’t ship to them? The word spreads quickly.
And I really don’t know what this fiasco really was. I’ll just say this: we reported the news from the original source of news. We didn’t break the story, we just reported it. A LOT of news agencies behave this way.
well me might be off topic a bit … again.
clearly stated “this hobby NEEDS a moral high ground” and frankly we as consumers, we as forumists, bloggers will need to provide this ground. For the last thousand years scammers, swindlers, quick change artists have existed and will continue to exist. The issue we face is that there are more in this hobby and there is no higher authority, legislation to keep these guys in check.
Well put Steve.
@vlad; i hear ya and I’m sure all of them have mud on their faces in on capacity or another. The problem is we never really get to hear the “whole story” which is why we need to be careful before we pass judgement.
@thread; indeed there needs to be some control in place to weed out the scammers. Problem is there are too many people, consumers and retailers, that are only concerned about their needs and in most cases that boils down to dollars. There are numerous examples of this in our local forums and retail outlets. There are a small number of good guys but as steve wrote they are dwarfed by the rest. Once our society rewinds and develops some real sense of morality only then will things change. Sad but 100% factual. Keep up the good work guys!
*one (damn, did it again!)
@M007This hobby deals with livestock and all retailers account DOA’s into their prices. You take the good shipments with the bad. The second example of LFS are scam artists and shame on their patrons who know what they do.
I have received many shipments that were not ideal, but you know what; I buy and sell livestock. It’s expected that things happen, but it is no excuse to rip off your suppliers. But then if you are THAT said LFS it is a great excuse to get free livestock again…and again…and again…
Please, you are only being ignorant if you don’t clearly see the signs about the ethics of this LFS. How can you possibly defend them? To this day they still owe me a lot of money.
Also, I might add in regards to the Hawai’i supplier; I am pretty sure that the “said” LFS did not just do a trial shipment with this supplier.
A supplier generally does not allow a new customer to open an account that the LFS can pay later. This process is usually done after a few shipments and only when the LFS pushes the supplier for it.
Having said that, it is probable that “said” LFS has purchased from this Hawai’i supplier in the past and gained their trust to have a shipment sent with payment later and as usual, true to their colors; this “said” LFS didn’t want to pay or waited for an opportunity to decline payment.
This is a common practice for them (said LFS).
Maybe this LFS told the supplier to bag 5 fish in one bag to help them save cost on shipping because the flight time is relatively short from Hawai’i? I truly doubt that a supplier would do something that outrageous, especially an American supplier.
I would tend to believe the idea that the “said” LFS was trying to save some freight charges and instructed the supplier to bag accordingly and it did not go as they (LFS) planned and decided not to pay the supplier. I’ll mention again that most suppliers will not allow accounts unless the LFS has purchased from them multiple times. So why would the LFS have issues with the suppliers packing job now?
Very interesting point of view that I forgot to mention. Thank you Paul.
I am the Hawaii supplier. The invoice in question is for the LAST shipment that I sent to the vendor in question. We were squared up on all of our other invoices prior to this 5′th and final shipment. I did not send them any fish that were 5 per bag in this shipment— especially since there was only 1 yellow tang in the order! Yonger brother was on vacation in the Filipines and only his older brother was here. I sent them almost everything that they asked for and I even ran around last minute to get them an extra black tang for their customer–and all I would have made was a $20 profit! After recieving the fish, the older brother told me that a few of the lemonpeel angels died and 1 or 2 flame angels, but everything else was in perfect shape… He asked for a week to pay and I said fine… It’s now been 3 months and no payment and all ignored calls… I have even hired a collection agency to help me out because that money is needed to pay out my shipping agent and my supplier in Xmas Island… The vendor in question didn’t just screw me; they screwd my supplier in Christmas island, they screwed my shipping agent, and they screwed everyone around me that I had to put on hold for $ owed. They legitimately owed me a lot of money (edit: names changed, amount omitted)
@Robert; We should get together and start a class action law suite against these two brothers (WeedWack). I know of 2 Indo Suppliers as well as two other U.S.A. suppliers that they owe money to and I still have not received my money either. In total, it could amount close to 6 figures. A class suite might put these guys out of business once and for all.
I too have tried to go through the collections process and they (WeedWack) told the collection agent at that time that they were moving to Indo and that by the time the trial went through, they would be long gone to Indo.
So, I sent a Bailiff to recover some of my livestock and they found out and took all my corals out of their store and sent the Bailiff back with dead skeleton corals. Then once the Bailiff left, they brought my corals back to the store to sell again. WTF!!
These are the type of people that we are dealing with; very sneaking and always on the lookout for an angle to rip off people.
I really hope that you can recover your money. These guys really need to be stopped because now they are most likely off to prey on a Vanuatu supplier as per their post in a local forum.
Good luck and please let me know if you want to proceed at looking into a group lawsuit against these guys.
WOW..this is an eye opener for me. I know there were problems but not this. I will refuse to go back there again. The worst part is this LFS sells high priced livestock and rips off there suppliers. BOOO
@ Darryl – I agree, an eye opener for sure.
@Robert and Paul – Sorry to hear, I hope everything works out. I hate people who dishonest.
If you want the know the BS behind ORA email me. I use to work there. try ANIMAL abuse!should be there new slogan. Killing thousands of clown fish on a regular basis. Disease issues galore with no UV or any other sterilization for that matter. And when the fish come with disease they flat out lie about it. the first batch of mandarin released were diseased with fin rot. Most starved to death because of not wanting to eat readily available aquarium food. Killed over 60,000 clown fish because they had to many and when facility is over run by disease and they need fish, they order it from Asia. So much for cultured fish. info@urbanreefkeeper.com